Attorney General Josh Shapiro recently demonstrated why Pennsylvania government workers need the Employee Rights Notification Act (House Bill 785 and Senate Bill 371).
In a tweet, Shapiro wrote “You have the right to form/join a union. Or Not. Know your rights.”
We couldn’t agree more. Workers should know their rights. This includes the right, reaffirmed via the Supreme Court’s Janus v. AFSCME (2018) decision, to no longer pay non-member fees to a union they don’t want to be a part of and didn’t join.
Shapiro then told workers to call his office if they had questions about their rights. Government workers shouldn’t have to call the attorney general to understand these facts—they deserve to be notified. That’s why we need the Employee Rights Notification Act.
The Employee Rights Notification Act puts workers' rights in writing to eliminate confusion.
It would be concerning if workers had to call the attorney general—since Shapiro submitted an amicus brief during the Janus case urging the Supreme Court to continue forcing nonmembers to pay union fees. Since Janus, the Attorney General’s office has protected union leadership’s restrictive actions toward workers.
Workers can’t trust union leaders to tell them the truth, considering many leaders are choosing to keep employees uninformed of changes to their workplace rights. Not only are unions enforcing “maintenance of membership” clauses, which can prohibit an employee from leaving the union for years, but some even lie to employees by asserting that union membership is required to keep state jobs.
Listen to John Kabler tell his story of fighting against his union’s deception.
The solution to this confusion is not reliance upon outside organizations to inform workers of basic workplace rights. The solution is the Employee Rights Notification Act.
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