Worker Choice, Union Freedom & Labor Organization Accountability
PROPOSED / DRAFT: WORKER CHOICE, UNION FREEDOM & LABOR ORGANIZATION ACCOUNTABILITY
POSITION
Workers have the right to organize, bargain collectively, join a labor organization, decline membership, and act together regarding workplace conditions. The same freedom that protects organization also protects individual choice. No worker should be forced to join, remain in, or financially support a private organization as a condition of earning a living.
VOLUNTARY MEMBERSHIP & FINANCIAL SUPPORT
No person may be forced to join or remain in a union or other labor organization.
No person may be forced to pay union dues, agency fees, assessments, political contributions, or equivalent charges.
Employment, compensation, promotions, benefits, scheduling, assignments, discipline, and workplace treatment may not depend on voluntary union membership or financial support.
A collective-bargaining agreement may not require membership or payment as a condition of employment.
A payment authorization must be knowing, voluntary, clearly stated, and revocable. Cancellation must become effective no later than 30 calendar days after the worker gives written notice.
No employer or union may misrepresent the legal or contractual consequences of joining, declining, paying, or cancelling payment.
NO LIST OF NONPAYING OR NONMEMBER WORKERS
A union, employer, government body, payroll processor, or affiliated organization may not create, maintain, distribute, publish, sell, or use a list identifying workers who are not union members or who do not pay union dues.
A union may maintain confidential records identifying its actual voluntary members and their authorized payments. An employer or payroll processor may retain only the minimum confidential transaction records necessary to process a worker's voluntary authorization, cancellation, refund, or legally required financial audit. Those records may not be converted into a list of nonmembers or nonpaying workers.
No worker may be threatened, intimidated, publicly identified, blacklisted, excluded, pressured, surveilled, or retaliated against for declining membership or financial support. Aggregate membership and revenue statistics may be reported without identifying nonmembers or nonpaying workers.
RIGHT TO ORGANIZE & BARGAIN
Employers may not retaliate against workers for lawful organizing, collective bargaining, communicating about workplace conditions, supporting or opposing union representation, or participating in lawful labor activity. Unions may not use threats, coercion, property damage, harassment, or retaliation to obtain membership, dues, votes, or political support.
Representation elections and negotiations must use accurate information, secure voting, neutral administration, and meaningful protection against coercion by either employers or labor organizations.
UNION GOVERNANCE & MEMBER RIGHTS
Labor organizations must use transparent governance and financial reporting. Members must receive understandable information concerning dues, assessments, officer compensation, material contracts, related-party transactions, political spending, reserves, debts, and the organization's rules for elections, discipline, expenditures, and withdrawal.
Union officers and employees may receive reasonable compensation for actual work. They may not extract funds through excessive compensation, sham employment, inflated contracts, concealed related-party transactions, personal expenses, improper loans, or another arrangement that independent members would reject.
Members must have fair procedures to inspect governing records, vote in secure elections, challenge material financial misconduct, and appeal discipline. A union may protect private member information, genuine bargaining strategy, confidential personnel information, and active investigations, but confidentiality may not conceal insider enrichment, retaliation, unlawful political spending, or misuse of member funds.
POLITICAL ACTIVITY
Union political activity is not charity and receives no charitable tax exemption. No worker's dues or fees may be used for a candidate, political party, political action committee, election committee, political cause, or ideological campaign without that worker's separate, affirmative, and voluntary authorization.
Political funds must be separately accounted for. A worker may support union representation without being required to finance the union's political or ideological activity.
TAX CLASSIFICATION
A labor organization is a non-charitable nonprofit unless a distinct activity separately qualifies as genuine charity. It is taxed under the rules for non-charitable nonprofit organizations on earned income and taxable surplus. Dues, assessments, commercial income, investment income, and other receipts do not become charitable donations merely because the organization has no shareholders.
A union may operate or support a genuine charitable program only through separately accounted charitable activity that meets all MPA charity standards. Money, property, staff, or authority may not be shifted between political, representational, commercial, and charitable activities to avoid taxes or disclosure.
PAYROLL DEDUCTIONS, CANCELLATION & REFUNDS
No union payment may be deducted without a valid voluntary authorization. An employer, payroll processor, or union receiving a cancellation must stop future deductions within 30 calendar days. Money collected without authorization or after the cancellation deadline must be returned within 15 calendar days after the error is confirmed.
A good-faith clerical error that is promptly corrected, fully refunded, and causes no retaliation may receive corrective treatment. Intentional collection, concealment, falsification, refusal to cancel, or repeated unauthorized deduction is a knowing violation.
COMPLAINTS, REVIEW & COURT ACCESS
The designated labor agency must issue a written decision within 30 calendar days after receiving a complete complaint. An independent administrative appeal must be decided within the next 30 calendar days. A final complaint or supervisory review must be resolved within the next 30 calendar days. On day 91, administrative remedies are exhausted and the worker, union, employer, or government may seek judicial review or enforcement.
The clock may not be restarted by transferring the matter, changing its label, requesting duplicative information, or opening a nominally new file. Immediate judicial relief remains available when necessary to stop ongoing retaliation, blacklisting, unlawful deduction, destruction of evidence, or irreparable harm.
REMEDIES & PENALTIES
A proven violation may require an immediate stop order, refund of unauthorized payments, correction or destruction of prohibited records, restoration of employment or membership rights, back pay, lost benefits, actual damages, reasonable attorney fees, and court costs.
A union, employer, payroll processor, government body, manager, officer, or representative that knowingly violates the membership-choice, payment-authorization, cancellation, or prohibited-list requirements is subject to a civil penalty of $25,000 per affected worker. Retaliation, blacklisting, deliberate disclosure of a prohibited list, evidence fabrication or destruction, or a repeated substantially similar violation within five years carries a civil penalty of $100,000 per affected worker and may support additional actual or punitive damages permitted by law.
Individual punishment requires proof that the person committed, directed, knowingly participated in, deliberately concealed, or personally benefited from the violation. Ownership, employment, union membership, or job title alone does not create personal liability. A disputed interpretation or ordinary good-faith error, standing alone, does not create a prison offense. Fraud, theft, extortion, bribery, violence, obstruction, evidence tampering, or another independently defined crime remains subject to the ordinary criminal law.
Core MPA standard: Workers are free to organize and free to decline. A union may represent willing workers, but it may not own their jobs, compel their money, identify dissenters, or turn workplace representation into forced political support.
Related policies: Workers' Rights; Workplace Freedom & Viewpoint-Neutral Employment; Nonprofit, NGO & Public Funding Accountability; Elections, Redistricting & Political Competition.
Status: Proposed / Draft, not yet formally adopted.
Originally published: October 5, 2026.
Last updated: October 5, 2026.
Version: Draft 0.1.