Human Decency of Privacy And Respect

The title of this post comes from the remarks made on the floor of the House in Olympia by Rep. Manweller (R) of Ellensburg, WA. And why do I find this significant? Because it touches on a topic which I dealt with as a teacher during my last full-time year in the past. And now, it appears the Democrats want to do the same thing they've managed to do to teachers over the decades, to other union workers in other professions. It seems they're scrambling to keep unions alive.

What is this issue? Here is the pasted text from the section of Rep. Manweller's update email I received today:

"A bad union bill

It wouldn’t be a legislative session without some bad bills. Last week, House Democrats passed House Bill 2751, which essentially sanctions the theft of a public employee’s paycheck. The legislation would allow unions to automatically deduct dues from a public employee’s paycheck, unless that employee provides written authorization against it."

Here's the link to that video of his comments on the House floor last week. I urge you to watch it.

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You see, when I accepted employment as a teacher in this state, I was surprised to learn that it was a law the state teacher's union - W.E.A. - got the legislature to pass some time in the past (I'm uncertain exactly when, the point is, they got it through.) which created a required membership and payment of dues to the teacher's union, in order to work in public education. Happy to have been offered a position fresh out of college, I took it without much of a qualm then.

However, as I progressed through my career and became familiar with how the union operated and got things done, I began to resent that my dues were going to political causes I didn't sanction. Then, in my 29th year, while teaching an 8th grade science class, an incident occurred which required me to have representation by the union with the district administration; you know, the type of instance where the union had told us for all the prior years, that if you get in some kind of bind, we'll be there to defend you when anyone asked why we had to pay dues all those years.

Well, with the local union president sitting by my side, over the duration of the meetings we had, it became crystal clear that the union wasn't coming to my defense on this incident, and they were leaving me out to twist in the wind. So, after being exonerated and negotiating an agreement to resign after putting in my 30th year, I began researching this issue and discovered something that gave me a small measure of justice.

You see, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation in Olympia had fought and won a teacher's case in court over on the east side of the state challenging the union's ability to not only continue collecting dues on a monthly basis from any teacher who requested being removed as a member of the union, but they also could designated, or pick which organization of charity those dues were required by law to go to. The court ruled that since those dues were the teacher's property in the form of wages, the teacher should be allowed to designate or choose which organization or charity the dues went to.

So, I resigned my union membership during my last full year of teaching and chose my own charity the those dues which were still deducted that year, went to. So much for unions respecting the rights and privacy of the individual.