Senate Bill 634 targets OEA members by complicating payroll deduction by requiring you to re-register your membership every year.
The red tape this bill generates will cost as much as $7 million annually for Oklahoma school districts to implement. This cost is an unfunded mandate. Schools will have to take money from the classroom to cover the overtime required to process the paper work. We need counselors, nurses, and more teachers to lower class sizes, not more paperwork as we come out of this pandemic.
Here are a few reasons we oppose it:
- It’s ONLY targeting education groups — NOT public employees, firefighters, or other organizations.
- It’s a huge waste of time and money. Amber Taylor of the OEA Republican Caucus wrote about why this flies in the face of Republican values.
- Employees use payroll deduction all the time for things like insurance and charitable donations, and those items don’t have this red tape.
- This is copy-and-paste, out-of-state legislation that doesn’t apply to Oklahoma. We are already a right-to-work state and have been for years.
- It’s insulting. TCTA Vice President LeeAnne Jimenez says SB 634 is an insult to Republican educators and support staff.
The Truth About SB 634
Supporters of SB 634 have shared quite a bit of misinformation about membership to education organizations. Here’s the truth.
- SB 634 is insulting. Membership in any education organization is voluntary. Members who decide to join know they are making a choice. We’re competent adults.
- Members can drop any time. State law requires payroll deduction to stop within five days of a member asking to cancel his or her membership.
- The Janus ruling doesn’t apply to Oklahoma. The Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court case dealt with what are called “agency fee” states, where workers who weren’t part of the union were required to pay a fee to the union for work the union did on their behalf. Oklahoma is not an agency fee state. So when the Supreme Court said agency fees were illegal, nothing changed here. Oklahoma is a right-to-work state.
- SB 634 is an administrative burden. School district employees will have to administer this unnecessary paperwork at a time of year when they are already busy with new hire paperwork, paychecks, and other start-of-the-year duties. Adding more work is a burden that will cost time and money.
- SB 634 is not pro-teacher. Creating unnecessary paperwork and sucking up district resources doesn’t help any teachers or support staff. It doesn’t help students and instead wastes resources that could be spent on them.
Estimated Financial Impact of Senate Bill 634
Public school sites are listed below by county. Use the scroll bar on the right side to scroll down to view additional districts. Use the scroll bar on the bottom to view the cost per school site.
