Right to Work and Home Owners Associations

I was having a conversation with some friends over the weekend and they brought up the fact that they live in a neighborhood with a Home Owners Association.  I asked them what their fees gave them that the neighborhood down the street didn't offer.

They told me that they get snow removal on all side streets, a playground for their kids, a walking path and are in the planning stages of building a swimming pool.  The said that the neighborhood had rules about parking, minimum house sized requirements etc. 

They went on to tell me that all these amenities helped keep the property values higher than their neighbors and that for those reasons they didn’t mind paying their Home Owners Association Fees.  That they looked at those fees as ways to protect their investment (their home).

I went on to ask them what happens if someone moves into the subdivision, uses the amenities that all their HOA fees cover but refuses to pay those fees?  They told me that  the HOA puts a mechanic’s lien against their property and when the HOA publishes the list of non HOA dues paying residents when they send out their quarterly statements.  They went on to tell me that most of the time when the names are published the residents start paying something to avoid the embarrassment of having their names published to the whole neighborhood.

I asked them what they thought about Right to Work.  They told me that no one should be forced to pay union dues if they didn’t want to.  I then explained to them that the union dues that the members pay helped give them things like job safety, higher wages, medical insurance, vacation pay, holiday pay, sick pay etc. I went on to tell them that those benefits helped maintain a higher standard of living than the factory down the street that didn’t have a union. 

Suddenly their eyes lit up and they exclaimed; “Hey, the union dues are like our Home Owners Association Fees!” They provide a higher standard of living and our HOA fees help provide higher property values.  I went on to tell them that Federal Law forces the union to represent the non dues paying members the same as the dues paying members. 

The comparison between Home Owners Association fees and union dues and the benefits they provide are important in understanding why Right to Work is WRONG!