Teachers Speak Out Against Unions

My union sent me this today:

I'll issue a complaint with the leadership tomorrow. As I've noted a couple of times now, public unions are thugs, and they don't represent me with their far-left progressive politics. I pay over $1000 a year in dues, and the political opt-out is a measly figure, obviously not representative of how employee dues are being used to support socialist policies. And like everywhere else, my college is going through the same stuff, including pressures to increase employee contributions for health coverage. More on that later. Michelle's got the must-read post on this, "Rank-and-file teachers speak truth to prog power."

“To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” – Thomas Jefferson

Since my days as a columnist for the Seattle Times, I’ve profiled courageous public school educators who have challenged the compulsory dues racket of their teachers’ unions. Here’s my 1999 column on how public school teachers in Washington state challenged their union over their political dues power grab. Here are your rights as a union worker. Here is a backgrounder on the permissible use of forced dues. As I wrote on Labor Day last year, free speech not only means the freedom to voice your political views, but also the freedom from being forced to pay for someone else’s. U.S. Supreme Court precedent established by the D.C.-based National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation guarantees the right to full financial disclosure from a union and a right to challenge the figures in court if they disagree.

On Sean Hannity’s Fox News television show last night, one of those brave teachers from the state of Ohio exposed how her union siphoned off her dues ($700 a year) to attack her husband, a GOP state legislative candidate whom the left-wing Ohio Education Association opposed:

Read it all.