From The Public Worker Union Class-War Zone- On The Question Of Employer Collection Of Union Dues- A Short Note

Click on the headline to link to a Leon Trotsky Internet Archives online copy of his 1940 work, Trade Unions In The Epoch Of Imperialist Decay.

Markin comment:Recently, as noted in some Jobs For Justice website postings, a number of states including Florida, and more infamously as part of the broader anti-union legislation, Wisconsin, have been eliminating the automatic union dues check-off and collection process as part of the efforts to destroy collective bargaining rights for public workers. I have noted previously that while, as a matter of trade union independence from the state, the bourgeois state, trade union militants favor union dues being collected by our own agents, shop stewards, or other union personnel we oppose actions, such as the one in Florida mentioned above, by state legislatures and state executives to eliminate that “right” in order to further gut public workers union collective bargaining gains.

That is the easy part to understand under today’s all too familiar class-war circumstances. The harder part is for trade union militants to understand that the seemingly mere bookkeeping function by the state (or private employer, for that matter) in the dues collecting process is just one more way that our trade unions are entangled with the state (or with capitalism, directly or indirectly). As recently as the April 4th Job for Justice national actions to defend the unions I have had to deal with this question put to me by some thoughtful trade unionists. As the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky (and others since) noted in his last unfinished work before he was murdered by a Stalinist agent in 1940, Trade Unions In The Epoch Of Imperialist Decay, the modern trend is for the trade unions to become emerged with the state at many levels, consciously or unconsciously. Trade unions are working class organizations and in America, absent a workers party, the main way that workers are organized against the class enemy.

Trade union independence from the state in such matters as employer dues collection, settling internal union squabbles in the capitalist courts, bringing law suits against the union in those same courts only weaken an already weak working class vehicle. Moreover, in the interest of simple union solidarity and accountability wouldn’t you rather see your union shop steward coming around with his little union dues book to ask you personally for your dues (and let you have an opportunity to scream in his or her ear about something on your mind). Believe it or not, that was the way it was done in the old days, the 1930s and later, when the industrial unions were getting a toehold (and were just as hated by the bosses and their state as the public workers unions are today).