Jejune in April

NEA rolls out its plan for what to do in case its worst nightmare – worker freedom – comes to pass.

Last July, the California Teachers Association released “Not if, but when: Living in a world without Fair Share,” a 23-page PowerPoint presentation unearthed by Mike Antonucci. The document revealed that teacher union honchos in the Golden State are expecting that pending litigation may very well put an end to mandatory union dues, and they’re exhorting local labor leaders to rise to the challenge.

Just last week, Antonucci “declassified” a similar document, this one coming courtesy of CTA’s parent, the National Education Association. Whereas CTA’s dispatch was downright perky – easy-to-read history, timeline and suggestions – its NEA counterpart (actually put together in April of 2014, three months before CTA’s version) is a snooze of Van Winklean proportions. Its 23 pages are packed solid with endless lists, boring bullet points and useless information. Perhaps a warning should have been posted: “Do not read before driving or operating heavy machinery.”

And while the CTA version took a few obligatory swipes at conservatives (what would a union missive be without them?), NEA devoted almost an entire page to its #2 bogeyman – the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Interestingly, the graphic the union uses for the think-tank includes descriptors like limited government, free markets, and federalism – all of which suggest that ALEC believes in the Constitution. NEA clearly has other ideas on the nation’s governance. (The memorandum’s exclusion of union enemy #1, the Koch Brothers, is inexplicable.)

And then there are the factual errors in the document, perhaps the most glaring of which is in the introduction. It reads,

Fair Share is a commonsense way to protect equity, individual rights, and the pocketbooks of educators. Also known as Agency Fee, Fair Share provisions ensure that all educators contribute to the legally required representation and negotiated benefits provided to them by local associations. Fair Share does not force individuals to join the Association. It simply makes sure that all educators contribute to the negotiated benefits and legally required representation that they all enjoy. (Emphasis added.)

NEA and other unions repeat this lie so often that it’s commonly accepted as fact. But it’s not truthful at all, and the unions know it. As Heritage Foundation senior policy analyst James Sherk points out,

The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) allows unions that demonstrate majority support to negotiate as exclusive representatives. If they do so they must negotiate fairly on behalf of all employees, including those who do not pay dues. However unions may disavow (or not obtain) exclusive representative status and negotiate only for their members. Nothing in the National Labor Relations Act forces exclusive representation on unwilling unions. (Emphasis added.)

In other words, if unions don’t want to represent non-members they are not required to do so. But they invariably insist on providing benefits to all.

The document contains another lie that NEA and other unions like to perpetuate.

The poorest states in the US are those in which unions don’t have many members or much power. These are called “Right to Work” states, but what that phrase really means is that workers there have no rights and work for less.

But as I have written before, right-to-work states are actually much stronger economically than their forced-dues counterparts. The Illinois Policy Institute’s Paul Kersey reports that:

• From 2002 to 2012, states with right-to-work laws saw a 7.2 percent increase in payroll employment, compared to a 2 percent increase in other states.
• As of September 2014, right-to-work states had an average unemployment rate of 5.5 percent, compared to 6 percent in non-right-to-work states.
• From 2000 to 2010, right-to-work states saw population growth that was twice as fast as that in other states (13.6 percent compared to 7.3 percent).
• Median wages in right-to-work states appear $4,345 lower than in other states. However, once you take into account cost of living and local taxes, right-to-work state wages rise. In fact, the cost of living is 16.6 percent higher in states without right-to-work laws.
• Right-to-work economies grew by 62 percent from 2002 to 2012, compared to just 46.5 percent growth in other states.

With its professed dedication to teachers’ best interests, there is also an omission that needs to be addressed. Typically when teachers join a union, they are forced to join three – the local, a national union and its state affiliate. However, there are teachers who enjoy the perks they get from their local but feel no need to send most of their dues money to the state and national entities which suck up about 80 percent (over $800) of a teacher’s total dues payment. If your politics are on the right, or you are a centrist or maybe not political at all, do you really want hundreds of your dues-dollars going to the leftist causes that the state and national unions regularly support? It is possible to form a “local only” teachers union, but only after engaging a lawyer and going through a laborious disaffiliation process. And NEA, far more interested in its bottom line than its teachers, has no mention of this option in its document.

Beyond the errors of omission and commission, there is not much else to comment on. It can be summed up as, “Tell people why they should join the union.” “Go after the younger workers.” “Engage non-members.” “Develop an app.” Tired tactics. Fallacious arguments. Same old, same old.

Zzzzzzzzz.

Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.