Recently, I had conversations with three teachers from three different school districts about their experiences with their unions and their decisions to opt out.

Three different people.
Three different districts.
Three different stories.

And yet there was a common thread running through all three conversations that left me asking a much bigger question: Why does opting out sometimes feel so difficult?

More importantly, why can teachers who choose not to financially support their union feel as though they need to explain, defend or justify that decision?

These aren’t people trying to create conflict. They aren’t telling everyone else what they should do.

They simply made a personal decision about union membership and then experienced what happened afterward.

• Kelly: “I Just Don’t Want to Be in the Union.”

Kelly opted out of her union the previous year. After she opted out, her local union president emailed her and said she wanted to meet with Kelly in person to discuss why she had chosen to leave. 

Kelly didn’t respond to the email. The union president eventually approached her in person.

During their conversation, Kelly was told the union had helped her and other special education teachers obtain additional instructional aides for their classrooms. Kelly replied that she hadn’t been part of that meeting three years prior at which those things had been discussed. 

The union president continued to insist Kelly had been there and that the union had helped her. Kelly explained again that she hadn’t participated in the meeting. 

She couldn’t have because she had only been employed in the district for two years.

At that point, Kelly felt the conversation was becoming less about understanding her decision and more about reminding her of what the union had supposedly done for her.

Kelly’s response was simple: “I just don’t want to be in the union.”

That sentence stuck with me. Kelly wasn’t saying the union had never helped anyone. She wasn’t saying that unions have no legitimate role. 

She was simply saying she had made a personal decision about her membership.

Shouldn’t that be enough?

• Helen: “I Had Already Made My Decision.”

Helen opted out several years ago after learning from a colleague that she had the right to do so. She made her decision and went about her job. There was no big announcement, no confrontation, and no explanation required. She simply opted out.

In the weeks that followed, the union reached out to her. Not once, but multiple times.

Initially, a colleague asked to stop by Helen’s office to say hello. She brought the union representative with her. Together, they brought pamphlets and flyers encouraging Helen to rejoin the union.

Two weeks later, the union representative followed up, telling Helen that she respected her decision and would not pursue the matter any further.

But the story didn’t end there.

Late one evening, Helen received a voicemail from her colleague stating that someone had filed a complaint about union harassment and that they were trying to determine whether Helen was the person who had filed it. She wasn’t.

For Helen, what began as a simple personal decision to opt out had turned into an uncomfortable situation involving repeated contact, pressure to rejoin, and now questions about a complaint she hadn’t even made.

What had been a personal decision Helen had made years earlier was suddenly becoming an ongoing conversation. And she began to feel uncomfortable.

Again, Helen wasn’t trying to pick a fight. She wasn’t telling other employees to leave. She had made her decision and continued doing her job.

Why isn’t that enough?  Is the goal to understand why they left or to entice them back at any cost?

Those are two very different things.

• Dan: “Can I See My Membership Information?”

Dan’s experience was different again. He tried to opt out but was told that he couldn’t because the applicable opt-out window had closed for the year. But that didn’t jive with what he’d been told about his membership and the timing of his opportunity to opt out.  So, Dan asked questions.

He wanted information about his own union membership. He asked for documentation showing when his membership began and information about the dates that applied to his ability to opt out. 

Instead, Dan was told by the union president that he would receive his membership information sometime in the fall with the union magazine.

No one is suggesting that every union is legally required to produce every document immediately upon request. There can be specific procedures, contractual provisions or applicable laws governing membership and withdrawal.

But the underlying question is still worth asking: When an employee asks for information about their own membership, shouldn’t the process be clear and transparent?

Dan wasn’t asking for anything unreasonable. He wanted to know:

• When did I become a union member?
• What document shows that?
• What are the dates that apply to my membership?
• What is the applicable opt-out period?
• What did I agree to when I became a member?

Those seem like reasonable questions for someone trying to understand his own status.

Why does opting out sometimes become so complicated? And why is a teacher who chooses not to financially support a union made to feel as though they owe someone an explanation?

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Janus v. AFSCME affirmed that public employees cannot be compelled to pay agency fees to a public-sector union without affirmative consent. The court specifically addressed the First Amendment implications of forcing public employees to financially support union speech.

That distinction matters. A teacher’s decision about whether to financially support a union is not the same question as whether the union remains the exclusive bargaining representative for employees in the bargaining unit.  The right to make an individual decision about financial support does not mean a teacher has to agree with everything the union does.  And it certainly doesn’t mean a teacher has to convince the union that their reasons are good enough.

But what if the reason is the union’s values? This is where the conversation gets even more interesting. What if a teacher tells a union representative: “I want my union to focus on my contract, my wages, my working conditions and my representation at the bargaining table. I don’t want my money connected to political candidates or causes.”

What does that answer mean to the union?  Is it simply an obstacle to overcome? Is the union representative looking for an argument that will convince the teacher to stay, or is the organization willing to actually listen?

Instead of trying to convince the teacher their decision was wrong, maybe union leaders should take a good, hard look at their operation and ask whether those opting out have a point.

If a teacher specifically identifies political activity or ideological differences as the reasons they don’t want to participate in the union, shouldn’t their feedback mean something? Shouldn’t it cause union leaders to pause and ask:

• Are we doing too much politically?
• Are our political priorities aligned with what all of the employees we represent want from their union?
• Are we losing members because some teachers want their union focused primarily on collective bargaining, contracts, wages, benefits, working conditions, and workplace representation?

There’s an important difference between listening to someone and trying to persuade them. When a teacher says, “I don’t want to belong to the union,” perhaps the response shouldn’t be a list of everything the union has ever done for that teacher.

Maybe union leaders should ask whether they’re doing what the members actually want.

The union and the teacher don’t have to agree.  But the teacher’s decision can still be respected.

Teachers have different political beliefs. They have different priorities. They have different ideas about what a union should and shouldn’t do. 

Some teachers may believe strongly in union membership and feel their dues are worthwhile. Others may decide union membership isn’t right for them.  Both decisions are equally valid.

Teachers deserve accurate information about their rights and their options. They deserve transparency about their membership. They deserve the opportunity to make an informed decision.

And once they make that decision, they deserve to have it respected.

Give teachers the information.
Give teachers the choice.
Respect the decision.

One teacher at a time.