In many ways it is hard to believe it’s been almost a year since the Supreme Court made a decision in my case and restored the First Amendment rights of millions of government employees. After the decision came out, I planned to return to my job as a child support specialist for Illinois. However, I quickly saw that I needed to get out and spread the word about workers’ rights because the government unions and in many cases, employers, were not sharing the information.
Since then I’ve been on the road a lot to raise awareness of what the decision means for government employees and the ways politicians and government union officials are trying to squelch those newly restored rights.
Last week I headed to Washington, DC, to speak on a panel about our efforts to ensure government employees are finally able to exercise their rights, nearly 12 months after the Supreme Court restored them.
Many people are being told they have to wait for an arbitrary window of time to resign from their union. In some cases this can be a year or two years down the road. The Liberty Justice Center is even representing a University of California employee who is locked in for up to four years
Government unions shouldn’t be allowed to “grandfather” workers into memberships that were signed under terms the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional. But if the unions aren’t going to be required to have everyone re-sign a membership card in order to deduct dues, they at least need to recognize workers’ rights to decide if they still want to be part of the union and freely leave if they don’t.
I spoke about the challenges workers face when I appeared on CSPAN’s Washington Journal last Friday and again early this week when I joined the National Review Institute in Dallas. You can watch the entire segment by clicking the image below.
