-By Warner Todd Huston
A union thug in Michigan was wide-eyed with faux shock when he was told that publicly posting the names of workers who opted out of the union was viewed as an intimidation tactic.
Union thug Lawrence Roehrig, international vice president of AFSCME and secretary treasurer of Michigan AFSCME Council 25 (that is a government worker’s union, folks) defended the practice of outing the workers who opted out of the union under Michigan’s new right to work rules saying that it was just a way to educate workers.
In the same way a business owner is paying for “protection” when a mobster demands payment to make sure nothing “happens” to them, thug Roehrig said, “You’re not harassing them. It gives you an indication of who’s paying and who isn’t.”
Of course, sensible human beings would understand that posting these names of workers who opted out of the useless, expensive, and tax-wasting union is meant solely for union members to see who is a “traitor” and so that such employees could be at the least ostracized and at the worst directly targeted for violence–the sort of violence that unions have such a long history of perpetrating.
The story is centered on the list of opted out employees posted by the thugs at the AFSCME Hurley Medical Center Employees Local 1603. The list of employees that opted out of the union was posted there for all union members to see and to get upset about.
Michigan Capitol Confidential spoke to some of the people on that outed list and they all agreed that it was an intimidation tactic. Not just a way to attack them personally, but also a way to warn others who may be thinking of opting out of the union that if they do their names will be posted publicly, too.
One employee told MCC that she quit the union because she has to cut corners on her growing budget and quitting the union saves her $40 a month. “I had to make some tough decisions. I don’t see why I should be punished. Just because I signed an opt-out form, that means I opted out to my right to privacy, too?”
Again, note that AFSCME is a government employees union, the sort of organization that never even existed until the 1960s when states started allowing government workers to unionize. AFSCME is also one of the many reasons that our governments have become bankrupt, why our government pension plans are billions in the red, and why taxes have gone up and up and up all across the land.
These government unions should be eliminated, America. They are destroying this country.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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