Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Blatantly Ignoring The Law

I was an agency fee payer for many years before the Janus decision, and my local union as an entity never gave me any problems.  After the Janus decision, my local union as an entity did not give me any problems.  Not every teacher can say that, though, as some local unions use shady justifications to blatantly ignore the Supreme Court's ruling:
Special-needs instructor Bethany Mendez has been fighting for months to escape the teachers union in Fremont, California, but the school district continues to funnel a portion of her paycheck directly to the labor bank account.

She joined four other public school educators in filing a federal class-action lawsuit Monday against the California Teachers Association to stop the forced collection of union dues, armed with last year’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME.

“This is a financial issue for many people as well as a personal choice,” Ms. Mendez said at a press conference in San Francisco. “It is unfathomable to me that after even receiving a revocation of consent, and the passing of Janus, that the local and state unions would continue to assert this mandatory deduction from our paychecks.”
As far as I'm concerned, the suit should be against the school district. After all, it's the district that's taking her money and giving it to the union.
In an Oct. 12 letter, she notified the union she had resigned and revoked any dues-collecting authorization, but the CTA told her in a Feb. 8 response that she could quit only during a 30-day window described as “not less than thirty (30) days and not more than sixty (60) days before the annual anniversary date” of her recommitment.
Unions have always acted shady. They've always used strong-arm tactics. It's the entire history of the union movement.

1 comment:

Ellen K said...

oh, so some unions are staffed by strident ideologues who don't think law handed down from the bench applies to them. Where else have we seen this in our society? Maybe in the tolerance of sanctuary cities? Perhaps in the unwillingness to enforce law as written because it ruffles the feathers of activists? I hope this teacher wins, I really do. But in a one party state like California, or New York or Connecticut, you have to more or less expect that those who have power will not give it up willingly.