It's The Fringe, Not The Middle

For a long time I have asserted that it is the fringe elements of society that define our freedoms, not the mainstream. Often I look for examples of this, and they are legion, but here is an excellent one because it is not a single issue. Most examples are very specific, such as a freedom of speech issue, but this one is messy. A messy issue such as this is a good place to work on your political thought because it requires you to take many things into account all at once, as opposed to the simpler single issue items. But more importantly, life is messy. The simple issues stick out because they are exactly that, statistical anomalies.

A teacher in Ohio has sued over being required to pay dues to a union that supports abortion when she does not. There are at least two issues immediately obvious, freedom of speech and the right to free association, and at least one adjacent issue being abortion.

Lets get the abortion issue out of the way because it only serves to clutter the mind. The fact that the plaintiff objects to her money being used for abortion is irrelevant, for indeed one could substitute any issue and the higher argument would still stand.

Ohio is not a right to work, and that turns out to be a sort of non-issue. On the one hand, the right to free association means that private organizations should and do have the right to exclusively hire from any union they wish. They have the right to enter into agreements with union that limit their pool of eligible workers.

Part of the problem is that the teacher is not working for a private enterprise. I hold that private groups may be so exclusive, but not so for public groups. State organizations do not have the same rights as private ones, and should be barred from entering into any exclusive deals with unions. This practice leads to corruption as union leaders begin to wield power against the state organizations the state is tempted to buy them off with favors and other undeserved rewards.

State organizations are fundamentally different from private ones in that they, above all other organizations, are required to most strictly adhere to labor regulations and public policies. Failure to do so will bring anger in the electorate who will act to clean up the mess, unless, of course, the public hands are tied by exclusive contracts.

On top of all this is the freedom of speech issue. Anyone joining a union of their free will must be willing to accept that the authority delegated to the union leaders may result in uses of the union dues that they personally disagree with. But that is not what's happened here. To practice her trade in a public organization she is compelled to join a union. She has had her free will diminished. It is true she could choose to practice something other than education, or could choose to work in a non-union private school, but as I've demonstrated the requirement of an exclusive union contract is improper and so she is the victim of fraud.

The state of Ohio has perpetrated the fraud of an exclusive union contract, and then used it to coerce potential workers into violating their rights of free association and freedom of speech.

Columbus, OH (LifeNews.com) -- An Ohio teacher has filed suit against two teacher's unions over the fact that her compulsory union dues are used to promote abortion. Kathy Hart, a fourth grade teacher from the Coldwater Exempted Village School District filed the lawsuit in federal court.

Hart sued the state’s largest teacher union for forcing her to pay compulsory union fees to fund the union whose activities violate her religious faith.

National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys are providing Hart with free legal aid and filed the suit this week in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division.

Hart, an active member of the Catholic Church, has been a teacher in the Ohio public school system since August 1996.

Because the public school she works in is unionized, she works under a collective bargaining agreement which forces her to pay compulsory union fees to the National Education Association (NEA) union and its state and local affiliates - the Ohio Education Association (OEA) union and the Coldwater Teachers Organization (CTO) union.

Due to her Catholic faith, Hart doesn't like to pay the fees because the NEA takes a pro-abortion position and the unions support pro-abortion political candidates.

Hart had asked that the union divert her compulsory fees to a charity, thereby accommodating her religious objections to supporting financially unions she believes to be involved in immoral activities.

NEA union officials agreed to allow Hart to redirect her compulsory union dues to a mutually agreed upon charity. However, OEA officials refused to accommodate Hart and used the CTO to collect forced union dues from her paycheck.

In response, Hart filed suit alleging that the union officials’ actions were religious discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission authorized Hart in September to proceed with her own civil action against the OEA and CTO.

“OEA union bosses have a long and abusive record of violating employees’ rights by refusing to accommodate religious objectors in the workplace," National Right to Work Foundation vice president Stefan Gleason told LifeNews.com.

Gleason says the dues issues are another reason his group supports Right to Work laws allowing employees to refrain from supporting unions and their political agendas.

Hart's case follows a case involving another Ohio teacher who won a federal district court ruling saying that requiring her to pay dues to the National Education Association is a violation of her First Amendment Rights.

Carol Katter sued to stop being forced to fund the organization because her money would be used to promote abortion.

The Ohio affiliate of the national group told Katter she could only be exempt from paying union dues if she changed religions.

http://www.lifenews.com/state3683.html