October 29, 2001

Political coercion is tyranny

Thirteen years ago Harry Beck got what every civics book says is the quintessential little guy's win in court. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a landmark decision authored by the late Justice William Brennan, declared that Harry Beck could not be required to pay into the Communication Workers of America's political funds as a condition of membership in the CWA.

In essence, the court declared that union members have a First Amendment right not to support their unions' political endeavors when they disagree with them.

What quickly became known as the Beck decision, however, has been as slow to spread to the ranks as Brown v. Board of Education was to local public schools. Brown was handed down in 1954; "massive resistance" to Brown continued well into the 1960s.

Beck was not enforced for blatantly political reasons. The Reagan administration, on its way out of office when the decision was issued in 1988, didn't want to anger unions in an election year. The first Bush administration let it molder as "too ideological" until it saw political advantage in a tepid 1992 executive order requiring federal contractors to post notices of Beck rights in all workplaces. This, however, was too much for Clinton, who made one of his first official acts in office the repeal of the Bush order.

Thirteen years after Harry Beck supposedly had his day in court, the Labor Department finally has gotten around to rules to enforce the Supreme Court's Beck decision. The rules allow a worker to choose whether to contribute to political activities, and require notice of Beck rights. No longer may unions require, as a condition of membership, financial support for anything other than collective bargaining activities.

This is as it should be -- and as it should have been for 13 years now. No one should be compelled to support a political cause with which they disagree, financially or otherwise. That is a bedrock principle of American freedom, indeed one given voice by Thomas Jefferson, who correctly described political coercion as tyranny.

Workers should no more be compelled to support political activity with which they disagree than they should be compelled to, for instance, have dues designated to a particular church.

If union leaders are indeed serving the best interests of members in the political arena, then they should have nothing to fear from the long overdue Beck rules. Fear and loathing of the Beck rules speaks volumes about the degree to which they actually represent workers' interests in political activities.