The Mackinac Center will be among dozens of local and national organizations in 30 states promoting National Employee Freedom Week June 23-29.

NEFW “is a national effort to inform union employees of the freedom they have regarding opting out of union membership and making the decision about union membership that’s best for them.”

NEFW will educate unionized employees on their options to stay a union member or opt-out of union membership to varying degrees. These include:

1. To fully stop paying union dues if they are in a right-to-work state;
2. To become an agency fee payer in a non-right-to-work state (or if they are waiting for a contract to expire so a recently enacted right-to-work law applies to them as many workers are doing in Michigan);
3. Become a religious/contentious objector in a non-right-to-work state (or are waiting for a newly enacted law apply to them).

The sponsor of the week, the Nevada Policy Research Institute, a nonpartisan think tank based in Las Vegas, notes that “unionized employees often don’t know that they have the legal right to opt-out of union membership” and that NEFW “will help educate those employees on their options so they can make the decision about union membership that’s best for them.”

The NEFW’s website, http://employeefreedomweek.com, provides national resources to inform union employees about how to opt-out of their union membership. It also provides generic opt-out letters and highlights alternatives to union membership.

The website complements on a national level the Mackinac Center’s Michigan-specific worker rights website http://MIWorkerFreedom.org, which provides Michigan’s union members with detailed information on how our state’s right-to-work law affects them and how and when they can exercise their new rights.

NPRI on June 24 will release the results of a poll of union households in various states showing the percentage of union members who are interested in exercising their rights around the country.

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