WI teacher Takes Teacher Union to Court Over Forced Dues

Kristi Lacroix, a Kenosha teacher, has suffered the slings and arrows of the teachers union for far too long.  She tells M. D. Kittle the story of her battle with union officials and forced dues, revealing the motivation behind the agency shop clause which forces her to continue to pay dues for political activities she does not believe in.

 Kristi Lacroix says she has been laughed at, screamed at and spit on – all because of her vocal support of Wisconsin’s controversial limits on collective bargaining and her vehement disdain of public employee unions.

Lacroix says KEA officials have told her that 98.8 percent of her dues go to the cost of collective bargaining and administrative expenses, as is intended under Fair Share laws. She believes that’s a lie.

“Collective bargaining happens once every two years for about five days,” she said Thursday afternoon in a conversation with Wisconsin Reporter on her cell phone and, Lacroix said, off school grounds. “My dues paid for the election of Barack Obama and all the nonsense that happened in Madison.

“The union has one goal in mind: to maintain membership so the money flows in.”

The National Right to Work Foundation, a nonprofit legal defense organization fighting against compulsory union membership, is assisting the educators’ legal efforts.

“No worker should be forced to pay union dues just to get or keep a job,” Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation, said in a press release. Of course, the foundation, as its name would imply, is pushing for right-to-work laws in Wisconsin, as it did recently and successfully in Michigan.

Kristi will be a keynote speaker at CEAFU”s 38th annual conference, on Saturday, May 18, 2013.   Details for this, CEAFU’s first online conference, will be published on this website.