The Freedom Foundation has a message for Texas residents: They need not join public sector unions, and they don’t have to pay the dues if they leave.
This is due to a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME. Justices ruled that public sector employees in states that are not “right to work” states can leave unions and not pay dues after that, although the Freedom Foundation's Ashley Varner said workers had that option even before the Supreme Court ruling.
Varner is the vice president of communications and federal affairs at the Freedom Foundation.
“Public employees in right to work states had this ability prior to the Janus decision,” Varner said in an interview with the Lone Star Standard. “Since the SCOTUS decision, Freedom Foundation has helped more than 70,000 such employees leave their unions — primarily in Washington, Oregon and California where we have offices.”
Opting out is easy – visit optouttoday.com, Varner said. Individuals who want to opt out can use the form to fill out their information and union information to create a letter that notifies their union representative of their decision.
“In states where we have received a significant number of notices of public sector employees using the website form to notify their unions of their decision to opt out, we create specific pages for that state’s largest public sector unions," Varner said. "We haven’t yet reached that threshold in Texas, because Texas has been a right to work state for many years and, therefore, Texans have had the right to opt out of their union for much longer than the non-right to work states.”
Texas law requires some government employers to deduct union dues from employee wages as payroll deductions, and the Freedom Foundation believes Gov. Greg Abbott does not have the ability to end government collection of union dues completely. However, they do believe political leaders can design a program that ensures agencies only withhold the dues from individuals who have authorized them.
In recent legislative sessions, the Senate has passed bills to this effect. Abbot and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick both support these measures, although the Republican-controlled House has either voted down or killed these bills.
