The suggestion by union leaders and various media opinion writers that the Supreme Court’s decision on Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees will somehow deny teachers a voice and will “defund and destroy” the unions is absurd.
The Janus case is one that addressed an individual’s constitutional protection from coerced speech. It doesn’t deny unions the right to organize, recruit, bargain, strike, or collect dues from willing members. What it does deny is the unions’ right to force individuals who are opposed to their positions and policies to pay into union coffers.
As much as America’s teachers unions are labor organizations, they are equally, or more so, political organizations, lending huge support to political policies, campaigns, and candidates. That political activity (carried out by, or under the direction of, union leaders, and funded by membership dues) falls overwhelmingly to supporting left-of-center issues and candidates and opposing ideas and individuals who don’t conform to union orthodoxy.
All of that is fine unless you’re a member who doesn’t want to be associated with those activities and doesn’t want to be forced to support them financially.
The pro-Mark Janus decision by the high court strikes a blow for the freedom guaranteed to individuals under the constitution. No citizen of the United States can be compelled to support speech that he or she does not believe in or endorse, and by upholding that constitutional protection, the court has affirmed a critical principle of freedom.
While this might not be good news for the teachers unions, it is fantastic news for the nation and for the thousands of educators who have long been exploited by the unions’ coercive tactics. It is also great news for families whose educational opportunities have been compromised by the unions’ unrelenting political war against charter schools and any type of education reform that operates beyond their diktats and outside of their control.
Education in America is in the midst of a major transformation that is struggling to realize its full potential in the face of limiting contractual and oppositional forces. From apathy to lack of knowledge to deliberate obstacles created by unions, these impediments have kept education from advancing into the 21st century. It’s that opposition that, in part, has earned the unions the antipathy of an increasing number of educators and a growing segment of the public.
The teachers unions were already decrying the case long before the ruling went against them. But they would do well to look beyond the revenue-generating dollars-and-cents loss that it will entail and see the opportunity that it presents — the opportunity to secure support for their work based not on coercion, but on voluntary support from those who truly believe in the ideas, actions, and pronouncements of any association to which they now may truly choose to belong.
They might also take this opportunity to abandon their entrenched stance against all things reform and embrace the cause of improving education for parents seeking new opportunities for their children, and for children in need of opportunities for innovative individualized learning options.
Jeanne Allen (@JeanneAllen) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is CEO and founder of the Center for Education Reform.
