Judge Strikes Down Democrat Governor’s Order Mandating Unionization Of Child Care Workers
Note that the judge didn’t rule that forcing workers to join unions was illegal, rather that it’s not something the governor can just order without the legislature.
Judge Dale Lindman declared Dayton’s order, issued Nov. 15, ”null and void because it is an unconstitutional usurpation of the Legislature’s constitutional right to create and or amend laws and as such is a violation of the Separation of Powers doctrine.”
The decision was a victory for anti-union child-care providers and conservative groups who opposed an attempt to unionize in-home child-care providers. It was a defeat for Dayton, who argued that the providers had a right to decide through an election whether they wanted to be represented by a union.
Lindman’s order ruled that the elections ordered by Dayton cannot occur.
“The proper method to proceed is for the matter to be brought to the Legislature,” Lindman’s order reads. He argued that Dayton’s order is an attempt “to circumvent the Legislative process and unionize child care providers by executive order, rather than by adhering to a valid Legislative process.”
The basis for Dayton’s attempt to force unionization on private-sector workers was that, because childcare centers receive state aid (indeed, it would be all but impossible to run a center without state aid in the regulatory environment that has been set up), then they are in fact a government employer and therefore must unionize its workforce.
That would be a wide-ranging precedent, if upheld, in that any profession linked however tenuously to state aid or appropriations could be classified a defacto state agency and forced to unionize.
Which would be great for the union/Democrat combine that has union activists working to elect Democrats who in turn look to force unionization on more Americans to swell the dues-paying ranks of the unions who elect them. For those of us not interested in being members of unions, for those of us interested in protecting the free choice of American workers, it wouldn’t be a great thing at all.
If unions are so great, workers wouldn’t have to be forced to join them.