Wednesday, September 28, 2005
The mighty mighty union
Next up, Prop 75. This is the one to limit how much the public union folks can use their money to support Democrats without permission from public employees (it's sort of like going from an opt-out policy to an opt-in policy). Oh, I mean, to use as political contributions for any cause. Ironically, unions are currently using a significant portion of their dues to fight this proposition.
Let me just excise a few words here... From the rebuttal to the for argument:
"Prop. 75's sponsor, Lewis Uhler, told the San Francisco Chronicle on June 8th that he designed 75 to target public employees because of their "greed" and "arrogance."
What? Uhler hates public employees? That's terrible. Let me go look up the context just to confirm what is certainly true.
"This time we're focusing exclusively on public employee unions," Uhler said. "People are upset with their overreaching arrogance and even greed in collecting pay and benefits, with pensions no other taxpayer could enjoy."
Haha, I bet you were expecting me to be sarcastic and say that the truth was that he was really referring to the union bosses. It's actually pretty ambiguous here. The arrogance and greed probably refers to the bosses, but all the employees get those benefits and pensions.
The endorseyment. It's not clear from the analysis and such whether currently, nonmember dues cannot be used for political posturing. The analysis says that is the case if the nonmember "objects," which to me suggests that the nonmember has to actually fill out a form to say "don't use my fees." I don't know if this is the case, though, and if anyone knows, I'd love to hear. I also don't know of the ASE unions (the ones grad students are often part of) are included in this proposal. If they are, then clearly I'll vote YES, because that's more money for me. If not, I don't care, so I'll vote YES anyway, because I might end up in one eventually.
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