As an Englishman who has immigrated to the United States, I often find myself pondering how the greatest nation in human history could be on the fast track to national decline. The United Kingdom, once a global power, is now a mere shell of its former self. Its empire is long gone, and so are the jobs and opportunities that once flourished. A country that was once a hub of industry is now plagued by socialism and urban decay. The root cause of this decline was the trade unions, which brought Great Britain to its knees from the mid-century through the 1970s.
Unfortunately, I see America following a similar path to the one that Great Britain went down during the 1960s and 1970s. This country is racing towards socialism, which will result in autocratic government, fiscal and moral bankruptcy, and national decline. Once again, the root cause is government unions.
These unions have rigged the game in their favor, giving themselves lifetime employment at a ruinously high cost, while delivering less and less every year to the citizens they supposedly serve. Government unions have become so greedy and unaccountable that the system itself is on the brink of collapse.
Every year, they steal over a thousand dollars from individual public employees. This is theft, plain and simple. They have even gone so far as to forge signatures on union membership cards. The Freedom Foundation is currently pursuing 15 forgery cases against government unions, including one involving Kristy Jimenez.
Jimenez, who lives in Yakima, Wash., takes care of her son, who is battling cancer. She has been paid to do this since 2015 by Medicaid dollars so that her son can remain at home, under his mother’s care, rather than be institutionalized. However, Washington was one of the states that forcibly unionized these care providers without permitting them to vote on whether or not they wanted to be unionized. So, while Jimenez never signed up with the Service Employees International Union, the laws of the state of Washington mandated that she pay dues.
In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Harris v. Quinn that this was illegal. However, no one was going to tell caregivers like Jimenez that they did not have to pay dues. The State of Washington was not going to break the good news, and the SEIU was not going to let them know. Fortunately, the Freedom Foundation has made it our mission to inform public employees that they have the right to stop paying union dues.
Jimenez received an opt-out form from the Freedom Foundation in the mail. By signing it and sending it in, she would be able to stop paying union dues. She did so in 2020, but the SEIU refused her request, claiming that the opt-out window for union members who no longer wished to be members had closed. However, Jimenez had never officially joined the SEIU, and the membership card authorizing these deductions had been “electronically signed” in Seattle.
The Freedom Foundation sued the SEIU and attached RICO claims to Jimenez’s case. The SEIU had forged Jimenez’s signature and then used it to prevent her from leaving the union and taking her dues with her. The SEIU is acting like a desperate mobster, and judges need to consider these fraudsters in the context of organized crime.
In these and other instances, one lesson is clear: The unions are getting desperate. They have become so powerful and extracted such a huge share of the resources we provide to the government in taxes that our system is on the brink of collapse. America cannot survive much longer with government unions having more control of government than voters and taxpayers do. Ending the undue influence of government unions is the most important thing we can do to restore the basic functioning of government in our country before it’s too late.
As someone who came here legally from another country, I’m proud to take the oath of citizenship and make this my homeland. I see opportunities that native-born citizens take for granted. But I can’t help but see echoes of my native Great Britain here in the United States.
