Right to Work Blog

Thanks to the efforts of the National Right to Work Foundation, Utah teacher unions no longer have the right to use government resources to collect money for partisan political activities.

From the Deseret News:

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday reversed itself and ruled to uphold a Utah statute prohibiting union officials from using payroll deductions to divert teachers’ and other government workers’ money into union electioneering.

“Utah has a legitimate interest in avoiding the reality or appearance of government entanglement with partisan politics,” according to the ruling, and Utah’s Voluntary Contributions Act “plainly serves the state’s interest in separating public employment from political activities.”

Five Utah labor unions and one association of labor unions – representing several thousand Utah public employees – brought the suit against Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, seeking a declaration that the Utah VCA, a law passed in 2001, is unconstitutional as applied to all public employers other than the state itself.

After initially siding with union attorneys who argued the law somehow violated the constitutional rights of the union, the 10th Circuit Court put the case on hold pending the outcome of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving a similar Idaho statute.

“The recent Supreme Court’s decision and now this 10th Circuit ruling makes clear what should have been obvious: Union officials have no constitutional right to use government resources to line their pockets,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation, which advocates for right-to-work states, including Utah. “It is bad public policy for government bodies essentially to act as bagmen for union political monies.”

The U.S. District Court has pinned back the ears of the Utah political class, particularly Lieutenant Governor Herbert — slapping down key provisions of their unconstitutional campaign finance regulations. The law was exploited by political opponents to muzzle — even criminalize — certain speech.

Read on at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

According to the Salt Lake [Utah] Tribune:

Dispatch Supervisor Roxann Cheever confirmed Thursday that she circulated an e-mail stating that the city’s public-safety bosses – not just an “overzealous employee,” as a police spokesman previously said – urged dispatchers to fill 50,000 envelopes with pro-bond fliers from the police union.

State law bars city employees from electioneering on the taxpayers’ dime.

Though the city’s “. . . top cop has denied any prior knowledge of dispatchers illegally stuffing envelopes with fliers advocating a $192 million public-safety bond,” . . . “an internal memo suggests the city’s police and fire chiefs not only knew, but actually directed the campaign.”

If true, this is yet one more example of anti-taxpayer collusion between public-safety employers and public-safety union bosses.