Larry Sand, president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network, has a great piece in the San Diego Tribune that points out how California Teachers Unions are making things tougher on teachers, even in this already tough economy. Dues payments are going up and teachers still have no control over how those dues are put to use. There are numerous union offiicials making six figures, and of course, plenty of teachers money being wasted on leftist causes that have nothing to do with education.
Many millions go to candidates and causes that have nothing to do with teachers or education. And the only thing a teacher can do to protest this spending is to “resign” from the union. In that case, a teacher gets a $300 rebate – the part of union dues that is not used for collective bargaining, such as union political expenditures – but is still forced to pay about $700 a year to the union even after they resign from it.
I wonder if policies like this have an effect on the availability of a pool of teachers. Would libertarian-types (like myself) who wanted to go in to teaching consider another profession because they don’t want to support causes that are abhorrant to them? Maybe…. maybe not, but it definitely contributes to the sense that teaching isn’t a particularly valued profession if teachers aren’t even respected enough by their leaders to allow them to exercise their own political concious.
Is it just me or does it seem that unions are rarely actually interested in advancing the cause of the workers?