AT WAR WITH THE TEACHERS UNIONS: Part 4 - Listen to PSA radio ads regarding religious objection

NOTE: this is Part 4 in a series of posts in which we will discuss concrete steps to do battle with and ultimately substantially defund teachers unions. These unions are clearly a subsidiary of the DemocRATic Party, and they are a big part of what is wrong with public education.

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Although there has been some publicity and the information is readily available on the Internet, many, if not most, teachers do not know about their rights to either withhold that portion of union dues used for political purposes or use all of the dues money for charity.

Please pass this information on to teachers you know. The union thugs do not want them to know about this.

Legal Action Forces Teacher Union to Respect Rights of Religious Objector
Teacher is granted accommodation of religious objection to union affiliation
May 14, 2002
URL: http://www.nrtw.org/b/nr.php3?id=110

Armstrong, Pa. (May 14, 2002) – Facing religious discrimination charges, the state’s teacher union has begrudgingly agreed to honor the right of an Armstrong school teacher to refrain from paying dues to the union because the organization’s social advocacy violated his religious convictions.

Carl Glock, a practicing Christian, objected to association with the Armstrong Education Association (AEA) and its affiliates, the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) and National Education Association (NEA), because of their support of resolutions calling for special legal protections for homosexuality, abdicating parental responsibility, and criticizing the practice of home schooling.

After filing charges at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Glock’s attorney, provided by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, helped persuade the union hierarchy to halt its discrimination by allowing Glock to donate his monthly agency fee to the Western Pennsylvania School for the Blind, rather than funding the AEA union and its affiliates.

“For far too long, union officials have ordered people of faith to shut up and pay up,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “It’s outrageous for the union hierarchy to demand that a teacher put allegiance to the union’s radical social agenda ahead of his conscience.”

The case arose when AEA officials would only donate a portion of Glock’s 1999-2000 dues to charity and intended to keep the rest. During the 2000-01 school year, the AEA refused to honor Glock’s status as a religious objector and confiscated his entire dues payment for the union. In response, Glock contacted the National Right to Work Foundation, which provided him with free legal representation.

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, union officials may not force any employee to financially support a union if doing so violates the employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs. To avoid the conflict between an employee’s faith and a requirement to pay fees to a union he or she believes to be immoral, the law requires union officials to accommodate the employee – most often by designating a mutually acceptable charity to accept the funds.

Nation’s Largest Teacher Union To Be Prosecuted For Violating Teachers’ Civil Rights
NEA union ordered to stop harassing teachers with religious objections to supporting union
May 20, 2002
URL: http://www.nrtw.org/b/nr.php3?id=112
Cleveland, Ohio (May 20, 2002) – In response to religious discrimination charges brought by Ohio teacher Dennis Robey, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) will prosecute the National Education Association (NEA), if the union does not stop forcing teachers to endure annually a burdensome and invasive process before respecting their religious objections to union affiliation.

With the help of National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, Robey brought charges against the NEA and its local affiliates after they refused to honor his religious objection to supporting the union because it promotes pro-abortion, pro-homosexuality positions and constantly attempts to interfere with parental rights.

“The NEA union’s illegal scheme is intended to force teachers of faith to shut up and pay up,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. “The EEOC’s action further underscores that the nation’s largest teacher union is systematically persecuting people of faith.”

Robey began to make his religious objections known in 1995. During the 1999-2000 school year, union officials rebuffed his longstanding objection and demanded that every year he must describe, in detail, his deeply held religious views, fill out a lengthy and invasive form, and file it with the union. On the form, union officials asked probing personal questions about his relationship with God, his “religious affiliation,” and required him to obtain a signature from a “religious official” attesting to the validity of his beliefs.

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, union officials may not force any employee to financially support a union if doing so violates the employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs. In order to accommodate the conflict between an employee’s faith and a requirement to pay fees to a union he believes to be immoral, the law allows employees instead to donate that money to charity.

The EEOC agreed with Foundation attorneys’ arguments that the nationwide union policy unlawfully places an undue burden on teachers, and that teachers need only file a one-time objection to paying forced union dues. The union’s illegal scheme is employed nationally against thousands of teachers whose sincerely held religious beliefs prevent them from supporting a union.

Under the Commission’s ruling, the NEA must stop the use of these practices or face further legal action.

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