Unions still trap teachers — 5 years after Supremes said they can’t

Five years ago Tuesday, the Supreme Court reaffirmed every teacher’s First Amendment right to make their own decision on union membership in Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.

Yet they’re still finding themselves trapped in their unions. They need to demand changes from their lawmakers to ensure their rights.

The Janus ruling gave all public employees the right to opt out of their unions and stop paying dues.

But unions don’t want to lose those dues, so they try to keep members from quitting. 

Teachers unions have made themselves among the hardest to quit. 

How do they lock in members, despite the court ruling?

While they technically can’t stop members from opting out, many unions place onerous restrictions on the process, making it extremely difficult to end membership.

Meanwhile, teachers who want to opt out are forced to pay hundreds of dollars in dues to an organization they don’t want to support.

There are three primary ways educators get stuck paying unwanted dues: automatic renewals, arbitrary opt-out windows and procedures and a lack of transparency.

With many unions, membership renews every year automatically and without notification to teachers.

Unlike streaming services or health insurance, which provide notification prior to monthly or annual renewals, automatic union membership renewal happens without any notice and locks educators into another year of dues payments without their consent.

Furthermore, in most states, unions deduct dues payments directly from educators’ paychecks.

Combined, these two policies make it difficult for teachers to reevaluate their membership periodically.

If you are never told your membership is renewing, and you never manually pay a bill, there is nothing to prompt an evaluation of whether or not the union is meeting your needs and expectations.

If educators decide they no longer want to belong to a union, they typically must send a written letter, as unions usually don’t let members opt out online or via a phone call.

Even then, there’s an added layer of tedium: Many unions enforce opt-out windows that limit when an educator can exercise his rights.

These windows can vary from a month to as little as a week — and often vary from district to district.

If educators try to opt out outside the window, they’re usually told to resubmit their request when the window reopens, which in most cases can mean paying dues for another year, and in some cases even longer.  

California’s opt out windows are particularly confusing.

Per the California Federation of Teachers’ membership form, educators must submit their letter “not less than 30 days and not more than 45 days before 1) the annual anniversary date of this agreement or 2) the date of termination of the applicable contract.”

Most educators — unsurprisingly — don’t know exactly when they signed the union membership form, so they can’t even begin to calculate their narrow 15-day window.

In some states, there’s even inconsistency between the state-level union and the local affiliates.

For example, the opt-out window for the Georgia Educators Association is the month of September, yet the window for some local affiliates is the month of August.

Since educators are typically required to belong to the local, state and national affiliates, when exactly is a Georgia educator supposed to submit his or her letter?

Teachers are left guessing — indeed, many don’t even know the union has an opt-out window until they’ve submitted a letter that’s rejected.

Some unions also require members to sign a form acknowledging the effects of opting out and attend an in-person meeting with a union officer before being “allowed” to end their membership.

Can you imagine wanting to cancel your gym membership and being told the gym won’t stop charging you until you meet with someone who will try to convince you to stay?

Not every state so blatantly flouts the Janus ruling.

Several — including Michigan, Missouri, Iowa, Indiana, Louisiana and Arkansas — already ban opt-out windows.

Florida requires unions to process an opt-out request within 30 days.

These states set a model for the rest of the nation. To protect Americans’ Janus rights, states need to end these unconstitutional union practices — by banning opt-out windows, reconsidering automatic renewals and requiring full transparency and clarity from unions.

Teachers should be at the forefront of pressing lawmakers for these changes, for themselves and their colleagues today and in the future.

All public-sector employees have a constitutionally guaranteed right to opt out of the union and stop paying dues; no one should be forced to remain through complicated rules designed to bypass the court’s ruling.

Noelani Kahapea serves as the director of policy and strategic partnerships for the Association of American Educators.