Questions About
Teachers Unions?

It is against the law for unions to negotiate contracts that exclude those who are not members of the union. Collective bargaining agreements apply to all employees in the bargaining unit. You will have all the rights and protections of the negotiated contract even if you are no longer paying dues to the union.

Many teachers have a sense of loyalty to their local union because of favorable union actions toward them or value for relationships with union members. This is perfectly understandable. However, many don’t realize that your membership requires you to also financially support the state and national union affiliates that advance policies you may disagree with on non-educational issues like abortion, marriage, gender identity, illegal immigration, etc. Almost all of the state and national affiliate political spending goes to one political party and their causes regardless of the diverse political views of their membership. Prayerfully consider your loyalties.

CEAI Executive Director David Schmus addressed some of these issue in a recent speech, in which he also pointed out that the NEA recently banned three Christian groups from their conventions, and have sometimes refused to defend their own members exercising their religious freedoms on campus.

As a non-member, it’s possible that you will have less access to the collective bargaining process through the union, and you will typically not be permitted to vote on a union-negotiated contract. However, as a teacher in your district, you always can have input simply by reaching out to district leaders.

While it is technically correct that unions can only use voluntary political contributions to contribute directly to political candidates (particularly at the national level), direct political contributions represent only a fraction of what unions spend on politics. (A Wall Street Journal analysis concluded that direct political contributions are only about 25% of what public employees’ unions spend on politics.). Unions spend money on politics in at least three additional ways:

First, unions can spend an unlimited amount of dues money to educate their own members and their members families about their endorsements. This can include candidate meet and greet meetings, phone banks, and mailings and union publications. When they are part of a group of unions, like the AFL-CIO or local labor councils, they can combine resources to reach out to member households of all the unions in the partnership.

Second, because of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, unions can make “independent expenditures” of dues money to independent PACs (Super PACs) that influence the outcome of races, but do not contribute directly to or communicate with the candidates.  Unionfacts.com reported that in 2015 the NEA contributed over $30 million and AFT contributed over $35 million in union dues on such funds and lobbying.

Third, public employees unions like the NEA and AFT spend millions on salaries for political activists that often spend 100% of their time on political activity. Sometimes these union employees are “loaned” to function essentially as campaign staffers for favored candidates.

So when your union talks about “political spending,” they are typically only speaking about direct political contributions to candidates, not nearly the entirety of what they spend to influence elections.

Most state bargaining laws grant the union that wins a collective bargaining election exclusive bargaining rights. This means that no other organization can represent employees in bargaining with the school district. So, math teachers, Christian teachers, teachers who feel lowering class size is more important than increasing salaries, or any other group cannot form their own organization to bargain with the district or even formally advocate for changes in the contract. The union is also able to bargain a variety of provisions that give them exclusive access to members and nonmembers, like making announcements at faculty meetings, use of school bulletin boards, payroll deduction of dues, use of district mail systems and access to employee mailing lists. In exchange for all these exclusive rights that make it very difficult for anyone to unseat them and very easy for them to recruit members, they are required to represent all employees through what is called duty of fair representation.  This means that they cannot treat members any differently than nonmembers under the contract.

The only real leverage that teachers have over the union is to join or not join based on whether you feel they represent you well.

If you feel God calling you to this, then you should. After all, He raised Daniel and Esther to affect nations. But if unsure, consider that local unions have very little influence over the politics of the state and national unions. Unless you rise up to levels of state or national leadership, your ability to sway your union on the issues they support will likely be negligible. Also consider that the unions may be forced to moderate their views to retain and regain members if many teachers like you leave. But if the union keeps receiving dues, what is their incentive to change?