Can We Extend FTC’s “One-Click” Cancellation Rule to Union Memberships?

​Ever thought you had cancelled a subscription to a publication or an app only to find it has been renewed for another year on your credit card account? This is one of the most common problems reported to the Federal Trade Commission.
 
In response, the agency recently announced a “click-to-cancel” rule for subscriptions, gym memberships, and associations. We think that’s good news. Now why doesn’t the FTC, or the Labor Department, extend this logic to make it just as easy for a worker to resign from a labor union?
 
Unlike an angry consumers’ right to cancel The Washington Post, when a worker is forced to remain in a union, she has to pay dues to subsidize union political speech that she may disagree with. This is what happened to Kristine Kirk who attempted to resign from the Los Rios Classified Employees Association, a union for employees of a community college district in California. Or consider the 21 lifeguards, also in California, who wanted to resign as dues-paying members of a public-employee union but couldn’t.
 
FTC Chair Lina Khan said that some businesses require consumers to go through “endless hoops” to end their subscriptions. That’s nothing compared to the California lifeguards, who were told that they could only resign their union membership during a single thirty-day period every four years. This is typical of attempts at resignation that are blocked by such dilatory tactics and state “maintenance-of-membership” statutes.
 
The most egregious aspect of this compelled union membership is that it violates American workers’ First Amendment right not to pay for political speech that they may vigorously disagree with. This at the heart of a similar lawsuit by attorney Daniel Crowe, who is suing to be released from having to pay dues to the Oregon Bar Association, which prints magazine articles and makes statements with a partisan slant.
 
Isn’t the First Amendment important enough to allow these members to resign their union or association membership with one click?
 
The FTC itself is now a union shop. FTC staff just voted to join the National Treasury Employees Union. Can they resign or are they all captive dues-payers for union speech for now on?
 
How about it, FTC?

DOnATE & HELP US FIGHT FOR YOUR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS