The following editorial appeared in the February 2012 print edition of Carolina Journal:
The North Carolina Association of Educators desperately needs help from the state’s judiciary. Unless the courts declare Senate Bill 727 unconstitutional, the teacher union will lose the ability to collect dues through employee payroll deductions.
In other states where similar procedures have become law, union membership has plummeted. The political clout of the affected unions has cratered as well.
In North Carolina, that collapse would be a boon for students, parents, and taxpayers who want to end the NCAE’s chokehold on innovation in public schools.
The NCAE has opposed every significant reform measure in memory, most notably charter schools; its answer for any problem related to student performance is a call for higher taxes and greater teacher pay.
Moreover, the union is on the wrong side of significant majorities in both the House and the Senate. Its most loyal ally, Gov. Bev Perdue, has decided not to seek a second term. If the courts don’t come to the union’s rescue, the NCAE soon may decline from one of the most powerful political forces in North Carolina to a garden-variety interest group.
Collecting dues by payroll deduction is the lifeblood of public employee unions — and the primary way they fill their rolls. When then-Colorado Gov. Bill Owens required public employee unions to gain annual approval for payroll deduction of dues, membership fell by 70 percent. Indiana ended payroll deductions in 2005, and membership rolls dropped by 90 percent; Utah saw a similar fall when it ended teacher union deductions. And after Washington state stopped payroll deductions for its teacher union in 1992, the percentage of teachers paying dues slipped from 82 percent to 11 percent.
S.B. 727 became law when the General Assembly overrode Perdue’s veto. The House cast the override in a controversial, early morning January session. Perdue summoned the General Assembly to Raleigh to consider her veto of the Racial Justice Act. Speaker Thom Tillis then decided to reconvene the House just past midnight the day following the Racial Justice Act vote to reconsider S.B. 727.
Tillis’ timing was bad form, recalling memories of similar shenanigans — late-night votes, budgets written behind closed doors, vote swapping, and even taking bribes — during the century that Democrats ran the General Assembly.
The NCAE and other parties have filed a lawsuit, claiming both the session and the override were unconstitutional.
Good luck with that.
The vote on S.B. 727 should have been conducted in an orderly, transparent manner. But it wasn’t illegal. Nor is the legislation. Blocking the deduction of NCAE dues would prevent no one from joining the organization. Members could write checks, pay in cash, or have dues deducted from their bank accounts. The NCAE simply would lose easy access to members’ money.
An end to payroll deductions should have no effect on union membership — unless the union’s goals and agendas don’t satisfy rank-and-file educators. They don’t, and the ones who suffer are the children who are held hostage in public schools that are accountable to no one.