Center for Individual Rights: “Collective bargaining is inherently political”

Here is a more recent article – from November 18 – about that lawsuit against the California Teachers Association, from the website of the firm that is representing the teachers:

https://www.cir-usa.org/cases/friedrichs-v-california-teachers-association-et-al/

Again, this lawsuit asks the court to overrule its precedent that allows states to mandate union dues – the law that allows employers and unions to exclude – refuse to hire – workers  who do not wish to be members or pay dues. Simply put, they are suing for the individual’s right to work.  The Center for Individual Rights, representing 10 California teachers, is taking it to the Supreme Court because they say this is the only court that has the authority  to grant them “relief” from involuntary union conscription.

Here’s an excerpt that sort of addresses a question we had on an earlier post:

Collective Bargaining is inherently political

Typically, California teacher union dues cost upwards of a $1,000 per year. Although California law allows teachers to opt-out of the thirty percent or so of their dues devoted to overt political lobbying, they may not opt out of the sixty to seventy percent of their dues the union determines is devoted to collective bargaining. This type of forced-payment scheme assumes that collective bargaining is “non-political.”  But bargaining with local governments is inherently political.  Whether the union is negotiating for specific class sizes or pressing a local government to spend tax dollars on teacher pensions rather than on building parks, the union’s negotiating positions embody political choices that are often controversial.

A reader had mentioned a possible provision for donating to charity – I doubt that’s still in the contracts,  but here they claim they will exempt 30 percent of your dues they say they spend on political causes. 

I agree with the lawyers who are representing the teachers – the union is political and everything they do is political. This 30-60 split is  preposterous – for one thing, I want to see the CTA’s books, all the way around.  They should have to make those public, on an easily accessible website, I’ll have to keep nosing around.

I’m assuming other  unions have the same exemption, am I assuming too much?  Every dime the CPOA PAC gets goes to political causes – where does the money go that is not used for the PAC? I’d like to see that fund  – should I ask CPOA president Peter Durfee? He couldn’t even get his campaign paperwork filed on time, complaining, essentially, “Dammit, I’m a COP, not an accountant!”  So, I have to wonder – who keeps the CPOA’s regular books, and where do I find them? 

I’d say, having to pay dues to an organization that pushes an agenda you don’t agree with is a shakedown. 

A real union is made of a group of people who agree to work together for a common cause, whether it is a temporary or permanent relationship.  You talk and vote among yourselves, with people who have the same gripes or needs, and you have to agree on your action, or it isn’t going to come off. If one person can’t get a big enough group to agree on an action, then that suggestion should die. If you are unhappy in your job, but you can’t get your fellow workers to agree with you, then you should find another job. 

With modern unions, the decisions are made by people who aren’t even employees, full-time “arbitrators” who get salaries bigger than working members, people who use intimidation, harassment and threats to get members to go along with the party line. 

sheesh – sounds like Chico!

Here’s how it works – you’ll be having coffee quietly somewhere, minding your own business, and some person you had considered too good to talk to you suddenly pulls up the chair across the table and makes friendly greetings in a low voice. They have lots of flattery for you – still in a low voice – but they wonder – are you really using your energies/talents to a good purpose? This actually happened to me at an “envelope stuffing party”, where I was sitting folding letters for Maureen Kirk, who was running for city council at the time. A very powerful liberal sat down and told me I should let her and others who know more about what they are doing write my letters!  She thought all I cared about was getting my name in the paper, and I’d be glad to let somebody else do all the onerous work of having the opinion. I can laugh now, but if she sat across the table from me today I’d land my size 8 right in her junk. 

I don’t hang out in coffee shops, so it happens to me more often via e-mail,  when one of them gets ahold of my e-mail under false pretenses. One well known liberal approached me this way, telling me, I had a “charming way with words,” and he loved my “feisty character,”  but by the third e-mail he was telling me I was “pissing into the wind” with my letters to the editor, “nobody listens to you.” 

This is, by the way, cyber bullying.  Like those women who are accusing Bill Cosby – if I told you who this old mummy was, you’d laugh your ass off. But I know he’s done it to other people.  The conservatives do it too – they also have an old mummy they take out of the cotton batting to annoy anybody who tries to raise their head up and say something that doesn’t jibe with  the party line. 

It’s as simple as that – they put you down, make you feel uncomfortable in your ability to express yourself. I’ve got a guy now, a member of the teachers’  union, who just keeps coming around and telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about. 

No, this doesn’t work on me, because my parents  put the mark on me when I was too young to realize – they told me I would be stubborn, they told me I would always think I was right. Your parents just know. 

But other people were raised by bullies, and they fall for bullying. It always blows my mind when I get those anonymous notes from people saying, “please don’t print my outrageous remark, I don’t want to get in trouble…”  But I know what they’re talking about, and I don’t have the heart to poke them about it, I know their fears are warranted.  

No, you do not have the “right” to a job in California.

Tags: California schools are a closed shop, California Teachers Association mandatory dues, freidrichs-vs-california teachers association, open shop, right to work legislation