Stand Up For Integrity In Public School Systems, Politics

Using teachers’ dues, the National Education Association has hired a public relations firm, the Kamber Group, to help the NEA polish its tarnished image. Issued in January, the Kamber Report warned that the NEA is in a state of crisis. Public opinion regards the organization as:

A monolithic union that looks out for number one at everyone else’s (including kids’) expense.

The greatest obstacle to needed education reform.

A giant political arm of the Democratic Party.

Having nothing new or positive to offer.

Kamber warned that failure to act could cause further marginalization and possibly even organizational death. Kamber advises that the NEA spend less time attacking its opponents and more time co-opting them - taking some of their positions, molding them to be beneficial to NEA members, and becoming the creator rather than the receiver of education reform.

A local Kamber co-opt is the Washington Education Association’s supposed support for charter schools. In fact, WEA dues provided 75 percent of the funds to kill a charter school initiative on last year’s statewide ballot.

Kamber recommends that NEA de-emphasize its focus on wages, hours and working conditions and that it initiate a public-relations blitz to retool its image. Following suit, the WEA and the Spokane Education Association are running their own ads.

Unfortunately, Washington’s teachers are paying for WEA’s spin campaign to defend itself against recent government and teacher lawsuits. They may end up paying the fines for WEA’s illegal activities, too.

If WEA is convicted of what the state Public Disclosure Commission calls the worst campaign violations in state history, union officials probably will raise teachers’ mandatory dues to pay the fines. That’s what WEA did when contributions to its political action committee dropped from 45,000 to 8,000 teachers when the law began requiring their prior consent.

Also, WEA spokesman Trevor Nielson has said teachers’ dues would probably pay the near-maximum fine levied by the PDC against NEA staffer Kristeen Hanselman (who makes $133,000 a year) for filing false public disclosure reports.

Meanwhile, the union is reducing the time spent on its primary responsibility - representing teachers. In September 1996, The Spokesman-Review quoted Spokane Education Association President Lynn Jones as saying only 20 to 30 percent of teachers’ dues are now used for collective bargaining, grievance resolution and arbitration. The rest is spent on politics, advertising, facilitating restructuring meetings, etc.

That is the basis of three lawsuits against the union:

Nearly 3,000 non-union teachers are represented in a class-action lawsuit against WEA for political use of their collective bargaining fees. (Recent challenges by non-union teachers resulted in 70 percent and 50 percent reductions in dues.)

Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire is prosecuting the WEA for intentionally violating election laws.

Union teachers and the Evergreen Freedom Foundation are suing the WEA, the NEA, the regional affiliates and 15 representative school districts - including Spokane - for raiding teachers’ paychecks for political contributions.

Current law is woefully inadequate to protect teachers and our electoral system from a monopolistic and unaccountable teachers union. The union spends teachers’ dues under a cloak of secrecy by refusing to open its detailed spending records - even to its own members.

This undemocratic and unaccountable system must be replaced. Teachers and taxpayers need legislation to:

Require the union to make an annual, externally audited report available to the teachers who pay the dues.

Levy significant punitive fines for illegal use of dues for politics and make union officials, not the general membership, pay them.

Require school districts to inform staff that they are not required to join the union.

Require reporting of political expenditures within 24 hours on the Public Disclosure Commission’s Internet website.

Teachers have a right and obligation to participate in the political process. Those who agree with the union’s politics can voluntarily contribute to the WEA’s political action committee. But teachers who disagree with the union’s politics must have their free-speech rights protected. They should not be forced to fund someone else’s politics.

It’s time we all stand for integrity in the political and public school systems. Teachers deserve to belong to a labor organization with integrity - one that helps them not only to have more but to be more.

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Cindy Omlin Special to Roundtable