Aaron WitheThe U.S. Supreme Court’s much-anticipated ruling in Janus v. AFSCME has the potential to put government employees back in charge of how much money their designated union can skim from their paychecks.
If any.
Not surprisingly, after decades of being handed a monopoly over the public labor supply on a silver platter, the unions are horrified by the prospect of having to earn their clients’ business the way a private-sector service provider must. So instead, they’re doing what comes naturally to them – conspiring with politicians whose loyalty they long ago purchased with someone else’s dues money on ways avoid compliance with laws that haven’t even been written yet.
Take the Oregon Education Association, for example. Rather than reinventing itself to create services actually worth the tens of thousands of dollars educators pay over the course of their career, union bosses in states like Oregon are leaning on their politicians in Salem and on school boards to thwart the clear intent of the Supreme Court.
The OEA’s parent organization, the National Education Association (NEA), borrowing heavily from the playbook developed by SEIU 503, has hatched an eight-point plan it hopes will prevent teachers from acting on their soon-to-be-affirmed First Amendment rights under Janus.
Watch to see if your local school board gives unions these eight things:
- publicly funded, hour-long union sales pitch meetings with every new employee;
- every scrap of information about employees necessary to communicate with them;
- access to work sites for communication and meetings during school, without prior approval, and without charge, and prohibitions on “rival organizations” from having the means to reach educators;
- taxpayer-funded time for union representatives to do the union’s work;
- payroll deduction of dues or direct bank drafts to garnish from employees’ bank accounts;
- prevent deductions from stopping unless specifically revoked during a window of a few days; recently the Michigan Supreme Court ruledthat these artificial windows illegally compel teachers to financially support the union;
- requiring school districts to deduct political donations for the union political action committees; and,
- assure the provisions that might be illegal are “severable” from the other provisions to ensure that if one or two of these tricks is struck down, the rest will still remain in force.
The only thing that stands in the way of this plan being implemented is your local school board. Every major decision about how teachers are treated is ultimately made by your school board.
Did your school board members get elected by union money? Can they be counted on to stand up for teacher freedom despite the pressure of the union’s desire to grab teacher dollars? Find your school board members’ contact information on the school district website and ask them to protect teachers’ right to make their own decision about paying the union.