Washington, D.C. (July 8, 2019)<\/strong> \u2013 Today, staff attorneys for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation are submitting a Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the US Supreme Court to hear Branch v. Commonwealth Employment Relations Board<\/i>, in which four Massachusetts educators are challenging the application of the state\u2019s monopoly bargaining law for its educational system.<\/p>\nThe educators argue that the state law, which is manipulated by union bosses to block teachers who are not union members from voting or otherwise voicing their opinions in the determination of their own working conditions, results in depriving nonmember teachers of their First Amendment rights.<\/p>\n
The four plaintiffs hail from the University of Massachusetts and the Hanover School Committee. All have rejected membership in the National Educators Association (NEA) and its local affiliates.<\/p>\n
Although the 2018 Foundation-won Janus v. AFSCME<\/i> Supreme Court decision guarantees that union fees and membership are strictly voluntary for all public sector workers, the policy in question unconstitutionally forces them to become full union members to be able to speak up about their work environment.<\/p>\n
To have any say in their own work conditions, nonmembers like the four educators would have to waive their First Amendment rights under Janus<\/em> and join the union, which means funding union political causes.<\/p>\nThe lead plaintiff, Dr. Ben Branch, is a finance professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is a colleague of fellow plaintiff of Dr. Wm. Curtis Conner, who teaches chemistry there.<\/p>\n
Plaintiff Dr. Andre Melcuk is Director of Departmental Information Technology at the Silvio O. Conte National Center for Polymer Research at the University. Dr. Melcuk was born in the Soviet Union and opposes the union based on his dislike of collectivist organizations.<\/p>\n
Plaintiff Deborah Curran is a long-term teacher in the Hanover Public Schools system. The union officials who supposedly \u201crepresent\u201d her attempted to invalidate her promotion to a position mentoring new teachers and pushed to have her investigated and suspended. She ultimately spent nearly $35,000 of her own money battling union officials just to protect her job.<\/p>\n
The petition comes after the Massachusetts Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit in April.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Massachusetts Supreme Court\u2019s refusal to apply the Janus<\/i> ruling has left these educators facing a legally untenable situation: either they can avoid associating with a union with which they disagree and lose their voices in the workplace, or they can waive their Janus<\/em> rights and have their money used for ideological causes they oppose,\u201d commented National Right to Work President Mark Mix. \u201cThe state of Massachusetts is forcing these educators to fund state legislators\u2019 union political allies if they want even the most limited participation in the government-created bargaining process that controls their conditions of employment.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cSuch schemes are effectively a modern version of Tammany Hall that should be a thing of the past, and it\u2019s time for courts to acknowledge it,\u201d added Mix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Disculpa, pero esta entrada est\u00e1 disponible s\u00f3lo en English<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[888],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nMassachusetts Educators Ask US Supreme Court to Review State Law Conditioning Workplace Rights on Funding Union Politics - National Right to Work Foundation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nrtw.org\/news\/branch-cert-petition-07082019\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"es_ES\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Massachusetts Educators Ask US Supreme Court to Review State Law Conditioning Workplace Rights on Funding Union Politics - National Right to Work Foundation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[:en]State law lets unions block workers from a say in workplace matters unless they waive their First Amendment rights and fund union political activities WASHINGTON, DC - Today, staff attorneys for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation are submitting a Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the US Supreme Court to hear Branch v. 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