Why is CEA fighting Right-to-Work?
Thursday, May 8, 2008Written by: Uncle Charley
The legislative session is over. Collective sighs of relief can be heard from many quarters across Colorado. But enjoy the warm weather while it lasts, as it only draws us closer to the black hole of a costly and contentious November election.
There may end up being several initiatives on the statewide ballot that end up having a direct impact on the world of education. Unless I’m missing something, one measure already qualified for the ballot that figures to have no such impact is the Right-to-Work initiative. Nor the counter-measures for which union leaders are seeking to collect signatures. These are all about the conduct of private sector business-labor relations.
Both the opposition to Right-to-Work and the support for the counter-measures are being run through a committee known as Protect Colorado’s Future. Though interest is denied in promoting the counter-measures, teachers union leaders say they’re on board with the campaign against right-to-work, and have put members’ money behind it:
“We’re not supporting those and we’re not helping get signatures, but we’re all in the same coalition basically because of right-to-work,” said Jeanne Beyer of the Colorado Education Association.
Beyer’s group, representing about 38,000 schoolteachers, is an affiliate of the National Education Association, which has contributed $130,000 to Protect Colorado’s Future.
These sentiments are basically echoed on the CEA website, with an elaboration of the union’s basis for opposing Right-to-Work:
This measure attacks Colorado workers and our wages, health care, and retirement benefits. Colorado workers have higher wages than people in states with right-to-work laws — making this initiative RIGHT TO WORK FOR LESS.
Colorado workers would have less money to spend, thus the initiative would hurt our economy. It would interfere in negotiations between unionized employees and employers, banning mutual agreements that nonmembers pay their share of contract negotiations. And the initiative is unnecessary as current law already ensures that no one can be forced to join a union.
Two quick ripostes: 1. Current law already ensures no one can be forced to join a union, but does not adequately protect workers from having to pay coercive fees. 2. A very strong case can be made that due to differences in cost-of-living and tax burden, employees in right-to-work states actually have more buying power.
But what’s most interesting is that public school employees in Colorado already have right-to-work protections for themselves, with a few notable exceptions in school districts that have negotiated agency fee obligations on to dissenting teachers. Right-to-Work hasn’t been so awful to the teachers union as opponents might claim, nor so wonderful to the state of education as proponents might wish to believe. Yet it somehow was worth $130,000 in member funds to combat at the ballot box.
Here’s the twofold question to which this discussion leads: Why are CEA’s strongest allegiances and loyalties to the labor union coalition? And what does it say about our education system that so many more teachers are drawn to an organization that protects the practitioner rather than the profession?
