House Republicans go after federal employee union contributions

Scott said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) would be introducing companion legislation in the Senate sometime this week. “Let’s … empower federal employees to make their own choices about their paychecks,” DeMint said in a statement last week.

Scott said past experience shows that eliminating the automatic union deduction for government employees has led to drastic reductions in the amount of dues collected. He also argued that automatic union deductions amount to a subsidy for the unions, and that government workers are a “target” of unions.

“The current system uses taxpayer resources to do the work of collecting dues, rather than the unions doing it themselves,” Scott said.  “Government workers are clearly the target of unions, as recent numbers show less than 7 percent of private sector workers claim union membership while 36 percent of public sector employees are union members.”

Scott’s bill has 16 Republican co-sponsors.