Senate committee rejects Oklahoma bill forbidding teacher paycheck deductions for union dues
Sen. Micheal Bergstrom, R-Adair, sought to ban payroll deductions for teacher union dues with Senate Bill 62. The bill failed in the Senate Education Committee. (Photo by Kyle Phillips/For Oklahoma Voice)
OKLAHOMA CITY — A Senate committee on Tuesday struck down a bill that attempted to ban a common way teacher unions collect dues from their members.
The Senate Education Committee passed a similar bill last year to prohibit payroll deductions for teacher union dues, but this time the panel voted 7-3 against the idea in a bipartisan decision. Republican lawmakers and state leaders have tried multiple times over the past decade to prohibit teachers from paying for professional organization membership through payroll deductions.
Sen. Micheal Bergstrom, R-Adair, refiled the legislation this year as Senate Bill 62. He equated these paycheck deductions to 'taxpayers subsidizing far-left teacher unions.'
Bergstrom said teachers still could join unions under his bill, but a school couldn't submit their due payments through payroll.
'Anyone can contribute to whatever organization they want to on their own,' he said during the committee meeting.
Outlawing all automatic deductions is 'just a step too far,' Sen. Dave Rader, R-Tulsa, said.
Rader ended up casting one of the three votes in favor of the bill after Bergstrom struck title, which means the author would have more flexibility to make changes to it. The bill also had support from the committee's chair, Sen. Adam Pugh, R-Edmond, and vice chair, Sen. Ally Seifried, R-Claremore, who wrote similar legislation last year.
The bill's failure in its first committee hearing prompted celebrations from union leaders after the vote.
Hopefully, it means lawmakers won't pursue it again next year, said Torie Pennington, president of the Oklahoma City chapter of the American Federation of Teachers.
Banning automatic due payments would create a burdensome task for teachers, Pennington said, and it would consume more of the organization's time that is better spent supporting schools and educators.
'I'm proud of the committee members who voted no and realize that having unions is just a benefit for the schools, a benefit for the teachers and a benefit for the students, ultimately,' Pennington said after the committee vote.
Eliminating automatic payments to teacher unions has been a longtime objective of some conservatives. In 2015, former Gov. Mary Fallin signed into law a prohibition on payroll deductions from state employees to unions that collectively bargain under federal law.
But, the law doesn't stop these payments from going to organizations that negotiate under state law or to groups that don't collectively bargain at all, according to a 2023 opinion from Attorney General Gentner Drummond.
The attorney general issued the opinion after state Superintendent Ryan Walters expressed interest in banning the practice and after lawmakers requested clarity on existing state law.
Drummond found the 2015 law was intended to block state employees' payroll deductions from going to national, out-of-state unions.
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