The Pacific Justice Institute reported that teachers in California are outraged that over one million dollars of their dues money has been spent by union leaders to promote gay marriage and to fight Proposition 8, a proposal that would restore the traditional definition of marriage in Calif.
Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, recently claimed that if gay marriage becomes recognized in California, school kids will be confronted with increased pressure to accept gay marriage as normal behavior and will be propagandized in school.
“If CTA has its way, we can expect to see more first-graders taking field trips to lesbian weddings, more elementary-age students subjected to transgender teachers and events like ‘Coming Out Week,’ and more students taught that gay marriage is normal. We do not believe those values represent most Californians, or even most teachers. There is a way teachers can say ‘Enough’ to CTA’s radical agenda. Under federal and state law, teachers and all other unionized employees whose religious values are not honored by their unions have the right to disassociate and divert the full amount of their union dues to charity.”
As I’ve said before, donations to extremist causes like this by unions is further proof that the political agenda of union leaders has strayed far from their proper venue of their worker’s rights and needs. The issue of gay marriage is none of a union’s business, yet here is the CTA donating over a million dollars of its members’ dues to a cause that is completely outside its purview.
Unions are no longer interested in the workers and are only interested in gaining political power to wield without benefiting members.
Moe Lane
Steve Maley
Dan McLaughlin
Neil Stevens
Daniel Horowitz
Those teachers that oppose should try and change the rules..
izoneguy (Diary) Friday, October 31st at 9:17AM EST (link)…protest and form their own PAC.
The point cannot be made often enough: Modern liberalism, as embodied in the Obama presidency, is the defender of the status quo. And the status quo is a road to economic ruin. Political forces cannot redistribute the wealth that the economic system does not produce.
Teacher Unions
MikeO Friday, October 31st at 9:50AM EST (link)A number of non-moonbat public school teachers have told me that the only reason (here in Virginia) that they join the union and pay their dues is for the implicit liability insurance in the form of legal representation by union lawyers should they ever be sued.
An insurance wonk friend who used to live next door told me that it is highly unlikely that any private insurer could create a market for such coverage because the unions would concoct enough bogus lawsuits against privately insured teachers to make it unprofitable.
We really need tort reform.
All the teachers have to do is object and sue.
Achance (Diary) Friday, October 31st at 11:04AM EST (link)It is settled law that it is unconstitutional for a union to use compelled dues to support the “social, fraternal, and political” activities if a “member” objects. See, Hudson and Beck.
Even the 9th Circuit has been very supportive of the individual’s right on this, though CA courts probably would side with the unions as did the WA courts. The WA SC quite literally turned the 1st Am on its head to continue support for the Democrat cash cow but the USSC reversed it.
State AGs should act against unions on this but Democrats aren’t about to because they live off union money and Republicans are afraid to.
It is an existential battle to take it on as a Republican office holder and I decided I had better things to do with my life when I could have challenged Alaska’s public sector unions on their unconstitutional dues schemes. Consequently, the fight always has to be carried by pro se litigants or by public interest groups such as Evergreen Foundation or Pacific Legal, often with help from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Fund.
Unfortunately, both the bargaining laws and the dues language in contracts causes most employees under a compelled dues scheme to “choose” to become members rather than objecting fee payers so that they can vote in union elections and on contract terms. I believe a persistent litigant could work their way through the courts and get a holding that a union cannot deny a fee payer a vote on contract terms or other elections directly related to collective bargaining.
In Vino Veritas