The scum running teacher's unions: MEA (Michigan)

Michigan is now what every state SHOULD be: a right to work state.

Except when teachers try to leave the union organized crime unit known as the Michigan Education Association, this is what happens:

Home  >  Michigan  >  Michigan union tricks teachers into prolonging membership

Michigan union tricks teachers into prolonging membership

By Mary C. Tillotson  /   July 29, 2014  /   16 Comments

     

   

By Mary C. Tillotson | Watchdog.org

Rob Wiersema teaches high school economics, and he knows the merits of a simple cost-benefit analysis.

Leaving the Michigan Education Association, he surmised, made economic sense.

Another professional association he found, offered better benefits at a lower cost.

But his simple economics become complicated. The union didn’t want him to go.

In December 2012, Michigan passed a Right to Work law, which allowed teachers and other workers to keep their jobs without belonging to the union. Until then, union membership was all but a requirement for employment.

“I thought, great, I’m out,” Wiersema said. “As soon as I heard you could leave, I thought, great. My contract is up in 2013. I sent letters to the MEA and the local association to say I quit, but it obviously didn’t work.”

He called the union and sent letters asking how to leave, but he got no reply. In June, he sent a “quit letter” to the state and local branches and the school. In July, union dues showed up on his credit card.

“I disputed the charge and said I wasn’t going to pay it,” he said. “Then I heard the MEA was going to go after people who didn’t pay it and have their credit reports take a hit.”

The MEA contends that teachers can leave the union in August only.

“People who thought they could exercise their right-to-work rights have unfortunately gotten a rude awakening that (the MEA is) now sending collection notices home,” said Vincent Vernuccio, director of labor policy for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. “If they have not opted out during the narrow window during August, they’re sending a collection agency after them.”

The Mackinac Center developed AugustOptOut.org to give teachers the information they need to leave the union. It’s the MEA’s job to inform its members, Vernuccio said, but the Mackinac Center is trying to fill the information gap.

“Last year there were teachers and other school support personnel and other members of the MEA that wanted to exercise the right but were not informed that August was the only time they were able to do so. Because they missed the window, they were unable to exercise the right,” he said.

Lisa Jelenek, who retired this spring after 40 years teaching first grade through high school, said several teachers in her district applauded the Right to Work law. They think the union is more of a political organization than a service for its members, she said. Dues were high, almost $1,000 a year, and the union had not successfully negotiated a raise for them in several years.

Jelenek and some of her co-workers chose not to re-join the union for the 2013-14 school year, the first year in which right-to-work applied. They didn’t know about the August window until too late.

Lisa Jelenek tried in vain to leave the MEA before she retired.

More:

The kind of scum running this union is the kind of scum that runs ALL unions: they could give a rat's ass what the members want or don't want... or even that they can leave.

The unions in Michigan fought to keep their organized criminal enterprise in place: they lost, the world did not end and the Earth continues to spin on it's axis.

But as proven repeatedly in Michigan and, for example, here locally at the grain terminal, unions don't give a damn about the law and demand only that the laws apply to everyone else... but not the unions.

This is the kind of thing that deepens my disgust of unions generally and public employee unions specifically.

And they need to go.