Respectfully Popeye and Golf, you are missing my point, or perhaps I am unable to adequately make it.

Its not the money for me. It is a personal freedom and belief issue with me. Trust me, if the time comes when I can no longer accept the union's values and direction, I WILL quit.

But I will pay the maintenance fee if I do. Easy to say I know because its now contractual, but that is what it is.

So to repeat, I don't begrudge the union its dues. I simply believe that joining the union should be a voluntary, personal decision made by each individual employee, just like it was when I was hired and made my own choice.

In an ideal world, the union would be so beneficial to the membership that we would never even be discussing the fact that there even were non members.