Is this labor union practice causing immorality?

[thomasx6]

I recently was accepted into a union electrician apprenticeship. It is sponsored by the IBEW. By being a member, I am obligated to pay 10 cents per hour towards their PAC, which goes to supporting “pro-labor” candidates. From my limited experience and opinion, most union supported “pro-labor” candidates are pro-abortion, as well. Is this causing me and my fellow union members to be morally liable for indirectly supporting pro-abortion candidates.
On a personal note, I always vote pro-life, pro-family, and I take all the church’s teachings on life very seriously. I am torn between a career and doing the right thing morally. Am I just being overly scrupulous, or should I consider leaving the union, and my chosen career with it? Thanks for any advice. Oh, and I do plan on speaking to my priest about this. God bless you all.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

I recently was accepted into a union electrician apprenticeship. It is sponsored by the IBEW. By being a member, I am obligated to pay 10 cents per hour towards their PAC, which goes to supporting “pro-labor” candidates. From my limited experience and opinion, most union supported “pro-labor” candidates are pro-abortion, as well. Is this causing me and my fellow union members to be morally liable for indirectly supporting pro-abortion candidates.
On a personal note, I always vote pro-life, pro-family, and I take all the church’s teachings on life very seriously. I am torn between a career and doing the right thing morally. Am I just being overly scrupulous, or should I consider leaving the union, and my chosen career with it? Thanks for any advice. Oh, and I do plan on speaking to my priest about this. God bless you all.

For one, are you in a “right to work” state like Kansas, or are you in a “union” state like Washington?

In Kansas, your labor union has to represent you even if you are not a member. In Washington state, you cannot work as a member of an organized group without becoming a member yourself.

If you are in a union state, then I’d look at it a bit like paying Caesar what Caesar would owe – like paying taxes or something, this is a part of working in your profession.

If you’re in a right to work state, then I’d say you have a choice. Even so, you might consider joining based on other factors based on your beliefs about unions, your responsibilities toward fellow workers, and prudence at being connected with the others and potentially “in the know.”

One thing I learned as an area rep for an engineering union, is that unless you know what is going on behind the scenes, you really don’t know what your union does (except endorse bad candidates of course). Many times when a union works an issue for a member or members, the company agrees to correct the problem without formal action, under the protection of a gag order. Therefore, in our engineering union (which young engineers who thought they were God’s Gift to the Company saw as useless) they tended to underestimate the value of it because all they saw were the public acts. They didn’t ever hear about the near-daily problems where management had treated a member unfairly (or even a non-member in Kansas) and the union and company worked it out satisfactorily – because these stories are systematically suppressed. On the other hand, you may well find out that by hanging around the leadership and getting into the “know” beyond what it stated at public meetings – is not palatable at all to you.

Alan

 

[axolotl]

I recently was accepted into a union electrician apprenticeship. It is sponsored by the IBEW. By being a member, I am obligated to pay 10 cents per hour towards their PAC, which goes to supporting “pro-labor” candidates. From my limited experience and opinion, most union supported “pro-labor” candidates are pro-abortion, as well. Is this causing me and my fellow union members to be morally liable for indirectly supporting pro-abortion candidates.
On a personal note, I always vote pro-life, pro-family, and I take all the church’s teachings on life very seriously. I am torn between a career and doing the right thing morally. Am I just being overly scrupulous, or should I consider leaving the union, and my chosen career with it? Thanks for any advice. Oh, and I do plan on speaking to my priest about this. God bless you all.

You may find some information here.

nrtw.org/d/illegalpac.htm

 

[thomasx6]

Thanks for the information. I am going to see my priest today about this. I don’t know if Oregon is union, or right to work. I guess that I should find that out. Thanks again,
Jason

 

[Listener]

I thank God for my husband’s labor union. He did manual work all of his working life. Now he is drawing a pension that we can actually live on!

I shudder to think what would have happened if he had been non-union. He probably would have had to work until he was 85 and then drop dead on the street.

Personally, I was a non-union office worker. Though I made a fairly decent salary, the entire total of my pension for one of my jobs where I worked for over ten years equals about the same number of dollars that my husband gets every year!!

I don’t think that the younger people in this country have a clue about the value of labor unions. You would be joining the union to protect your rights as a worker. Their official opinion on abortion is something that you probably don’t have much control over, so I can’t imagine that you would be guilty of anything if you joined the union.

If your medical plan covered the “morning after pill,” do you think you would be guilty of abortion?