Check-mate: protecting workers' paychecks from predatory unions is good politics - and simple justice

National Review, Jan 26, 1998 by Christopher Rapp

Mr. Rapp is a journalism fellow at the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in Los Angeles.

LOS ANGELES

IN 1996, Frank Ury had only one term under his belt on the school board of Orange County's Saddleback Valley Unified District. But he already had a reputation as a renegade. With two friends, he had formed the Education Alliance, an organization which supported conservative candidates running for Orange County school boards. He had also led an effort -- opposed (successfully) by the teachers unions -- to make algebra a graduation requirement in the district's high schools. Worse still, in the eyes of the California education establishment, Ury had publicly supported Proposition 174 -- the 1993 voucher initiative, which the California Teachers Association (CTA) spent upwards of $9 million to defeat. Ury's support for this proposition led the local union to circulate a petition calling for his removal from the school board.

In November 1996, with Ury up for re-election, the CTA and its Saddleback affiliate decided it was payback time. They poured an estimated $70,000 into the campaign against Ury. Though he managed to raise $30,000 -- more than seven times what he had spent in winning the seat in 1992 -- Ury lost. "The unions wanted to tell me how to think, and I didn't agree with them," says the 33-year-old Ury, an electrical engineer by trade. "Therefore, they made sure I was out of office."

Ury and his partners at the Education Alliance, Mark Bucher and Jim Righeimer, were chastened by the experience -- but saw a chance to fight back. The union had funded its attack on Ury -- as it does all its political efforts -- not with voluntary donations but with money automatically deducted from its members' paychecks. In response, the trio from the Education Alliance drafted the Campaign Reform Initiative, a ballot measure that threatens to hamstring the unions' political efforts by requiring them to get written permission before using a member's dues for politics.

The brewing fight over the ballot initiative promises to be one of the most bitter -- and important -- of 1998. If passed, the measure would threaten the huge slush funds that make the unions such formidable political players. The unions -- not only in California but nationwide -- are launching a nuclear attack on the ballot language, while the Republican National Committee and national conservatives have made passing it one of their top priorities. Once again, California finds itself the battleground for an issue that could change the shape of America's politics.

Anyone wondering what the consequences would be of letting workers decide whether or not to support their union's political activism need only consider Washington state. For years, the Washington Education Association (WEA) automatically deducted $13 per year from each teacher's paycheck specifically to support its political-action committee. Teachers could opt out of the deduction, but they had to do so in writing, and in the short window of time between August 1 and August 31.

This all changed in 1992, when voters approved Initiative 134, which required the union to get permission before deducting money for politics. As a result, the number of teachers supporting the union's PAC plummeted from 48,000 to 8,000, a decrease of more than 83 per cent. The WEA spent the next four years trying to circumvent the law; last February the state's attorney general filed suit against the union, alleging that it had made "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in illegal political contributions.

The California initiative borrows heavily from the Washington law. The authorization requirement applies not only to unions but also to employers who deduct workers' money either for a corporate PAC or on behalf of a professional organization or union. This is an important step: typically, for example, it is the school district, and not the teachers union itself, that actually collects members' dues. "We don't think it's right for anybody to have money taken out of their pay without their permission," explains Mark Bucher, "and it doesn't matter whether it's being taken out by a union or a business." With a view to the current national fundraising scandals, the initiative also prohibits foreign contributions in state and local elections.

FOR the most part, teachers unions in California are not as blatantly coercive as the WEA. As CTA officials like to point out, there are even some school districts where teachers are free not to join the union at all. But the vast majority of teachers work in districts where the arrangement is more like a closed shop than a free market. To avoid paying for the union's politics, teachers must resign from the union within a 30-day window, which in some cases only comes around every three years.

Even if a teacher manages to resign, the CTA responds by imposing an "agency fee" -- the amount of dues it claims to spend strictly on collective bargaining. Teachers who disagree with the union's calculation must enter a year-long process which culminates in a ruling by a union-appointed arbitrator. At every step of the way the burden is on the members to prove why they should not be forced to give financial support to political candidates and causes they do not favor. "The unions force teachers to go through unbelievable hoops," says Ury. "All this initiative does is tell the unions they have to ask for permission first."