Las Vegas middle school teacher Cindy Robertson is fed up with her local union, the Clark County Education Association. In fact, her dissatisfaction with the service provided by CCEA stemmed back several years, but several roadblocks prevented her from exercising her rights as a teacher.

In Nevada, teachers have the option to leave their union should they so choose. But rather than improve services to keep existing members satisfied, many unions manage member hemorrhaging by limiting a teacher's ability to leave the union to a short, two-week drop period - of which they often open over the summer when many teachers are away for summer break.

But this year Ms. Robertson wanted to leave her union and she made moves to withdraw her membership. She even had the letter ready well in advance of the July 1st to July 15th drop window since she knew she would be on vacation during that time.

In mid-June, Ms. Robertson mailed her letter. On July second, she left to go on vacation. Upon her return on the 16th of July, she opened her mailbox and what to her wondering eyes did appear but a letter from the CCEA - dated during the drop period and delivered at the end of the drop period - informing her that she would need to re-do the letter so that it was received DURING the drop period.

Being too late to make that deadline since she had not received the reply until a month after she sent her letter, she called to request an exception to the rule since she made every effort to comply given her vacation constraints. But her request was denied.

Ms. Robertson has now vowed to help dissatisfied teachers learn how to drop out of the union so that they don't face the same fate she did...a mistake costing nearly $800 of her hard-earned money.

The issue of compulsory unionism is at the heart of why AAE was founded. AAE is adamantly against any policy where teachers are forced to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment, also known as compulsory unionism or forced unionism.

AAE believes that teachers, as college-educated professionals, should be able to decide whether union membership matches his or her budget and beliefs. The fact is there are thousands of educators who do not want to be represented by a union and do not want to pay union dues but are forced to because of state laws.

If you, or someone you know are looking for an alternative to union membership, we encourage you to learn more about why AAE is the preferred choice for educators by visiting aaeteachers.org/membership.

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