The National Education Association is Goliath among the
unions, a towering fighter on behalf of every Philistine notion
that has ever reigned in teacher-training classes.
        Politicians of both parties tremble when Goliath walks.
Democrats fear losing the union's support — its $3.5 million in
campaign contributions in 1993-94. The GOP's share was barely more
than 1 percent of that.
        Republicans worry about provoking the NEA into targeting
them for defeat. Focused union opposition means dollars — and
campaign workers — that can determine the outcome of a close local
race.
        The NEA has adopted a laundry list of policies drawing the
line they expect politicians to toe. These resolutions take up
nearly a hundred pages in the union's handbook.
        It's certainly appropriate for a union to adopt policies
governing its members' contracts. That's what unions are for,
although I personally find the trade-union mentality antithetical
to a professional career. Professionals should expect to be
evaluated and rewarded as individuals, not as members of a cohort
of teachers hired the same year.
        But this is a union, so I'm not surprised to know that it
opposes competency tests for its members, wants schools to hire
only people with teaching certificates, opposes home schooling and
favors full funding for practically everything.
        I can understand, too, why the NEA would take a position on
an issue like bilingual education, although it took the wrong one.
The resolution supports programs that instruct children in their
native language until they are proficient in English. 
        Some of its resolutions, however, come from pretty far out
in left field. What's troubling is not so much the positions the
NEA takes, although you'll have no trouble predicting what they
will be; it's like a diagnostic test for political correctness.
        The troubling thing is that the NEA has positions at all,
on global warming, world hunger, nuclear non-proliferation, the
reparation of Native American remains, highway safety, recycling,
and the U.S. constitutional convention.
        Teachers cannot possibly be monolithic on all these issues
and many more that are only loosely connected with the union's
proper role of bargaining for its members.
        That's why, in districts like Livermore, Calif., slingshot
practice is continuing. The local NEA affiliate, the Livermore
Education Association, won an agency shop contract in 1994. That
means teachers in the district have to pay union dues, whether or
not they are members of the union.
        Dianne Foster, George Graham and Anne Lindl organized a
petition drive to ask for a vote on the agency shop provision.
        They got the signatures they needed on their petition, at
least 30 percent of the approximately 540 members of the bargaining
unit.
        But when the votes were counted recently, they'd fallen
short; 171 teachers voted to eliminate the agency shop, 232 to keep
it. The rest of the members didn't vote, and a change requires 51
percent of the total, not merely those voting.
        Foster intends to continue the fight.
        "We didn't get 51 percent," she said. "But neither did
they. And now no one can say it's just a few of us opposed."
        But it's safe to say few opponents work as hard as these
three do. Under an agency shop contract, non-members are entitled
to claim back from the union the portion of their dues that goes to
activities other than bargaining for the contract. The percentage
people could get back used to be tiny, only 8 percent when Lindl
and Foster became activists a few years back.
        But now, with dues more than $600 a year and the potential
rebate for non-members in an agency shop 30 percent of dues, the
stakes for the NEA's massive lobbying effort are enormous, and the
union goes to extraordinary lengths to make sure the deck is
stacked.
        The percentage of rebate due is set every year by
arbitration, at a weeklong session held in Burlingame the last week
of the first semester. The timing, and the location, pretty much
assure that few teachers can afford to show up to oppose the union.
        Until they started showing up with lawyers, Foster said,
they made no progress at all in raising the percentage. But the
California Teachers Association has plenty of money for lawyers,
raised of course from dues.
        "They're using our own money to fight us," Foster said.
        If the arbitration process does result in a larger rebate,
only teachers who signed up at the beginning of the year to
participate get the extra amount. This year, only about 700
teachers did that. CTA officials refuse to say how many people are
non-members paying an agency shop fee.
        The Livermore school district is far from neutral in how it
treats teachers who attend the arbitration. This year, it was one
of three districts statewide selected by the union as
representative of how union expenses are split between chargeable
and non-chargeable activities. The union covered the expenses,
including pay for substitutes, of its representatives. Foster and
Graham not only had to pay for their own substitutes, and their own
travel expenses, they were required to count their absences against
their allotted number of personal and sick days (Lindl took leave
this year to fight the agency shop provision).
        All three say they would be willing to pay for the actual
expenses of bargaining at the local level.
        "We're not 'free riders,' we're unwilling passengers,"
Lindl said.
        They just object to having their money used to advocate
beliefs they do not share. And so they should.