For years, Oklahoma public schools have handled automatic paycheck deductions for teacher-union dues, an administrative service not provided to other entities that teachers may join or financially support.

Efforts to eliminate that implicit taxpayer subsidy by ending Oklahoma government’s role as the financial middleman for unions have failed to advance in Oklahoma, but a similar reform was recently adopted in Idaho.

The early results indicate a significant share of Idaho teachers may have chosen to leave their union once they had to proactively pay union dues each month.

In a recent online post, Chris Cargill, president of the Mountain States Policy Center, noted that the Idaho Education Association (IEA) is cutting roughly 13 percent of its staff, eliminating four organizer positions, closing all five of its regional offices, and scaling back its annual Summer Institute.

On Oct. 1, Idaho Education News reported that IEA’s board of directors announced the cuts in an email to union members. The email stated that one factor in the decision was “the challenges created by recent legislative policies, including House Bill 516,” the Idaho law that ended the practice of state schools processing union-dues payroll deductions.

The Idaho Education Association Reporter, a publication of the union, reported that HB 516 also prohibited the teachers’ union from distributing IEA recruitment materials at state schools, recruiting during school hours, and meeting about union business without reimbursing the district.

The Idaho Education Association Reporter noted that under the new state law, IEA members would also be “prohibited from electoral or legislative advocacy work on school time.”

The Idaho Education Association Delegate Assembly issued a vote of no confidence in Gov. Brad Little for signing the “union-busting” bill into law. It took effect July 1. 

On April 24, after the bill was signed into law but before it took effect, the union urged members to switch to IEA AutoPay, a simple service that “will route your dues from your bank account or credit card” to the IEA.

Without a “steady dues base,” the IEA warned the union “loses resources to fight” for its various causes.

“Every member who slips through the cracks weakens the whole of the union,” the union post stated. 

While no public numbers have been released, the fact that the union is citing HB 516 as a factor in its budget challenges is notable, Cargill wrote.

“During the debate, lawmakers and the public were told taxpayers weren’t subsidizing the union,” Cargill wrote. “Now the IEA is cutting staff and closing offices—and it says HB 516 is one of the reasons its operating environment has become more difficult.”

He noted the new Idaho law does not ban unions and instead means a state entity “simply stopped doing their paperwork.”

“Teachers remained free to join a union. Unions remained free to advocate for their members. Collective bargaining remained legal,” Cargill wrote. “The difference was that unions would increasingly have to pay the costs of operating their own organizations. They’d have to convince teachers to voluntarily make their union dues, as opposed to forcing them to.”

He wrote that teachers’ unions must now simply provide teachers “with enough value to justify membership.”

Cargill also noted the union was “forced to pay $70,000 to cover state taxpayer expenses that resulted from the union’s frivolous lawsuit against education choice,” a case the union lost in a unanimous court decision in February, which undoubtedly contributed to its current financial challenges.

Oklahoma schools are currently required to serve as a middleman by handling dues deductions for teachers’ unions. That’s in sharp contrast with many other organizations that teachers may join, where the teacher must proactively and independently make dues payments without the involvement of the school employer.

Oklahoma lawmakers have repeatedly considered legislation to prohibit school districts from deducting dues for organizations that collectively bargain on behalf of their members. Under such proposals, union members would have to pay their dues directly rather than have them withheld from their paychecks by their employers. So far, those efforts have failed, and school districts remain authorized to make payroll deductions for professional organizations at employees’ written request.