1) Every public employees’ professional association in S.C. except The SCEA (and PSTA, I surmise) enjoys the convenience of payroll deducted dues.
2) Taxpayers would not incur any cost from payroll deduction of union dues, any more than they do from payroll deduction of United Way contributions, State Employees’s Association dues, law enforcement and correctional association dues — the list goes on and on.
3) NEA and The SCEA membership dues, like all union dues, may not be used for political action. Members may voluntarily contribute to PAC funds, but these contributions are not a requirement for membership.
4) Public employees in S.C. have neither collective bargaining rights, nor the right to strike, whether they belong to a union or not. The union serves to inform them of their rights (of which the state would often prefer they remain ignorant), to assist them in asserting those rights through internal grievance procedures and civil actions when informal resolution fails, and to lobby for legislation that guarantees competitive salaries, benefits, and working conditions.
5) Teachers who choose not to belong to the union benefit from the union’s lobbying activities at the membership’s expense. Most union members in S.C. that I know accept this as the cost of doing business in a “right to work” state and hope that non-members will in time do their part for the profession as a whole.

I hope I have been able to clear up some misconceptions.

What in hell is a “right to work state baby”?

If you in fact got fired after 19 years and were replaced by “some college kid at a third of the cost” I encourage you to call a lawyer. That is already agaisnt the law.

My guess, however, is that it didn’t happen…but was offered as a badly needed boost for an otherwise specious argument.

And it shouldn’t be called right to work, it should be call right be fired for no reason and with no recourse.

I hope someday you get fired from a job after 19 years just days before you qualify for your pension so they can hire some college kid at a third of the cost.