A news article in the Sacramento Bee today has a story about the State Service Employees International Union Local 1000 (SEIU 1000) and how they spent $12 million dollars in their successful attempt to stop Arnold’s special election inititives back in 2005, which I blogged about back in Nov. 2005. Of the $12,000,000 spent a quarter of it was paid for by State workers who choose not to join the union.
A federal judge has declared that SEIU 1000 must “send notices to the workers who opted out of union membership. The union must issue refunds, with interest, to those non-union members who object to the special assessment.”
Since February of last year (2007) I became a State employee and subsequently a member of SEIU 1000. Although I have yet to understand much of what the union does I do know that they are a pretty lousy union. The union rules are not fair at all. Recently there was an initiative put forth to rescind the union’s fairshare fee’s. I voted ‘yes’ to have them rescinded. However for a union law to be passed by the members there has to be a majority of the members, regardless if they vote or not, to vote for the new law. So if only 49% of the union membership votes to pass a new law it will automatically fail. It is a very effective way to silence those the union is supposed to represent.
Look past the break for the text of the Sac Bee story.
