Tennessee lawmakers passed a bill raising minimum pay for teachers this year, but it also contained a provision that some call a “poison pill” for teacher unions. The measure bans school districts from letting teachers pay their dues to professional associations through payroll deductions.
But Sara Duran, organizing director for the Metropolitan Nashville Education Association, says it is “just another obstacle” for groups like hers. She says they’ve long had to adapt to attempts at weakening their power.
Teacher strikes have been outlawed in Tennessee for decades. And in 2011, the Republican-controlled legislature took some of teachers’ bargaining chips off the table. Despite those setbacks, Duran said over the last few years membership in MNEA has increased significantly.
She added that the idea of banning of payroll deductions for paying dues has been around for years.
“Now that it’s gone through, that isn’t something that they can continue to hold over our heads anymore,” Duran said. “Whatever attempts at sort of breaking our collective power that the state government is going to try to put on us, we’re going to find a way to do it anyway, to overcome that.”
Both MNEA and its statewide counterpart, the Tennessee Education Association, are urging members to switch over their payment methods to a bank draft before the law takes effect.
Meanwhile, the portion of the law that raises teacher pay will not affect teachers in Metro Nashville Public Schools for years, if at all. In the coming school year, it increases minimum pay to $42,000. This school year, first-year teachers in MNPS already make a little over $48,000.
When the bill was in committee, Rep. Sam McKenzie, D-Knoxville, questioned Brent Easley from the governor’s office about the decision to pair pay raises with the restriction on professional dues.
“Both of these items, the governor believes are good public policy, and so we put both of those items in this proposal together,” Easley responded. When asked, Easley did not elaborate on what research or outreach informed the governor’s stance.
The due provision prompted many Democrats to vote against the legislation.
Bless their hearts, others voted with us, weird they didn’t name them. There is a poison pill in this bill, why would they not pass a clean bill with a raise? Why be continually disingenuous about legislation. I will vote for a clean bill to raise teacher salaries to $50k today! https://t.co/ywIhXq75s1
— Rep. Gloria Johnson (@VoteGloriaJ) April 19, 2023
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