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THOSE D*MN UNIONS: Do-nothing teachers’ union threatens Marine’s job

By: LaborUnionReport (Diary)  |  June 10th, 2010 at 09:21 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

It is a question of principle.

Apparently, today’s union bosses believe that service payment to the union is more important than one’s service to his country.  As a result, they would rather make an example of a retired marine by having him fired for not paying union dues than to hear his case as to why he should not be forced to pay them.

A retired U.S. Marine who runs a Massachusetts high school’s ROTC program says he faces termination if he doesn’t pay a $500 union fee by next week, a levy he refuses to pay because he already receives medical and dental benefits from the military.

Maj. Stephen Godin, senior naval science instructor at the Naval Junior ROTC Unit at North High School in Worcester, Mass., told FoxNews.com he has been teaching for the Educational Association for Worcester for 15 years — including 14 at North High School — without having to join the union or pay an “agency fee” toward the cost of collective bargaining.

“I just want to save my job here,” the 58-year-old father of two said. “I’ve been doing this for 15 years. Nobody has ever told me to join the union or be terminated.”

Unfortunately, the teachers’ union may have more standing in the eyes of the law, since Mr. Godin lives in Massachusetts, one of 28 states where it is legal to force workers to pay the union or the union can have them fired.

Godin, who earns roughly $75,000 a year, said he has asked for arbitration no fewer than five times, but has not received a response from the teacher’s union. He said he received a letter last month from Worcester Public School officials indicating he will be fired on June 15 if he fails to pay the agency fee.

“It’s really nothing,” Godin said of the amount. “It’s the principal [sic] of the matter. I think they’re trying to extort money from me. They do nothing for me.”

In this case, while they may have the legal right to have Major Godin fired, on principle*, the teachers’ union is just plain WRONG..  To think, this retired marine fought for freedom for his country and his fellow Americans–some of whom are those very teachers’ union bosses who are now trying to have him fired.

[* Then again, like morals, principles seem to be what are lacking with so many of today's union bosses.]

Read the rest of Major Godin’s story here.
__________________
“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

For more news and views on today’s unions, go to LaborUnionReport.com.

Cross-posted.

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COMMENTS

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  • JamesSmith130

    that his union dues are not automatically garnished. My assumption as that in forced unionism states, that was the way it is done.

    • Achance

      The employee has to authorize the employer to withhold the dues from his pay and the authorization is voluntary. This is called a dues check-off. An employee’s choice not to authorize a dues check-off does not relieve him of the obligation to pay the dues however. I’ve known of employees who chose to go down to the union hall every month to pay in cash. That said, there are instances where an employee owes dues and the union gets a court judgement against them which might result in garnishment, but the garnishment is at the order of a court in satisfaction of a judgement, not an action by the employer or a creature of the union contract.

  • E Pluribus Unum

    Best cure for a bad case of the criminals.

  • Achance

    You don’t have to like it, and the citizens of 22 states don’t, but in states where union/agency shops are legal, that’s just the way it is. Generally, state law does not require that a labor agreement include a union security clause but rather permits such a provision. In this case, there is a union security clause in the agreement between the union and this school district and if he has a job in the union’s jurisdiction, he has to pay does or an agency fee for collective bargaining services. The fact that he has military benefits is completely irrelevant to the issue.

    There isn’t enough detail in the story to determine what he is asking for arbitration about. If he is objecting to the amount of the agency fee, he is entitled to some formal determination of what portion of the union’s dues are chargeable to an objector who chooses not to become a member but who still receives the benefit of the union’s bargain. Often that formal determination is made by an arbitrator.

    If he is seeking arbitration through the grievance procedure on whether there is cause for his dismissal under the union’s contract, advancing the matter to arbitration is a matter for the union’s discretion. They, of course, aren’t likely to advance it to arbitration, but even if they did, the Marine would lose.

    • http://www.laborunionreport.combrand/brhttp://www.laborunionreport.blogspot.com LaborUnionReport

      …which is why I stated:

      Unfortunately, the teachers

    • Flagstaff

      According to him, he has attempted to appeal using the prescribed appeals/arbitration process, but the union refuses to respond to his appeal and schedule a hearing. If he is doing things according to Hoyle, he may get some success out of it. That’s only a guess.

      I think he’s doing this sans lawyer.

      BTW, never, ever, let yourself come under the “protection” of the Maricopa County AZ Probate Court. You will only escape when your wealth is exhausted. IOW, if you want to fight city hall, get a lawyer first. Not exactly on point, but the worst thing about AZ isn’t SB1070, it’s the crooked lawyers who run the state.

      $75,000 per year to teach high school ROTC? Seems like a lot.

      • The_Gadfly

        about hours worked. If it is a full time job, given that it is Worcester, Mass, $75K might be cheap. I live in the metropolitan DC area making a small chunk less than that and am not a highly placed employee. Cost of living is killer in major NE cities, especially after you figure in taxes.

  • conservativecrusade

    through the use of baseball bats, threats of violence, force, and numbers. Maybe it is time to remove them from power in the same way. They are a cancer and if you want cancer gone, you cut it out!

    • Achance

      For the longest time, the unions didn’t really want public employees. Starting in NY in the ’60s and with JFK’s EO, the politicians began to see the utility of just dealing with a few union business managers rather than thousands or millions of constituents. There was a rush of state and local public employee bargaining laws in the ’60s and early ’70s and the union v. non-union balance has been pretty static since the mid-’70s.

      Few of these unions had any sort of organizational batte to secure recognition and bargaining; once they had the law, almost exclusively from Democrat legislators, they were given the employees/members. Elections were not over whether or not the union would be recognized but rather only over which union would represent which employees. In other words, the unions did not organize the employees, they organized the governments. Consequently, in the Democrat controlled states, collective bargaining is simply a charade between the union and the government to reach as far into the taxpayers’ pockets as possible.

      It is no coincidence that there is an almost one to one corelation between the states that have unionized public employees and the states that are firmly and irredeemably Blue – and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. When I was Alaska’s director of labor relations, the guy in CA and I were the only appointee-level Republicans in charge of a state’s labor relations; all the rest were either Democrat operatives or apolitical technicians with no policy making power.

      And you don’t need baseball bats to deal with them; you need Republican governors and AGs who’ll make them actually bargain and run a legal dues scheme. Since they can’t do either very well, they come to heel very quickly when actually challenged.

      • JamesSmith130

        it has a relatively large percentage of union members, but it is solidly red.

        Why did the unions not want the public employees until the late 1960s?

        • Achance

          that the company had to make some money so that they could make some money. Not all of them, but that was the general idea. The public employees had a totally different set of interests and totally different attitudes, and the old union hands just didn’t want to deal with them

          That was true here in Alaska into the late ’70s. The trades unions took some of the blue collar public employees when Alaska authorized collective bargaining in ’72, but left most of them to independent employee associations. One reason is that they didn’t want public employees on their membership rolls for the Pipeline, but there was more to it than that. I was with the Laborers’ Union in those days and they chartered a whole seperate local for public employees so that they wouldn’t have cards in the private sector locals.

          Only in the mid-eighties as manufacturing jobs began to leave America and former SDS’ers began to reach high level positions in the unions did they begin to take a serious interest in public employees. I first had to deal with AFL-CIO unions being interested in white/gray collar public employees in ’88 when AFSCME came to Alaska looking to buy a Senate seat. That was the game they played; politics, not collective bargaining. Now they play it Nationwide;

          • JamesSmith130

            “Back in those days the unions had an understanding that the company had to make some money so that they could make some money. Not all of them, but that was the general idea. ”

            From the days in the early 1950s when the Commies were purged until the 1970s, I got the sense that most labor unions were sane and pro-American. They took care of their members and often used thuggish tactics, yes, but they weren’t interested in destroying business or this country. When the Dems decided to go in a different direction, i.e. George McGovern, Meany simply refused to support him. Ironically McGovern is actually a voice of sanity on union issues among Dems today in opposing EFCA

            Thanks for the explanation..