OKPOLICY.ORG
In February, the Oklahoma House approved a bill (HB 1749) that would ban payroll deductions for membership dues to any organization that conducts collective bargaining on behalf of public employees. This week the bill was narrowly approved by a Senate committee, and it could come before the full Senate by next week.
HB 1749 would prevent teachers, school bus drivers, janitors, cafeteria workers, and other school employees who voluntarily choose to be union members from using payroll deduction to pay their union dues. That’s a benefit that these workers have had for decades. It’s something they can also choose to do for charitable contributions, such as the United Way, or for payments to credit unions and insurance companies.
Oklahoma is already a “right to work” state, which means that every single employee using this benefit is a volunteer. And HB 1749 wouldn’t save taxpayers any money, since it keeps the deduction system in place for insurance companies, credit unions, and charities, and the system has minimal costs to begin with. Likewise, this bill isn’t about keeping money away from entities that engage in politics generally, given that insurance companies and even credit unions take part in the political process. What HB 1749 would do is inconvenience those teachers who choose to exercise their voice as members of a union.
While not saving the state any money, the bill would create a costly administrative burden for groups that advocate on behalf of school employees. If payroll deductions are banned, the Oklahoma Education Association and American Federation of Teachers would need to go to every one of their members and set up a new way to collect dues. The bill would also create an ongoing cost burden, since these groups would need extra staff hours to ensure their members’ credit card or bank information is kept current.
Though the bill never mentions them by name, it was carefully written to affect only teachers and other school employees, and not, for example, state troopers, firefighters, or any other public employees.
Debating against the bill on the House floor, Rep. David Dank (R-Oklahoma City) said:
“There’s not a person in this chamber … that doesn’t know why we’re doing this. We’re doing this to punish a group. I’m for school choice. I’m for homeschooling. … I have never been endorsed, supported, taken a dime from any teacher organization. … But I will not contribute to what I consider to be the hypocrisy today. If you think that this is being done for philosophical reasons, if you think that this is being done because, you know, gosh we just don’t want to be withdrawing money for people who negotiate or bargain with the state, you believe in the tooth fairy.”
Rep. Dank went on to argue that the bill was really intended to punish the Oklahoma Education Association for opposing school choice, a reference to a controversial proposal that would have allowed taxpayer money to be used for private school vouchers or homeschooling. The author withdrew the voucher bill for this year after pushback from many citizens and education groups.
Oklahoma has already achieved the dubious distinction of making the worst cuts in the nation to state aid funding for schools over the last five years. With nearly the lowest pay in the U.S., Oklahoma schools are struggling to recruit and retain qualified teachers, which has left classrooms with about one thousand teacher vacancies.
In this context, taking away another benefit from Oklahoma teachers could add to an already dire problem of a shrinking teacher force. It’s inappropriate for legislators to target retribution against a group for not agreeing with their policies, and it’s a bad sign for our children’s education if the Legislature has decided punishing teachers should be their priority.
As Sen. Ralph Shortey, another Republican who is opposing the bill, put it, “I’m not going to cast a vote that’s going to poke a teacher in the eye. I’d much rather put an arm around them and tell them what a good job they do.”
