Catholics as Members of Secular Teachers' Unions?

[paladinan]

This is an offshoot of a discussion that developed around the water cooler, moved to respect the OP’s thread…

I’ll post more detailed things soon (probably tomorrow or Wednesday?), but here’s the main question: given that the two main secular teachers’ unions in the United States (The National Education Association [NEA] and the American Federation of Teachers [AFT]) both support taxpayer-funded abortion, contraception and normalization of homosexuality (and the indoctrination of K-12 students into these ideas), what’s a faithful Catholic to do if he/she is:

a) currently a member of such a union
b) contemplating membership in such a union

My own view (and I’ve done this personally) is that a faithful Catholic would be obliged in conscience to take at least some sort of action–be it simply asking for a refund of all union dues which are earmarked for political activity (*), or a complete withdrawal from the union and a demand to divert mandatory union dues (called “agency fees” or “fair share fees”) to a charity, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (as I did).

(*) Note: unions are notoriously evasive and/or inaccurate when asked to calculate this amount–as several class action lawsuits attest:

nrtw.org/teachers-hit-wea-union-statewide-class-action-suit-reclaim-200-000-dues-seized-politics
nrtw.org/profiles/davenport/index.htm

More later… but that should be enough to stir the pot…

In Christ,
Brian

 

[Monsterkittie]

Really??

I had no idea. No, really. Now I’m wondering about the union I belong to. Not a part of NEA, but a smaller, state-based union. Wonder how I can find out what they are also a part of…

How do I find out? Anyone know?

Thanks.

M

 

[paladinan]

You can probably ask your local union president… or, barring that, you could do a quick Google search for the name of the union itself; the affiliation is usually listed somewhere (often in the “about us” link). If all else fails, feel free to e-mail me, and I’ll try to check it out for you.

As an addendum to my own story: a Christian teacher friend of mine (who has since left the teaching profession, at least partially due to this issue) wrote to the union and requested, as per his rights under the law, for a refund of all “union dues” (called “agency fees” for those who are not union members) which were not being used specifically for bargaining, etc., purposes. The state union’s first response was, “none of your agency fees are being used for non-bargaining purposes; your agency fees entail 100% of your union dues, less the $13 PAC contribution, which we’re refunding you as per your written request”. Now, this is pure nonsense, and my friend knew it… so he contacted a lawyer (the same one from the National Right to Work foundation [nrtw.org/]](http://www.nrtw.org/]) who helped me), and–with the lawyer’s help, got the union to admit that true “agency fees” (i.e. money actually used for teacher contract negotiation and other germane things, and not for political action) amounted to something less than 60% of his union dues. (Hmmmm… it makes you wonder why the union didn’t say so at the outset, doesn’t it?) The subsequent legal wrangling finally led my friend to the conclusion that another career (which had just opened up for him) was the easiest way to serve God–and to prevent his money from funding the culture of death.

One of many morals to the story: no teachers’ union in the nation uses all 100% of its union dues (i.e. not counting any extra donations to Political Action Committees) for bargaining, etc.; a very large percentage goes toward “educating the public [and government officials] about the need for laws conducive to quality education” (and other euphemisms)–which would, of course, include “free access to reproductive health services” (abortion, contraception, sterilization) and the promotion of the normalization of homosexuality and homosexual acts [starting at Kindergarten!].

To illustrate the point, here are five books which are being used (in ever increasing numbers, with strong encouragement–and even pressure–from the NEA/AFT), in grade schools and high schools throughout the USA:

Grade School:
Heather Has Two Mommies (Lesbian couple raises children)
Daddy’s Roommate (Homosexual men raise children)
And Tango Makes Three (check this out yourself for details)

Middle School/High School:
Jake Riley: Irreparably Damaged (includes main character sexually abusing a calf)
Rainbow Boys (“gay” students portrayed in graphic sex acts)

The following link has excerpts of the graphic parts–WARNING: GRAPHIC AND OFFENSIVE!

Parents Against Bad Books In Schools

I hope that this, at least, shows how we’re not dealing with “quibbles” or mere “matters of personal taste”…

In Christ,
Brian

 

[HouseArrest]

I had no idea a person could ask for a portion of their union dues back for that reason. I am really glad to know that.

Back in the day when I was teaching, things were not AS bad, but I joined the union out of fear of one day being sued by a parent and having it destroy me.

Here’s another question for you, does a public school employee have to join the union?

 

[paladinan]

I had no idea a person could ask for a portion of their union dues back for that reason. I am really glad to know that.

You can ask… but do be warned: they’ll return a pittance voluntarily (i.e. the money directly earmarked for political action–in my case, I received $13 back from my $700+/year dues, back in the days before I resigned from the union, filed as a religious objector, and demanded that my “agency fees” be diverted to charity.

Back in the day when I was teaching, things were not AS bad, but I joined the union out of fear of one day being sued by a parent and having it destroy me.

I hear you! There is an alternative for teachers of faith, however:

Christian “Teacher Malpractice” Insurance

Here’s another question for you, does a public school employee have to join the union?

Absolutely not… and if you’re not a member, the union is still obligated by law to defend your interests as if you were a member! No teacher is obliged to belong to a union, though many states authorize teachers’ unions to deduct “fair share fees” (i.e. what should be the “bare minimum” necessary to pay for bargaining expenses–but which, in reality, is far more) from a non-union teacher’s paycheck automatically. There’s where the grey area comes in; the AFT/NEA almost always attempt to claim that “agency fees” are equal to 100% of normal union dues… even though that’s been proven to be an outrageous untruth.

Check out the National Right To Work Foundation; they have a wealth of information about all of this, and they even offer free legal help!

In Christ,
Brian

 

[paladinan]

Finally, I get a spare moment to address your points, Sham7!

You wrote, in reply to my post (on this thread:

I am glad you clarified that unions are not evil.

Right (speaking generally, and not about specific unions)… and I never denied that, in the least, in any of my posts. In fact, virtually all of the labor unions began for noble reasons (as I said earlier) which were completely in accord with Church teaching. What I’d suggest to you is that, at present, many labor unions (and especially the secular teachers’ unions in the United States–which was the OP’s original topic) have devoted more and more of their energies toward “social engineering”–in which objective moral evils, including abortion, contraception, and the normalization of homosexuality are being promoted, encouraged, and even mandated by those unions.

Let me say again: if the AFT and the NEA had simply stuck to their express purpose (of furthering just and safe working conditions, wages, etc., for teachers), I would have no problem with them at all. As it is, the choice of the AFT and NEA to promote such evils is, to my mind, completely insane. (What other organization do you know which actively works to destroy its own future clientele?)

BTW, check out the Catholics who have worked so hard helping others through the union path. What do you say about Poland? Solidarity?

My esteem for the Polish people is extraordinarily high; I find their culture and their devotion to be greatly superior to that of the United States, in fact. Solidarity (the union) was formed by courageous, heroic, and virtuous souls (some of whom became martyrs), and I’m in awe of them. I would gently remind you, however, that Solidarity does not (and has never been known to) agitate for expanded “abortion rights”, contraception, “gay marriage [sic]”, or any other objective moral evil… mainly because the people of 1970-80’s Poland held onto their collective moral compass long after most of Europe and the USA lost theirs. If Solidarnosc were ever to start promoting such evils, my moral support for them would evaporate instantly.

They are not all created equal as you pointed out and that was my only point.

Right, again. You are aware that I never said otherwise, right?

I get what you are saying about some money going to causes that you do not agree with and thus my next paragraph.

Okay… but (and not meaning to nit-pick your word choices) I’m still a bit baffled by the mildness of your word choices; it really doesn’t describe my position accurately (which you were trying to do, I assume). In my ears, the phrase, “I don’t agree with that!” can cover anything from “mass-murder of innocents” to “the choice of paisley pants”; it has the effect of blurring the distinction between “personal preference” and “moral crimes”, and I don’t think that’s very useful. I hope no one thinks that I’d withhold my union dues because the union president chose to use part of his salary (paid for by my dues, in part) to buy himself paisley pants!

You know that you pay taxes to a government that funds abortion, but you choose to be a citizen of this country and you continue to support abortion in that way. Why?

several reasons:

1. Resigning from a union is far less grave of a choice than would be expatriating from my country; I hope that’s self-evident.
2. As per #1: my resignation from the NEA (and affiliates) did not devastate my family, as a decision to expatriate would certainly have done.
3. Any decision in which there exists an admixture of good and evil must be guided by right principles and right proportions; the more remote the evil, the less justified is an extreme measure by which one might combat it. I would not, for example, be justified in breaking into the Pentagon on the grounds that I could no longer tolerate the wastefulness of $1000 toilet seat covers, etc.
4. My country has a far stronger claim on my loyalties than does any union–and this is perfectly in accord with Catholic teaching.

In short: the difference between “leaving my country because some money is being leaked to Planned Parenthood” (ostensibly for “non-abortion purposes”–cough) and “resigning from the union because my paycheck is immediately supporting an active proponent and propagandist of the culture of death” is quite extreme; the latter is sensible, while the former (and the extreme and immediate damage it would do) is not justified. Check out This Rock’s article on the moral theology pertaining to gradations of cooperation with evil, if you’d like more detail.

My point about being a member of AFT or NEA is no different in my view.

The principles are similar; I’ll grant you that. But the remoteness of the participation in the material evil, and the severity of the effects, are wildly different; hence my position.

It is a choice. “Pro choice”? yep

In the pure sense of the word “choice”, that’s true; but vs. the corrupted sense of “pro-choice” (i.e. believing that a woman is morally free to choose to murder her child, or have him/her murdered), I hope you see the difference.

To be continued…

In Christ,
Brian

 

[paladinan]

Sham7 wrote:

Yes, you are not pure anymore than any other human being. We all like to be right. I have heard that some would rather die than be wrong.

Well… with all due respect, this is one of the points at which I suspected you of being somewhat hasty, if not slightly rash in your judgment; this sounds very much as if you’re insinuating, “The only reason you hold your beliefs is because your pride won’t let you admit that you’re wrong!”

I do not believe that the Magisterium forbids us to join unions. Not even ones that send a small percentage of their monies to causes that we do not agree with much like you sending your money to the government who funds abortions.

Half a moment, here; you’re equivocating two very different things. I’ll address your “magisterium vs. unions” idea in a moment (and I claim only that it’s morally obligatory not to join a corrupt union, not “unions” in general), but first: to compare unions, from which I can easily resign (and which you didn’t even need to join, apparently–I assume you live in a Right to Work state…?) to a renunciation of my USA citizenship is a wild comparison, at best. See my previous post.

I do not like that anymore than you, but we must “render unto Caesar what is … and to God what is God’s” You know what I mean? Jesus words, not mine.

They are certainly the words of Our Blessed Lord… but it’s necessary that those words be rightly understood:

“The citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the Gospel. Refusing obedience to civil authorities, when their demands are contrary to those of an upright conscience, finds its justification in the distinction between serving God and serving the political community.” (CCC 2242)

The words of Christ may not be taken out of context to justify a mindless acceptance of all that a secular government demands; only those things which can be justified by right reason and sound moral theology can be accepted (see the article from This Rock which I quoted earlier).

I too am against abortion, but I am against War, Big Corporations, and Big Tobacco even more so. They kill way more human lives than the abortions that occur throughout the world is what I believe.

First, compare your position with that of Pope John Paul II:

“Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights-for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture- is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.”

Secondly, your claim that you are “against war, big corporations and big tobacco even more” (I really do wonder how you can equivocate “war” and “big corporations”!) runs directly against even the mild-spoken US Conference of Catholic Bishops:

The first [temptation] is a moral equivalence that makes no ethical distinctions between different kinds of issues involving human life and dignity. The direct and intentional destruction of innocent human life from the moment of conception until natural death is always wrong and is not just one issue among many. It must always be opposed.

Of the concerns that you mention–war, “big corporations”, or even “big tobacco”–all of them can be abused, but none of them are intrinsically evil; Catholics can, in good conscience, disagree about them. But abortion (along with euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and other non-negotiable issues, cannot be condoned (or even accepted) by any faithful Catholic, and the fight against them must take precedence over “negotiable” items–important though the latter might be. To think otherwise is to fall into moral relativism, which is a very serious error.

No offense intended, but I was a bit wary of your list of “offenders”; “anti-war, anti-big-corporations, and anti-big tobacco” reads more like a wish-list from the Democratic National Committee than from any semblance of Catholic principles. Seriously: if your political beliefs collide with your Catholic faith, which will you follow?

I’ll wrap up in the third post.

In Christ,
Brian

 

[paladinan]

Final installment!

Sham7 wrote:

To focus on one issue that kills human beings(abortion) is very short sighted in my view.

This sentence is a rather good example of my concern with your position; by the phrase “kills human beings”, you equivocate (i.e. wrongly treat dissimilar things as if they were similar) many types of killing of human beings (e.g. abortion = justifiable homicide = killing an enemy combatant in a just war = euthanasia = (etc.)), and that simply won’t do. The lamentable deaths in the War in Iraq, for example, pale in comparison to the slaughter of 50 million children in our own nation alone, in the last 35 years alone… even if you ignore the moral concerns (e.g. killing enemy combatants in a just war) and focus on numbers alone!

I don’t see the Pope only concerned with abortion as he has gone on the record against the Iraq war that the US started.

Of course, abortion isn’t the Holy Father’s only concern… but the Holy Father has made it undeniably clear that Catholics can legitimately differ in their views about the Iraq War, but they can never legitimately differ in their views on abortion. The mere fact that the Holy Father mentioned both of them does not at all imply that he gives them equal weight; he most certainly does not. If it helps, consider the fact that abortion incurs the penalty of excommunication latae sententiae, while support for the Iraq War is not even sinful, if held for the right reasons. It’s a grave error to equivocate intrinsically evil acts with non-intrinsically evil acts.

By the way, the union I joined was voluntary

In 22 states of the Union, citizens are blessed enough to have union membership optional; in the other 28 states (including mine), union dues (or the pseudo-equivalent “agency fees”) are mandatorily deducted from paychecks. “Pro-choice”, indeed.

…]and we had around 80% of the teachers join.

All right. What, in your mind, does that mean? (I.e. Why is this not simply a fallacious appeal to popularity?)

Do us all a favor, ok? Get some stats(%) as to how much money goes toward abortion from unions.

I’m afraid the unions are not very forthcoming about stats like that, and they’d be quite foolish to itemize their political efforts accordingly (i.e. don’t hold your breath for accurate stats about that); I think even the NEA and AFT treasurers and lawyers would find it difficult to parse out the exact (or even approximate) percentages (or amounts) are spent on advancing the pro-choice agenda, as opposed to the homosexual agenda, as opposed to the promotion of contraception, etc. Aside from a possible attempt to paint me as “inconsistent” for resigning my union membership while not expatriating from the USA (which I already addressed, above), what purpose would the exact stats serve, anyway? I wish I could get exact stats for you… but the unions aren’t amenable to such requests, regrettably.

That should do, for now; take care, and God bless!

In Christ,
Brian

 

[Inman]

Here’s another question for you, does a public school employee have to join the union?

It depends on your state. There are two issues involved.

First, state employees have no ** federal** right to unionize. Some states voluntarily, for reasons I cannot possibly fathom, give their employees the right to unionize. In states that don’t give their employees that right, they can join a union because of the free association clause of the constitution, but the union gives you no protection. So if you go on strike, the state can take actions to break the strike a private employer could not, such as firing all of the striking workers for failure to show up for work, or even better firing the ring leaders. In those states being member of the teacher’s union is like joining the NRA. You get a sticker and they do some lobbying. They don’t bargain with the state for the employees, because the state doesn’t have to recognize them.

Second, some states have what is known as a right to work law. Essentially, if gives the employee the right to not join the union. In other states, where a union is present it is known as a closed shop state. If you want to work where a union is present, you are automatically part of that union.

Generally speaking, if a state gives its own employees the right to unionize, it is the kind of state does not have a right to work law.

If you are a state employee that is forced into joining a union, call and write your representatives and urge them to pass a right to work law or to take away the right to unionize from state employees. The other option is to try to build support among fellow union members for decertification of the union. In order for a union to represent a workforce requires an election. A similar election can throw them out.

Good luck.

 

[paladinan]

Just as a quick addendum to my other posts:

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights act of 1964, any teacher (or union member, in general) may, if the union is using his/her union dues in ways which violate the given employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs, may demand that the entirety of their union dues be diverted to a charity which does not violate said beliefs. (That’s what I did, years ago, when I was still employed by the public schools.)

There are three key points to this:

1. This does require that the employee resign from the union, which will forfeit the ability to vote on union matters, etc., and will surrender any “union-specific” benefits (such as the “complimentary malpractice insurance”–but these can be replaced). This does not forfeit the normal union protection (e.g. legal protection against unjust job action, efforts to maximize contract benefits, etc.), and the union cannot legally deny these to any employee–union member, or no.
2. “Sincerely held religious beliefs” need not be backed up by official tenets of a particular denomination (e.g. official teaching of the Catholic Church, the Missouri Synod of Lutherans, or what-have-you); all that is necessary is that the union practices violate your true (i.e. sincere–not just “made up” for the sake of getting your union dues to your favourite charity) religious beliefs. Make no mistake, though: if things go to trial, the union lawyers will probe the solidity of your beliefs with great precision!
3. Go to the National Right to Work website; they’re very experienced at talking anyone through the necessary steps, and there’s a great deal of good information available there. Other good sites include the Pacific Justice Institute and the Alliance Defense Fund, though they may well steer you back to NRTW.

I hope that helps! (Feel free to e-mail me, if you have any specific questions; I’m very motivated to help people who are in this type of bind!)

In Christ,
Brian

 

[buffalo]

If Catholic teachers unionize then there is an immense failure in the mission.

Catholic schools should be a win-win situation. There should not be any reason to unionize.

If it’s about wages, then perhaps the school’s mission and vision is not shared. The realities are that Catholic Schools do not have the open checkbook available to them that the public system does.

Catholic school teachers that embrace the mission know this and make financial sacrifices, because they believe. Teaching in a Catholic school is a vocation and not a job.

On the practical side Catholic schools must try to pay a just wage. But, bankrupting them through union tactics does not serve the common good.