In a case before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ten teachers say the California Teachers Association, an affiliate of the National Education Association, forces them to participate in collective bargaining, whether they’re union members or not; pressures teachers to campaign for selected political candidates, whether the teachers actually support the candidate or not; and collects union dues, whether the collectee is a union member or not.

Under California state law, a union that is recognized as the exclusive bargaining representative for a school district, such as the CTA, can enter into an organizational security or “agency shop agreement which, in lay terms, means that while it is not mandatory for a teacher in the district to become a member of the local union, they must pay fees to the union for it to negotiate on their behalf. The rule is a condition of employment for all teachers.

Financially, this doesn’t involve chump change, either:

CTA members and non-members alike pay the full annual dues, which total around $1,000, with non-members only able to request reimbursement of the portion deemed separate from bargaining expenses.

The union does the deeming, too.

This is an affront to dignity, to individual liberty. This caps individual freedom of opportunity by taking the fruits of an individual’s labor for another’s purpose without the taken-from’s permission. This denies the individual his opportunity to cut his own deal with his employer. This demands an individual perform tasks to which he has not agreed, which are not part of his contract, and for which he is not paid.

This is a denial of opportunity by making even the chance of that labor conditioned on the power to take or to compel.

It’s union abuse.