Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Get Your Money Back Before It's Too Late
November 15th is the deadline to request your money back from the California Teachers Association. This year the rebate is about 35%, which is the amount the state and national teachers unions admit to spending on activities not related to representation or collective bargaining (e.g., politics). To get this money back, though, you must resign from the union and request the money back. See this post for an overview and this page from the California Teachers Empowerment Network web site for more specifics. Sample letters are included at the 2nd link.
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9 comments:
We had a somewhat similar issue with the Texas Tomorrow Fund. We had paid into it for twelve years for our son's education. He's taking a break from school, but if we didn't pull out the funds by November 30, 2009, we would only get back the principle, all the interest would belong to the state. The problem was that the big state schools were allowed to set their own tuition. Naturally since academia seldom runs on a real world budget, tuition went through the roof and the guaranteed educational funding went broke. Just another example of how academia and greed killed the Goose that laid the Golden Egg.
Thank you for this information in the past. I resigned last year and have not looked back. Joined CEAI and love knowing that my money isn't going to political views I don't concur with (well, they use it for a while, but I get it back.)
Did you get your check yet? Mine was $313.31!!
Teachers should not be requesting a refund, they should be demanding a refund. I would also encourage teachers to consider becoming religious objectors. That way, the state and national unions don't get any forced union dues to wpend on radical political schemes.
As a religious objector (info on that is also available at the CTEN web site), you must donate a money equal to *full* union dues to a charity--often a charity chosen by the union.
Darren, you've posted this before I'm sure, but how is it constitutional to be "required" to join a union? This makes my head explode.
There's another issue that you need to address - why do districts only take x number of years when you move to another district? If I've taught 15, 20 , 25, or whatever years in a district, why do districts only take x years? That, to me, might be the most head-exploding thing of all.
Whether you choose the charity or the union chooses it will depend on how hard you are willing to fight to get the charity of your choice. If it becomes apparent to the union that it is going to be more expensive to fight you than it is to agree to your choice of charities, you will win. Keep in mind that unions are in the business of collecting money, not in protracted struggles for it. Further, you can deduct your charitable gifts from your income taxes, something you usually can't do with your union dues.
EdD, you are correct.
Socalmike, we're not required to *join* a union. We're only required to *pay* a union for so-called services.
Isn't that rather like a protection racket?
Yes, it is. Legalized extortion.
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