Unions Often Ignore Religious Objectors' Right to Divert Dues, Watchdog Warns
by Jim Brown
June 27, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A union watchdog group says many times powerful teachers unions like the National Education Association (NEA) stonewall religious objectors who want their membership dues diverted to a charitable organization.The Washington Education Association recently denied a Christian teacher's request to have her dues diverted to a charity that opposes sex trafficking. The teacher objected to funding the WEA's support for abortion and same-sex "marriage" with her dues.
Justin Hakes, director of legal information for the National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW), says such cases are unfortunately all too common. "In fact," he notes, "they're so common that our organization has established a special project to provide free legal aid to employees in these sorts of situations, where they find their conscience at odds with many of the activities that union officials are engaged in politically."
That National Right to Work Foundation effort is called the "Freedom of Conscience Project," Hakes explains, and its purpose is to protect employees of faith from having their religious freedoms violated by the injustices of compulsory unionism. He says Title VII of the 1964 Federal Civil Rights Act allows employees with sincerely held religious beliefs to divert their union dues to charity.
However, Hakes notes, often when employees try to exercise this right, union officials ignore their request or create illegal hurdles before granting the worker's "religious objector" status. Also, he points out, under different Supreme Court rulings and the law, the charity to which funds are to be diverted has to be "mutually agreeable" between the union and the religious objector.
"In this case, where this woman was trying to divert her dues to a charity that battles sex trafficking and so forth," the NRTW spokesman says, "sometimes where union officials feel there may be a different agenda at work that they don't agree with, per se, at the root of the organization, and they may try to discourage employees from diverting their dues to such organizations."
Religious objectors who decide to join a liberal union are taking a gamble, Hakes asserts. He says many times union officials will throw up roadblocks to discourage workers and infringe upon this basic right; and when that happens, the Foundation's Freedom of Conscience Project stands ready to offer free legal assistance to victimized employees.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
