into his office nor allow them to see any of his cabinet. If they have business with the State, they can pursue that business through collective bargaining processes, not political processes.

public employee collective participation in politics or you can have public employee collective participation in politics if you ban public employee collective bargaining. If you have both, you very quickly turn unionized public employees into a socialist workers’ party and that’s what we’re seeing now. The old-time trade unions hardly figure in AFL-CIO internal politics; it is all public employees and third sector employees. Even the Teamsters hardly represent truckers any more; they’re a wall to wall union that will represent anybody who’ll sign a card for them, including lots of public employees. SEIU is mostly third sector with a large segment of public employees as well. AFSCME and NEA are exclusively public.

Representing only public employees frees a “union” from almost all federal regulation, especially that troublesome Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) that makes unions report what they pay their officers and staff and what they spend their money on. Most public employee unions are merely state-chartered non-profit corporations subject only to minimal state regulation, if any at all. These state-chartered corporations then enter into affiliation agreements with the national organizations, and, of course, pay per capita fees to the national. But since that money isn’t really subject to much regulation, they can spend it on whatever they like. The only real restraint is state and federal campaign contribution laws.

The whole mess needs a thorough study and consistent regulation, but here angels fear to tread. I authored and tried to carry a bill drastically changing Alaska’s very free-wheeling public employee bargaining law. The bill had the enthusiastic support of the leadership and we had a veto proof majority in both bodies, which we needed because the Democrat governor was sworn to veto it. Despite our best efforts, it died on the last night of the session because we couldn’t get the 27th vote without the 21st and couldn’t get the 21st without the 27th – and that was with complete Republican control of the Legislature. You just can’t get past that segment of Republicans who beleive that if they’re just nice to them, the unions will stop beating them.

Of course they have the right to freely assemble and petition the government. They do not as citizens qua citizens have the right to compel the government to do anything as the result of their assembly or petition. What collective bargaining does is give them legal rights regarding the government’s response to their assembly and petition. If employees have the right to unionize, and it is a statutory right, not a constitution right in most places, then once the union demonstrates majority support, the government MUST meet and bargain in good faith and if an agreement is reached, it is valid and enforceable by the courts (though usually it incorporates a grievance procedure ending in arbitration so that resort to the courts may be avoided)

Where the 1st Am. comes into play is in compelled dues where the courts have held that compelled dues violate an employee’s right to speech and assembly if those compelled dues are used for “social, fraternal, and political activities.”