Sabotage, Stalking & Stealth Exemptions
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The U.S. Chamber Workforce Freedom Initiative (WFI) today released its latest publication, “Sabotage, Stalking & Stealth Exemptions: Special State Laws for Labor Unions,” which highlights a number of unusual state policies related to unions. In particular, the study looks at state policies that provide exemptions from criminal statutes for individuals engaged in labor activities and other state practices that seem to provide express favoritism towards unions.
Some of these exemptions are perplexing. For example, in California, a union protestor apparently can be let off the hook for invading the home of an academic researcher. The state passed a specific trespassing law to deal with such disturbances to a researcher’s academic freedom, but it oddly included an express exemption from that law for labor activities.
Other exemptions seem a bit more sinister. As one might imagine, the thought of being stalked by another individual is truly scary, and so it is no wonder that such harassment is against the law. Yet in Pennsylvania, California, Nevada, and Illinois, union-related activities have been given a specific exemption from anti-stalking laws. As a company in Pennsylvania has recently reported, shadowing individuals in a threatening manner during a union dispute does seem to be occurring, making these exemptions hard to justify.
Additional state policies highlighted in the report include the forced unionization of personal care and child care providers. These schemes have forced thousands of individuals into unions based purely on the fact that they are in some way tied to state funding sources. In one particularly egregious example, two parents taking care of their own children suddenly found that they were members of the Service Employees International Union and that union dues were being automatically deducted from the Medicaid checks they used to care for their kids.
Overall, the report is intended to educate the public about unusual union-related legal regimes that until now have remained out of the spotlight. Click on the link below to read more:
Cross-posted from WFI's blog.
