For public-school teachers, joining a union is more of an inevitability than a conscious choice. Thanks to unions’ effective recruitment efforts – which often start before new teachers have even graduated from college – more than 70% of teachers are union members, and most incorrectly believe they’ll be penalized if they leave.
But according to Pennsylvania mom and veteran educator Karin Majewski, leaving a teachers’ union doesn’t have to be a scary choice. In fact, seeking out union alternatives was what finally allowed Majewski to live and teach in accordance with her values.
“I’m still employed. I still have a job. I’m still teaching,” Majewski said after dropping her teachers union membership with the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) in 2021.
For most of her career, Majewski didn’t think much of her union or her part in it. When she began her teaching career in the Bucks County, Pa., public school system 12 years ago, she was barely familiar with its role, much less its politics.
“I joined the union my first year [of teaching] because I didn’t know that much about it,” she said. “I think for a lot of other first-time teachers, they’re just trying to do the best that they can and not get in trouble.”
Majewski said that teachers unions subtly pressure teachers to become members before they’ve even completed their degrees.
“They come for you in college while you’re a student-teacher,” she said. “So it’s very ingrained. The unions are also a part of first-year teacher orientation—I remember [the union rep] came up and basically tried to scare everybody.”
Looking back on their tactics years after that orientation meeting, Majewski described the union’s pitch to teachers as an exchange of protection for money.
“‘You sign up for the union, we collect your dues, we protect you, we bargain your contract. This is what you do,’” she said of the union’s pitch. “Being new, I didn’t ask any questions. I just signed up after school one day, and that was it.”
The next decade passed quietly, Majewski said, and she never needed the union or ran into issues with them—that is, until 2020. Her first time learning about union politics came suddenly when a friend shared a statement that the PSEA sent out on behalf of its members—Majewski included.
“[The PSEA] stated that they were speaking on behalf of all 178,000 members and that they were in favor of passing a bill that was going to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for all public school employees,” she said. “I thought, ‘What the heck is going on here? I’m one of those members, and nobody asked me.’ There was no survey sent.”
Majewski said she reached a “breaking point” when she subsequently discovered that the National Education Association (NEA), the PSEA’s national counterpart, heavily supported the integration of critical race theory (CRT) into every classroom in America. CRT is an increasingly prevalent educational narrative that claims America is systemically racist, that racial identity is central to one’s life experience, and that equality of outcome is preferable to equality of opportunity.
“I felt so out of control,” Majewski remembered. “I didn’t agree with what was going on, but I couldn’t do anything about it except control what my money was funding.”
After a friend referred her to the Freedom Foundation, an organization that seeks to free public employees from political exploitation, Majewski worked with their team to craft her union exit strategy. It was then that she was first informed about her “Janus rights.”
Janus rights were established in a 2018 Supreme Court case, Janus v. AFSCME, which allowed public employees to opt out of their union. Prior to the decision, public employees were forced to either financially support their union or lose their jobs—even if they disagreed with how their dues were being spent.
Although public-sector unions are forbidden from contributing to individual candidates, they generously give to political organizations. Since 1990, teachers unions have earmarked at least 94% of political action and lobbying funds for left-wing causes, including Planned Parenthood-sponsored sexuality education and expanded abortion access. This year, the NEA has been hard at work promoting the Biden-Harris administration in advance of the presidential election in November.
Thanks to Janus v. AFSCME, public school teachers such as Majewski are free to opt out of their teachers union—although, according to Majewski, many teachers are unaware of this.
“[Freedom Foundation] informed me about the legality of leaving and how I could opt out,” she said. “I had so many questions—I didn’t know anything about it.”
According to Majewski, leaving the union was an “incredibly easy” and painless process – until the local union realized she might encourage others to do the same.
Armed with her Janus rights and full of newfound knowledge about what teachers unions were really promoting, Majewski said she was eager to share information and resources with the other teachers in her district.
“I started a Facebook group called Union Choice for PA Educators,” she said. “I was having meetups every week with maybe four or five workers from [different] districts who just wanted information. I thought, ‘Wow, this is a need.’”
Growing frustrated with Facebook’s limited reach, Majewski ultimately decided to “risk it all” by sending a mass email to the entire school district.
“All I wrote was, ‘Happy Friday, hope everyone’s doing well. If anyone would like information about an alternative to the union, feel free to reach out to me,’” she recalled.
Majewski said her email crashed the district server due to the volume of responses she received. Some were negative, calling her a “disgrace to education” and threatening to report her to human resources. But she also received a large number of positive responses from people who wanted to learn more.
The next week, Majewski returned to an email from her school’s HR director, asking to speak with her regarding the email she had sent.
During that meeting, Majewski said, the HR director let her know that a new policy forbade district employees from sending district-wide emails. After promising not to send more, Majewski informed the HR director about the growing interest in union alternatives and how she hoped to raise awareness. Her plan involved creating flyers with information about union alternatives and hanging them in teachers’ lounges across the district.
The HR director agreed, so Majewski spent the next two weeks driving to all 23 public schools in the district, hanging the HR-approved flyers where teachers would be sure to see them.
Daring to share information about union alternatives, however, raised the ire of the local teachers union.
“Right after I had finished, [a union member] sent me an email saying, ‘You’ve got to watch yourself, there was an email sent out about you,’” Majewski said.
The email, which Majewski shared with IW Features, instructed local union members to “remove and recycle” Majewski’s flyers and then “staple/tape several copies of the attached [pro-union material] on top of their display.”
“I haven’t gone back to all 23 schools, but I’m pretty sure everything got ripped down in about 23 seconds,” Majewski said. “I forwarded the email to HR, and the director was really upset about it. There was proof that the union went against her to pull everything down.”
Despite this setback, Majewski said she continues to help district employees—mostly support staff such as nurses, bus drivers, and teachers’ aides—leave the teachers union and join a union alternative. According to Majewski, their reasons for seeking out alternatives commonly include their conservative views or the desire to keep the entirety of their hard-earned paycheck.
In spite of everything that happened, Majewski is still a public school teacher in the Bucks County school district—and she refuses to stay silent. She has created a website where she shares information about union alternatives, helping other teachers make informed choices about their union membership.
“There shouldn’t be this craze to gain members through fear and misinformation. That’s the biggest injustice of it all—the lies and the fear and the blatant untruths,” Majewski said. “That is so embarrassing and disgraceful to me. If you were so awesome, then why not have a little competition?”
