Golden State Today

Just as many big companies are rewarding essential workers with extra “hero pay” for working during the COVID-19 pandemic, unions should also make dues optional for those employees, Vincent Vernuccio, a senior fellow at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy told Golden State Today.

“Everybody right now is sacrificing,” he said. “Everybody is having a hard economic time. Unions should be taking care of their members. I think unions should be making dues optional right now and allowing members who are hard hit by the pandemic and the economic uncertainty an option to choose to pay or not.”

Allowing employees to opt-out of union dues during the pandemic would be “cash in the pocket” for workers, Vernuccio said.

It would be particularly helpful to entry-level workers who aren’t making a lot of money, he said.

“They probably need that money,” Vernuccio said. “And unions should give them that option. If they cared about their members, they would.”

California should also join 27 other states in becoming a “right to work” state that allows private-sector employees the ability to choose whether or not to pay union dues, Vernuccio said.

“Right to work simply means that a union can’t get a worker fired for not paying them,” he said. “In right-to-work states, workers see higher wage growth. Right-to-work states see higher population growth. When you factor in cost of living, workers actually make more in right-to-work states.”

The fact that California is one of the states where unions can get workers fired for not paying dues is all the more reason why unions should give workers the option of paying dues during the pandemic, Vernuccio said.

“Aside from all that when you look at this hero pay companies big and small are doing for right by their employees and they are doing it voluntarily,” he said. “They should really be praised for that.”

The best-case scenario is for employers to give the extra hero pay voluntarily without being forced by governments to do so, Vernuccio said.

“If the companies don’t have the money and the government comes in and forces them to give these bonuses, it could cause closures and could cause, unfortunately, employees to be laid off and not get any pay, let alone hero pay.”