EDITORIAL: Federal taxpayers on the hook for public-sector union activity

Nevada is one of several states that has banned federal workers from conducting union business on the taxpayer dime. And while Silver State Democrats are doing everything they can to roll back that legislation, a new report highlights the importance of such restrictions.

According to the federal Office of Personnel Management, in 2014 alone, U.S. government workers spent almost 3.5 million hours conducting union business while on the clock, costing taxpayers $162.5 million.

The office surveyed more than 50 agencies and found that between 2008 and 2014 — the most recent data available — public time spent by federal workers on union business increased by more than 10 percent. This includes an increase in their time away from the job of 30,000 hours since 2012. The cost to taxpayers was based on average salary and benefits, and 2014’s total of $162.5 million was a 20 percent jump from the 2008 fiscal year.

As the Washington Free Beacon points out, this questionable increase in union activities has happened despite the fact that union membership in the federal workforce has dropped to the lowest level since World War II.

While taxpayers typically support their tax dollars going to law enforcement, public works or essential government services, many may not be aware of just how much of their money subsidizes things such as funding trips to union events or visits to lobby politicians.

Trey Kovacs, a labor policy expert at the pro-free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, said in a statement to the Free Beacon that most taxpayers “have no idea that their money is spent paying federal employees to perform union business unrelated to their public duties.”

He went on: “Employees on official time are off lobbying on behalf of their union, attending union conventions, or doing some other union-related business. The Trump administration and Congress should waste no time in eliminating this subsidy for federal employee unions.”

Other groups have filed lawsuits in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Texas and Arizona in response to this misuse of public funds. While Nevada is one of the states that limited the practice as the result of legislation passed in 2015, Democrats in Carson City are seeking to undo that measure.

That would be disservice to the hard-working Nevadans who fund the state’s generous public-sector perks and benefits. Despite Democrat- and union-led voices to the contrary, there is no circumstance in which taxpayers should have to foot the bill for government workers to conduct union business.