EDITORIAL: Employee freedom

National Employee Freedom Week wrapped up Saturday. What just a year ago was a modest local effort has extended nationwide, thanks to the Nevada Policy Research Institute.

The Clark County Education Association, which was the lone focus of NPRI’s effort last year, has noticed and is not amused. On its Twitter feed earlier this week, the CCEA stated, “Real intent of right-wing orgs like NPRI is 2 strip teachers of bargaining rights as well as their orgs advocacy 4 ed.” We’d rather see a teachers union use proper spelling instead of Twitter shorthand, but that’s beside the point.

NPRI is simply informing teachers throughout Clark County — and now union members throughout the country — of their legal rights regarding union membership. You might think teachers already know that. Surely the CCEA educates its members on their rights, right?

Unless, of course, a lot of the members don’t know how to quit because they’re not told it’s possible.

CCEA members, and teachers in unions around the state, can opt out by providing written notice to the union from July 1-15. If, as the CCEA states, the real intent of the NPRI campaign is to strip teachers of bargaining rights, as well as their organization’s advocacy for education (sorry, we had to spell it out there), then wouldn’t it be fair to counter by questioning the real intent behind the CCEA’s brief opt-out period? Two weeks in the middle of summer, built around a major national holiday? When teachers can join the union year-round?

Does NPRI have an agenda here? Absolutely. It believes the CCEA doesn’t spend members’ dues wisely, and the CCEA has provided ample proof. As the Review-Journal reported last year, the CCEA spent more than one-third of its $4.1 million 2009 budget on just nine employees. Former CCEA Executive Director John Jasonek received a total of $1.2 million from the union and its affiliate organizations in 2009 and 2010 alone.

NPRI reports that more than 800 teachers left CCEA last year. Obviously, those educators were interested in the information provided by NPRI. Perhaps glossing over that fact is, in Twitterspeak, real intent of union orgs like CCEA.