Right-to-Work Group Condemns Biden Proposal to Limit Federal Workers to 1 Day a Year to Revoke Union Dues

President Joe Biden speaks at Seacliff State Park in Aptos, Calif., on Jan. 19, 2023, after seeing storm damage caused by the recent storms. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo)

A Supreme Court decision that guarantees civil service workers the right to stop being charged union dues is being threatened under a proposal being advanced by a federal administrative agency, as appointees of President Joe Biden want to limit that right to just one day a year.

“The Federal Labor Relations Authority [FLRA], now stocked with union-label Biden appointees, is moving to limit the rights of rank-and-file workers just to give federal union bosses expanded powers to seize union dues over the objections of the workers they claim to represent,” Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW), said in a Jan. 25 statement.

“All American public sector workers have a First Amendment right under Janus to freely make this choice, and by changing the rules, the FLRA will deliberately undermine the constitutional rights of the federal workforce.”

In the Supreme Court’s 2018 Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees decision, the right of every individual public employee to revoke their authorization to deduct union dues from their paycheck at any time after one year of payments was upheld.

The FLRA under Trump implemented the Janus decision in the federal workplace by issuing a regulation in 2020 that affirmed the right recognized by the high court. However, the Biden proposal would allow public employees only one day each year to revoke the dues deduction for the following year.

The authority oversees the relationship between the career civil service workforce of more than 2.1 million federal employees and unions that represent major portions of the government’s employees.

Its chairman is Susan Tsui Grundmann, former chairperson of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017. When President Donald Trump took office, Grundmann left the MSPB to become executive director of the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights in the legislative branch.

The general counsel of the FLRA is Charlotte Dye, who was appointed by Biden in March 2021. Colleen Duffy Kiko is the Republican-appointed member of the FLRA’s governing council, which also includes Grundmann and Dye.

More than 700,000 federal workers are represented by the American Federation of Government Employees. The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) represents 150,000 federal workers, while another 100,000 are represented by the National Federation of Federal Employees.

Public sector employees generally are five times as likely to be members of unions than those in the private sector, according to data compiled by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The FLRA proposal was prompted by an appeal from the Treasury union, which argued that the Trump-era FLRA was incorrect in its interpretation and should restore the one-day-per-year rule that was obtained prior to the issuance of the Janus decision.

The NTEU based its claim on its contention that because the one-day rule was in effect for decades prior to Janus indicates that was the intent of Congress.

Kiko voted against issuing the proposal, noting in her dissent, “It is unsurprising that [NTEU] would seek to reinstate a rule making it more onerous for employees to revoke dues-withdrawal authorization. What is surprising, though, is that the majority indulges [NTEU] by commencing this premature, unnecessary notice-and-comment rulemaking.

“When the [FLRA] very recently solicited public comment on this regulation, we heard from employees who were frustrated with narrow form-submission windows occurring on indecipherable anniversary dates.

“In 2020, the [FLRA] enacted a regulation that is consistent with the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute and assures employees the fullest freedom in the exercise of their rights. Regrettably, the majority’s proposed rule-making would discard a valuable reform without affording it even a reasonable trial period.”

Kiko also pointed out that in 2020, when the current rule was issued in response to the Janus decision, the NTEU argued that the authority didn’t have the ability to do so.

“Just a few years ago, the [NTEU] asserted that the authority lacked the power to issue a rule on this topic, but now [NTEU] insists that the authority must exercise its rule-making power in this area,” she wrote.

In its comments on the FLRA proposal, the NRTW emphasized the importance of the Janus decision in protecting the right of every individual federal worker to decide whether to join a union and pay its dues.

“In Janus, the [High] Court held that the First Amendment guarantees public employees a right to refrain from subsidizing a union and its speech. The government violates that right if it deducts union dues or fees from employees against their wishes.”

Kiko said the high court explained that compelling individuals to mouth support for views they find objectionable violates a “cardinal constitutional command,” and compelling a person to subsidize the speech of other private speakers raises similar First Amendment concerns.

“As Jefferson famously put it, ‘to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and [abhors] is sinful and tyrannical,” she said.

“A government restriction on federal employees’ ability to stop union dues deductions restricts those employees’ First Amendment right under Janus not to subsidize a union and its speech.

“Enforcement of that restriction violates the constitutional rights of federal employees who authorized dues deductions in the past, but no longer want to support the union’s speech [or perhaps never freely did in the first place].

“Because of a restriction on revocation, those employees will have union dues seized from their wages against their will, in violation of their First Amendment rights.”

A copy of the NRTW comments, which haven’t yet been published in the Federal Register, was made available to The Epoch Times.