For the past three years, my team and I have spent hundreds of hours on the UCLA campus talking to union-represented employees.
We stand outside hospital entrances, staff parking areas and research buildings as employees arrive for work or head home after long shifts. We aren’t there to harass anyone or tell people what decisions they should make.
We’re there for a much simpler reason — to tell workers something most of them have never heard.
Namely, that public employees cannot be compelled to financially support a union as a condition of keeping their job.
That principle was affirmed in 2018 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME, which held that forcing public employees to join or financially support a union violates the First Amendment’s protections for freedom of speech and association.
In plain English, affiliation with a public-sector union must be voluntary.
That’s it. That’s our message.
And after thousands of conversations with UCLA employees, one fact has become crystal clear: Most workers have no clue about these rights.
The Conversation That Happens Almost Every Day
A typical conversation starts the same way.
“Did you know you can stop paying union dues if you want?”
More often than not, the employee looks confused. Some laugh and say, “No, that’s not true.”
Others become nervous and lower their voice. “I thought I’d get in trouble for that.”
Some even believe they could lose their job.
None of that is true. Yet these misconceptions persist.
Which begs an obvious question: Why don’t unions tell their own members about this right?
The answer becomes clearer the longer you spend talking to workers.
Union officials depend on dues money to fund their salaries, their political activity and the organization itself.
If large numbers of employees realized they could simply stop paying, the spigot of dues revenue would dry up overnight.
Which creates a powerful incentive not to highlight that option.
And when someone else does, things can get tense very quickly.
When Workers Realize the Truth
One of the most consistent reactions we encounter is disbelief. Workers often take a brochure, read it, then look back up and ask the same question: “Wait … are you serious?”
Sometimes they ask for extra copies to share with coworkers.
Sometimes they laugh. Sometimes they get angry.
One employee at UCLA told me he’d tried to opt out of union dues once before but was told he hadn’t made his request during the union’s “window” — a roughly 30-day period that only opens once every few years.
He shook his head and said something that stuck with me:
“If they really believed in what they were selling, they wouldn’t need rules like that.”
He’s right.
Imagine if your gym membership worked that way. Imagine being told you you could only cancel during a specific 30-day window every three years. Miss the window, and you’re locked in for another three years of payments.
Most people would call that absurd.
Yet that’s exactly how many union dues systems operate. And so far, at least, it’s legal.
The Teamsters 2010 Trap
One of the clearest examples of this system exists with employees represented by Teamsters Local 2010 at UCLA.
Under the union’s rules, employees who want to stop paying dues can only do so during a month-long opt-out window every three years.
If they miss that window — even by a single day — it won’t open again for another three years.
We’ve spoken with many employees who only learned about this rule after it was too late.
Some had tried to opt out and were denied. Others had no idea the window existed in the first place.
Imagine signing up for a streaming service and being told you can only cancel during one specific month every three years.
Consumers would revolt.
But when it comes to union dues, these restrictions are treated as normal.
When Union Officials Get Involved
Our conversations with workers are usually positive.
Our interactions with union officials are often another story.
Over the past three years, our team has repeatedly been confronted by union representatives who attempt to interrupt, redirect, or shut down conversations with employees. And in multiple instances, those interactions have gone beyond disagreement — into outright misrepresentation of workers’ rights.
On several occasions, we personally witnessed AFSCME representatives step into conversations and tell employees, in no uncertain terms, that their dues were “mandatory” and “by no means optional.”
Not complicated. Not conditional. Not something tied to a signed authorization.
Mandatory.
That is what workers were told — directly, confidently and in front of us.
This is happening nearly eight years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Janus v. AFSCME.
Yet when confronted with that reality, these same representatives did not engage.
They did not ask questions. They did not attempt to explain their position. They did not offer any meaningful response.
They refused to discuss Janus. They refused to acknowledge the tens of thousands of public employees across the country who have exercised their rights since 2018.
Instead, they shut the conversation down.
They told workers not to listen. They dismissed the information outright, and they relied on their position of authority to end the discussion before it could go any further.
For a worker who has never been told otherwise, that matters. In that moment, the union representative is the authority figure.
And when that authority says, “Your dues are mandatory,” most people take it at face value.
They stop asking questions. They assume they don’t have a choice. And the system continues exactly as it was.
Whether that message comes from ignorance, avoidance, or something else, the outcome is the same: workers are left with an incomplete and misleading understanding of their rights.
One incident stands out.
One afternoon while we were speaking with employees near UCLA facilities, a group of union representatives approached us. Among them was an AFSCME representative named Ricardo.
Instead of engaging in a discussion, Ricardo immediately launched into a profanity-filled tirade. He called our team “pieces of s—,” told us to “f— off,” and directed deeply personal insults at us. The women with him joined in, repeatedly calling us names and insisting we were not allowed to be on campus distributing informational flyers.
It wasn’t an attempt to inform workers.
It was an attempt to shut the conversation down.
Campus police arrived shortly afterward and confirmed we were fully allowed to be there.
Almost immediately after the interaction, union representatives began approaching employees we had just spoken with and distributing freshly printed flyers about “big pay raises” the union was supposedly negotiating.
The timing was impossible to miss.
When workers started asking questions, the response wasn’t to answer them — it was to redirect them.
The Conflict of Interest No One Talks About
The more time I’ve spent talking to workers, the clearer the underlying problem has become.
Union representatives are paid by the union. Their salaries depend on dues money. Their job is to keep that money flowing.
That creates a conflict of interest that would be unacceptable in almost any other part of life.
Imagine a doctor whose salary depends on prescribing the same treatment to every patient, regardless of whether it actually improves their health.
Imagine a real estate agent who only gets paid if you buy the very first house they show you — no matter how overpriced or poorly maintained it is.
Or imagine a college professor who grades students based on whether they purchase his textbook rather than how well they understand the material.
In each of those situations, the problem would be obvious. The person giving you advice has a built-in incentive to push you toward one outcome.
Union officials are no different.
And when someone’s paycheck depends on keeping money flowing in one direction, transparency suddenly becomes inconvenient and uncomfortable questions are discouraged.
What Workers Really Want
After three years on UCLA’s campus, I’ve learned something simple: Most workers don’t want confrontation.
They don’t want political lectures. They don’t want someone telling them what decisions they should make.
They just want honest information.
They want the freedom to decide for themselves whether the union deserves their financial support.
And when workers finally learn they have that choice, something important happens.
They start asking questions. They start talking to coworkers. They start thinking about how their money is being spent.
Because informed workers are independent workers, and independence is the one thing unions cannot control. To learn more about your rights and how to opt out of union membership, visit OptOutToday.com.
