Which Four States Say It's OK For Unions to Stalk People?

Labor unions are one of the Left's pushier constituencies. Look no further than the protests they staged outside Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's house back in February of last year for evidence:

Now, imagine for a moment that a private individual followed you home and started screaming at your house, or accosting you when you left. Presumably you would go to the police and claim the person was a stalker. And under normal circumstances, you would be right...unless that person is in a labor union and you have the misfortune to live in Pennsylvania, California, Nevada or Illinois. In that situation, there's nothing the cops can do.

Why? Because, according to a report by the US Chamber of Commerce, every single one of those states has exceptions carved out in their anti-stalking laws for labor unions. The reasoning behind this puzzling double standard is that since employers have a so-called "captive market" when speaking to employees, labor unions have to be free to accost those employees in other settings, even if the employees would rather not speak to union representatives. Never mind that anyone who was thus accosted would probably be more likely to brush off the union.

The Washington Examiner explains the specifics of these laws this way:

The Pennsylvania anti-stalking law states it “shall not apply to conduct by a party to a labor dispute” while the Illinois law says “any controversy converning wages, hours, working conditions or benefits … the making or maintaining of collective bargaining agreements, and the terms to be included in those agreements.”

California has a similar exception for its trespass laws. The Chamber dryly noted in the study that the mere fact that these exemptions had to be written into the law shows how close some union tactics come to behavior that would be illegal in any other context.

And lest you think Wisconsin is any more stringent, don't kid yourself. Wisconsin actually has an even more bizarre exemption carved out for unions. Specifically, they allow unions to disrupt military activities. Why this should be the case is anyone's guess, given that the military is not unionized, and most likely never will be unionized. Nevertheless, these carved out favors indicate that the unions are more than willing to do things that many would consider outside the realm of decency and legality. Whether you believe those acts would be justified, however, is likely a matter of irreconcilable ideological preference.