Un-American activities in Bucks County

This is an interesting op-ed column by Simon Campbell, best known for his leadership in trying to ban teacher strikes in Pennsylvania.

Denying workers freedom of association

Suppose you are Jewish and attend synagogue. There is a Catholic church across the street. Members of both faiths are exercising their right to support only those private organizations that represent their personal values and beliefs.

This is the American way i.e. equal rights, freedom of association, and freedom of speech. The official Bucks County Democrat party’s platform even touts such virtues on its Web site. Article 1 of their platform reads “we believe in equal rights and individual freedoms for all.”

Consider this scenario. One day a law is passed by a Democrat-majority government that says all members of the Jewish congregation must pay nonmember dues to the Catholic Church. The government has declared that the Catholic Church does good work in the community — work that benefits every resident. Besides, there are more Catholics than Jews and this is what they voted for.

The Catholics call their vote “workplace democracy” to make it sound nice. Every Jew must now pay their fair share of dues to the Catholic Church. To ensure compliance, the law requires all Jews to have the dues deducted at source from their paychecks, whereupon their employer forwards it to the Catholic Church. If the Jews don’t like it, they can go live somewhere else.

If a law like that were enacted, there would be riots in the streets. Well, I just described the law in Pennsylvania EXACTLY as it pertains to compulsory unionism. Elected officials like county commissioners, township supervisors, and school board directors, are empowered by state law to force non-union employees into paying union dues as a condition of their employment. It is despicable. Individual employees all across Bucks County are being denied that most fundamental of American rights — freedom of association.

The Bucks County Democrat Party’s platform of “individual freedoms for all” is pure hypocrisy. The truth about this political party is that not one of their elected officials supports the right of workers to freely accept or reject union affiliation.

Democrat County Commissioner Diane Marseglia just voted to force all nonmember employees to pay union dues in order to keep their jobs. She also voted to prohibit county employees from freely resigning their union membership whenever they like. And she voted to use the resources of government to help pump election money to the union that endorses her campaigns.

There are 22 Right-to-Work states in which it is illegal to force non-union employees to pay union dues as a condition of employment. House Bill 150 in the state Legislature would make Pennsylvania a Right to Work state. It has 36 co-sponsors. Not one of them is a Democrat. Meanwhile, Republican John McCain supports passing a National Right to Work law, while Barack Obama opposes it.

Democrats who justify union dues extortion often say “unions benefit workers.” Whether this is true is irrelevant. The issue is this: Who should decide whether a union benefits an employee — the union or the employee? Democrats like Obama and Marseglia believe that employees should have the right to join and pay dues to a union. But they don’t believe that employees should have the equal right to refrain from doing so. These hypocrites with their phony platform of freedom take the Orwellian view that all workers are created equal, but some workers are more equal than others.

Individual liberty and freedom is precious to most Americans. A blind eye should never be turned when the First Amendment is being trampled upon. This November my wife, who is Jewish, will be voting for the man whose love of liberty left him tortured in a prison cell; the man whose unset broken bones today render him unable to freely move his arms. John McCain will never force her to financially support any private organization against her wishes.
This presidential election isn’t about Republican vs. Democrat. It’s about American vs. un-American.

Simon Campbell is president of StopTeacherStrikes Inc., a nonpartisan group working to ban teacher strikes in Pennsylvania. For more information, visit www.stopteacherstrikes.org