Instead of standing before elementary
school students as I am accustomed to, on June 24 I faced cameras and reporters in front
of Washington’s state Capitol. In addition to being Mr. Leer, P.E. teacher in the
rural Sedro Wooley School District in northern Washington state, I am now part of Teachers
for a Responsible Union suing the Washington Education Association. Apparently this is a
historic case. But all we are seeking is for the union to obey the law and stop taking our
money without permission to fund its leaders’ political agenda.
The law is on our side. Our state
campaign finance laws strictly prohibit employers from taking money from employees’
paychecks for political contributions without annual, written consent. But the WEA has a
routinely directed schools to withhold money from its 65,000 members’ checks for
political contributions.
As in most states, our education
union is huge, wealthy and powerful, funded to the tune of more than $43 million taken
from members’ paychecks each year. WEA members wanting to find out how their union
has been spending their money are told that WEA’s records are off limits. Until now,
the books have been closed.
I got involved in 1995, when I
learned that the WEA had given and then forgiven a $162,000 "loan" to its
political action committee. After confirming that this illegal transfer had taken place, I
wrote to my union and asked for an explanation. PAC contributions are political and
voluntary and are not to be mixed with the general fund, which comes from mandatory dues.
The union’s response was to send
a big-wig to my school. He called a meeting to denounce the "misinformation"
that "someone" was spreading about the loans -- never mind that I had
documentation with me. Since it was obvious that the WEA was not interested in my
concerns, I, along with several other teachers, filed complaints with our state’s
campaign watchdog organization, the Public Disclosure Commission.
Months went by. Frustrated at the
PDC’s inaction, I showed my documentation to my school district, which serves as the
WEA’s administrator in deducting dues. The district’s attorney informed me that
nothing could be done to stop the automatic deduction for political funds.
So my colleagues and I turned to Bob
Williams, a former government auditor and president of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, a
policy institute and state budget watchdog. In his preliminary investigation Mr.
Williams found that the amount of money illegally taken and spent by the WEA was bigger
that we had imagined -- at least $4 million. He turned his findings over to the PDC, which
finally conducted its own investigation and eventually confirmed all our initial
complaints.
Last November the PDC announced that
the WEA was guilty of the largest campaign violations in state history -- more than
$600,000. The violations were so large that the PDC recommended prosecution by Attorney
General Christine Gregoire. Ms. Gregoire had been a recipient of substantial WEA
contributions in her previous political campaigns. Showing remarkable independence, she
returned the donations and in February filed suit against the WEA.
The suit contends that "the WEA
has severely frustrated the public’s right to know" who is paying for political
influence. It also charges the WEA with improperly funding and failing to correctly report
hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign contributions, expenditures and loans.
I went before my district’s
administration and explained why the district should cease deducting money from
teachers’ paycheck for what the attorney general has declared a stealth PAC, the
Community Outreach Program. The WEA’s own lobbyist, Robert Maier, has stated under
oath that this program was "an internal ploy to raise more WEA-PAC money."
My district payroll administrator
agreed with me -- until the following Monday. The WEA had threatened the district with
legal action if it stopped collecting the funds.
A few days later I received a
letter from the WEA’s lawyer: "You are hereby warned that if, [your]
District withholds dues transmission...we will sue you." Frankly, I was scared that
my request for the protection of my rights was jeopardizing my wife and children. Soon my
fright turned to anger. Because I did not want to pay for someone else’s politics, I
was being threatened by my own union.
Although most teachers agreed with me
that money should not be deducted from their paychecks to be used for political purposes
without their consent, they feared retaliation if they spoke up. I understand their fears.
Because of WEA’s refusal to obey the law and respect my First Amendment rights, I
reluctantly quit the union. I still have to pay the mandatory dues, but I have lost my
right to vote as a union member on legitimate union functions such as arbitration,
workplace conditions, and contract negotiations.
In the past, the National Education
Association and the WEA have been able to dismiss complaints like mine as those of
anti-union nonmembers. But teachers who belong to the WEA are among those who make up
Teachers for a Responsible Union, the group suing the union. We are joined by
Evergreen Freedom Foundation and represented by Seattle attorney Steve O’Ban, who in
past battles with the WEA has won reductions for teachers of up to 70% of annual union
dues. On June, I joined these courageous teachers in filling suit against the WEA for
collecting and spending violations concerning their union dues.
The WEA’s response has been
lamentable. The union has labeled teachers like me "disgruntled dinosaurs"
because we don’t belong to the union -- even though resigning was our last resort.
And it has attacked the Evergreen Freedom Foundation as part of a "right-wing
conspiracy" against public education.
We do not yield our paychecks to WEA
officials to be pillaged at will for their own professionals; we are fully capable of
making our own political decisions. While we value the counsel of our WEA teachers, we do
not yield our rights as free citizens to make our own political decisions.
I don’t want to be an activist;
I want to be a teacher. I love my school and the children I teach. While it may be easier
to give up this struggle, I cannot. The very principles of liberty and free speech that
drove our Founders are at stake. What kind of teacher and father would I be if I gave up
now?
Mr. Leer is a public school teacher living in Sedro Wooley, Washington.