I’m a history teacher. I enjoy it. I’m a taxpayer. I accept it. I recognize my responsibility to pay my fair share to support the commonwealth. I elect representatives to determine how much I need to pay and how my taxes get spent to support the public good, and if I don’t approve of their taxing and spending decisions, I enjoy the right to cast a vote to get them out next time.
I am also a member of the National Education Association. This I don’t enjoy and will likely no longer be able to accept. Many years ago our principal was away, and when he received word that a student was secretly taping classes and conversations, he asked me to collect her recording device. I explained the situation, the student gave me the device, and I told her she could retrieve it in the office at the end of the day. A few hours later the police appeared at my classroom door to investigate her mother’s charge that I’d “stolen” the recorder. That day I reluctantly decided to join the National Education Association. I’ve been paying dues ever since.
Apparently my dues, and the dues of other teachers who voluntarily join the union, aren’t enough. The association nationally and in Vermont has been lobbying since at least 1988 for an “agency fee,” or what it euphemistically calls a “Fair Share” law. This proposed act requires school boards to deduct eighty-five percent of normal union dues from non-union teachers’ paychecks and turn that money over to the National Education Association.
The union’s proffered justification is that nonmembers benefit from the contract negotiated by the union. That rationalization makes some initial sense. However, it fails to tell the whole story.
If you enter a restaurant and choose to buy lunch, the owner has the right to charge you for lunch, and you would expect to pay for it. If you choose not to buy lunch, you’d rightly expect that you wouldn’t have to pay for it. That’s because you have a choice.
In the case of contract negotiations, teachers don’t have a choice. I’m not allowed to negotiate my own contract because long ago the union lobbied for and won the statutory sole right to negotiate for me.
Having taken from me the right to negotiate my own contract, the union now wants to charge me for something I never wanted it to do. This is like having a customer decline to order a sandwich, allowing the proprietor to cram most of it down her throat, and then making her pay for eighty-five percent of it.
Do you like that picture?
If the National Education Association would allow each teacher the choice of either participating in the union’s negotiated contract and accepting union representation in disputes, or negotiating a non-union contract with his local school board and representing himself, then I would defend the union’s right to charge participating teachers an agency fee. However, if you don’t allow me to decide whether I want you to act as my agent, you don’t have the right to force me to pay you a fee. Compelling me to pay that fee is indefensible.
Having obscured that essential unfairness, the National Education Association complains that union members’ dues currently “cover the costs” of bargaining and representation while nonmembers “reap the benefits.” In short, argues the union, my dues are higher than they should be because nonmembers aren’t paying their “fair share.”
Does anyone seriously believe that once all these nonmembers start paying this allegedly “fair share,” the association will be “fair” enough to reduce my membership dues since the union’s expenses will be divided among so many more teachers?
Does anyone not realize that compelling teachers to pay almost full dues for virtually nothing — no liability insurance, no legal representation — will lead many to conclude that they might as well join the union and at least get something for their money? This is a far from inadvertent byproduct of the union’s lobbying for “fairness.”
In its press release to members, the association laments that my union “brothers and sisters” and I have carried this “unfair” burden too long.
I have a sister, thank you. And if I have professional brothers and sisters, they are my fellow teachers, not my fellow union members. And as I would not reach into my sister’s pocket to steal from her, I would not steal from other teachers, who for whatever reason choose not to belong to an organization so reprobate and without conscience that it would stoop to picking working teachers’ pockets against their will.
I recognize the legislature’s right to take my money through taxes and apply it for the public good. But this is not a tax, and this act serves no public good. It doesn’t serve the people or any portion of the people.
It simply takes certain private citizens’ money and puts it directly into the coffers of a private organization to benefit that private organization. If there is an agency at work here, it would be the Vermont Legislature operating as an agent of the National Education Association.
I cannot believe that is the deliberate intention of my state’s elected representatives, yet that would be the result of their actions if they enact this statute.
I hope my representatives, charged with doing the people’s business, will withhold their hands from something so unconscionable.
Peter Berger teaches English at Weathersfield School. Poor Elijah would be pleased to answer letters addressed to him in care of the editor.
(3) comments
The NEA only wants your mandated dues, dearie. BTW, Vermont is not a Commonwealth. Only Massachussets, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky are. You know that, I'm sure. Vermont is a "Blue State", run by Communists, Democrats, Liberals, and Progressives. Ethan Allen, and John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. are rotating in their graves! Dunno what Garfield is doing in Binghamton. I'm sure Aiken isn't happy.
Commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political community founded for the common good. Historically, it has sometimes been synonymous with "republic".
Shakey: keep it civil and straightforward. No more "dearie" etc.
Thanks.
Otherwise we're going to cut you off.
The Reporter
Hi Mr. Berger,
As a history teacher you are aware of the history of unions. Had it not been for them fighting for the rights of common labor you would not be enjoying the luxuries you have now. I noticed you choose to join when you needed them but now you want to walk away? I assume when you need them again you will join and want them then to help you, did they walk away when you needed them? If the Vermont bill passes it's only fair that those who don't belong to the union will then have to pay something and at 85% they are getting a bargain. They reap the rewards of those who worked hard before them to establish a union,so they can be provided with a salary, health insurance, the ability to have sick days, the ability to work in a clean healthy environment, etc. I can go on but as a history teacher you know this and other benefits we have enjoyed and are still enjoying due to literally the blood, sweat, and tears of those who went before us. You mention that you have a sister and do not consider your fellow union members as brothers and sisters; literally they are not but figuratively they are it is a shame that it sounds like they cannot count on you even though you counted on them when the need arose. They are the ones who stand up for you to have your rights. The ones that are the real thieves are those who have sat back and reaped the benefits and rewards that you help provide by paying your dues and NOT the other way around.
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