Why do so many labor unions think they can thumb their noses at U.S. Supreme Court decisions that they don’t like? It’s been more than a decade since the nation’s highest court revoked union bosses’ license to pilfer from workers’ pay envelopes and deliver the booty to equally larcenous politicians. Yet the paycheck plunder continues, largely unabated, thanks in great measure to the Clinton-Gore administration’s barely concealed contempt for the high court’s 1988 ruling in Communications Workers of America v. Beck.

Harry Beck is a former telephone lineman who objected to having any portion of his union dues given to political causes and candidates he opposed. The union fought him every step of the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled that Beck could only be required to pay his fair share of collective bargaining costs. A special master appointed by a lower court found that only 21 percent of dues collected had been spent for such purposes — which leaves 79 percent for “other purposes,” including political campaigns.

Here’s the gist of the Beck decision, and the best-kept secret in the American workplace: nobody can be required to join or maintain membership in a labor union, no matter what your union contract says. What’s more, nonmembers cannot be required to pay more than a “fair share” agency fee to cover the cost of collective bargaining. Agency fees cannot be used for nonbargaining activities (i.e., political campaigns).

Why is this important? Because, with few exceptions, union bosses and the politicians they favor are so far out of step with the values and thinking of the vast majority of working people that they’re not even on the same planet. The “suits” are committed to nurturing the loathsome Nanny State: an intrusive bureaucratic regime of assorted pests and parasites, busybodies, thought police, diversity hustlers, trial lawyers, tree huggers, and meddlesome do-gooders who collectively feed on ever-higher taxes levied from the paychecks of folks who work in the Dreaded Private Sector (DPS).

In Maine, we’ve reached the point where nearly half of the AFL-CIO’s members are government employees. So guess whose interests the AFL-CIO is lobbying for in Augusta? Just about any proposal that grows government and jacks up taxes wins the enthusiastic support of union lobbyists.

Any union member in the DPS (particularly in the forest-products industry) who owns any land or any firearms, or who dreams of someday being self-employed, is committing an act of cultural and economic suicide by continuing to pay full union dues. Why contribute campaign cash to loony left-wing special interests whose ultimate goal is to strip you of your job and your freedom?

Ten years ago I was an hourly employee in a Maine lumber mill, where I also served as an elected shop steward of Local 80 of the United Paperworkers International Union (UPIU). When I asked for an accounting of how the local was spending dues money in our bargaining unit, the vice president of the local told me, in so many words, to mind my own business.

I eventually filed an unfair labor practice charge against Local 80, and for the last two years that I worked in the mill, I was not a member of the union and I paid not a dime in union dues or agency fees, even though the union contract stated that everyone must be a dues-paying union member or be fired. During those two years I enjoyed all of the rights and benefits (including the grievance procedure) guaranteed to every other employee.

It took the National Labor Relations Board nearly eight years to settle my claim against the union. This inexcusably long delay can be best understood as the result of foot-dragging by union lawyers, and the board being stacked with Bill Clinton’s pro-union appointees. Or perhaps it’s the residue of Al Gore’s laughable initiative to “reinvent government.”

In any case, the NLRB had no choice but to rule in my favor, and ordered Local 80 to refund with interest all dues money withheld from a fellow employee’s pay since his resignation from the union in 1991. The board further ordered Local 80 to inform every employee in writing that union membership is entirely optional. Finally, the union promised to abide by the Beck decision in the future — a promise Local 80 made only after being dragged kicking and screaming, for the better part of a decade, through the administrative process.

The NLRB’s grudging, belated ruling simply affirms what ought to be taken for granted in America: nobody should be forced, as a condition of employment, to support any political cause or candidate. Period.

Lawrence Lockman lives in Seboeis Plantation. His email address is ldlockman@telplus.net.