Monday marks the start of a new school year for Rebecca Friedrichs, a kindergarten teacher at Holder School in Buena Park, a Southern California city of 82,000.
The 25-year veteran of the Savannah School District is to be forgiven if she is wary of the reception she will receive from her public school colleagues.
Not just because she resigned her membership last year in the California Teachers Association, the union that represents most of the state’s public school teachers.
But also because she is the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit, Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Association, that challenges the state’s so-called “agency shop” arrangement, which forces her to pay dues for the collective bargaining the teachers’ union performs not only behalf of members, but also non-members — whether they like it or not. It is being heard in the District Court of the Central District of California, Southern Division.
Freidrichs would prefer not to pay the CTA $1,000 or so a year for its representation. But what really galls the teacher is the $350 or so of her compulsory union dues that go to support the CTA’s political activities, with which she disagrees.
Indeed, the kindergarten teacher supports school vouchers, which the teachers’ union has used her compulsory dues (and the dues of political dissenters among its rank-and-file) to defeat.
Similarly, she opposes measures — like Proposition 30, the $7 billion tax-increase initiative — for which CTA spent millions in union dues last year to win passage – that confer higher salaries and more generous bemefits upon teachers at the expense of everyday taxpayers.
“I think that is wrong,” said Friedrichs.
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