Revenge is a dish best served cold, the saying goes.
The Alaska Public Employees Association, still upset over the Dunleavy Administration’s decision to not force people to pay union dues, is serving filet of revenge to its members this week.
In a letter to public work forces around the state, the APEA Board of Directors asked the public employees — the Alaskans who have actual paying jobs — to not only sign the recall petition, but to commit to voting against Gov. Mike Dunleavy, if the measure ever makes it to a ballot.
“…he has directly attacked our union with his indefensible interpretation of the U.S Supreme Court Janus decision,” the union wrote to state employees in an email this week.
“The court decision tries to drive a wedge between workers and their unions by eliminating automatic registration in public employee unions and is an unprecedented attack on our organization,” APEA wrote.
Actually, the interpretation of the Janus rule is defensible, but that takes political courage. If Dunleavy survives his term in office, this interpretation of Janus could be defended all the way to the Supreme Court.
The Dunleavy Administration doesn’t think it’s legal, under the Supreme Court’s earlier Janus ruling, to force public employees to pay union dues, and instead says that workers must be provided true freedom to enroll or not enroll as a dues-paying member of a union. Attorney General Kevin Clarkson says that the State of Alaska isn’t going to be part of a system that coerces people into having their dues deducted by the State and sent to the union without the employees’ express consent.
The public employee union is striking back.
“In our work, we strive for professionalism and impartiality as we work in the best interest of the public. However, we are also Alaskans and this governor’s failures and the moment we find ourselves in calls for bold action. We have determined that recalling Governor Dunleavy is the best option for Alaska’s future,” the group wrote.
The recall committee says that COVID-19 has hampered its efforts in collecting signatures, but the public employee union has tens of thousands of possible names that could be harvested. Workers at the State of Alaska, Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, Anchorage School District, Cities of Seward, Bethel, Nome, Petersburg, and boroughs of Fairbanks, Ketchikan, Kenai, Mat-Su, numerous school districts around the state and many employees of the University of Alaska system received the union memo.
To get the recall on the ballot Alaskans need to turn in at least 71,252 signatures by July 3, the group wrote. The Recall Dunleavy Committee is believed to have nearly 40,000 signatures.
The group has just 14 days to collect more than 31,000 valid signatures. This amounts to needing in excess of 2,200 signatures per day for the next two weeks.
The only realistic place to get that many signatures is in the rank and file of the publicly funded workforce.
