Depending on which side of the political spectrum your views happen to fall, a Feb. 8 article in The 74 headlined “California teacher’s union numbers show declining membership at 587 of 995 affiliates since 2019,” heralds either disaster or a return to sanity.
In it, author Mike Antonnuci notes that in 2018 — the same year the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark Janus v. AFSCME ruling banning mandatory union membership and dues for public employees — the California Teachers Association reported 326,000 members. But “(i)nternal documents show that figure dropped to 293,444 as of Jan. 13, 2023.”
Not only have nearly 33,000 California teachers freed themselves from the union’s tentacles, but the roughly $900 each had been paying in annual dues translates to $29.7 million in red ink on CTA’s bottom line. Every year. Forever.
And the defection rate is increasing, with good reason.
The Freedom Foundation has had an active outreach operation in California since 2019, informing public employees of their First Amendment right to opt out of union participation and supporting their desire to exercise it. More than 5,000 California teachers have left their union as a direct result of our work, and many thousands more have undoubtedly done so indirectly after being exposed to the organization’s email, door-to-door, direct mail and digital messaging.
For unions and the radically liberal candidates and causes they support with someone else’s dues money, the trend is catastrophic. But for teachers — and parents — who believe the purpose of schools should be to educate rather than indoctrinate, the news should be celebrated.
Really, it isn’t news at all. For generations, unions in California and all over the country have used their resources to fill school boards with fellow radicals expected to rubber stamp their every whim. Ranging from the United Teachers of Los Angeles’ successful campaign to defund the police on school campuses to the widespread implementation of the Critical Race Theory curriculum in the state, unions have ruthlessly turned their talking points into school policy.
That’s what happens when you value your political agenda over the safety and education of the children handed over to your care.
“If California losses continue,” the article asserts, “it will have a domino effect across the country.”
It will indeed, and when that happens, the Freedom Foundation will be there to keep the momentum going. This summer, in fact, the Freedom Foundation will host a first-of-its-kind three-day National Teacher Conference in Denver, Colo., during which hundreds of teachers from around the country will learn about their opt-out rights and what their union is actually doing with the dues money they thought was being used simply for workplace representation.
There are currently around 18.5 million public employees in the U.S., and the clattering of that many dominoes tipping over should be music to everyone’s ears
