Voters want Oklahoma officials to honor Janus rights

October 9, 2019

Staff

1.  In 2018, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME that public employees have a First Amendment right to choose whether or not to pay a union. It also ruled that public employees are entitled to their full paycheck unless they opt into having their money go to a political organization like a union. Would you support or oppose having Oklahoma’s elected officials acknowledge and respect the Supreme Court’s ruling?

2.  Would you support or oppose having the Governor faithfully implement the Supreme Court’s ruling by making sure that there is evidence that unionized public employees have signed a consent form to pay the union?

3.  Would you support or oppose having school boards faithfully implement the Supreme Court’s ruling by making sure that there is evidence that unionized public employees have signed a consent form to pay the union?

4.  In Oklahoma, once a school is organized under a union, teachers and other education employees usually don’t get another chance to vote on whether to keep the union, remove it, or replace it with something else. In other states, teachers and other public employees do have this choice. Do you support or oppose giving teachers and other education employees in Oklahoma a chance to vote every four years to decide whether they want to keep their union?

5.  Would you support or oppose allowing a teacher to turn down union representation and work with a school district directly to decide what their individual employment agreement looks like—something that over 92 percent of working Oklahomans do already?

6.  It is against the law for teachers’ unions to strike in Oklahoma. However, some school board officials undermine this law by closing schools so that unions can take teachers away from the classroom and organize protests at the Capitol. Would you support or oppose closing this loophole so that school board officials can’t undermine this law?

7.  Generally speaking, when you think about Oklahoma politics and who decides which laws get passed—do teachers’ unions have too much power, the right amount of power, or not enough power?

Source: Results for this poll are based on automated telephone interviews conducted among a statewide sample of 500 likely voters. Data for this survey research were collected by Cor Strategies Inc. Interviews were conducted via a computer-assisted telephone interviewing system utilizing techniques designed to achieve the highest possible respondent cooperation. The surveys were conducted March 20-26, 2019. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4.38 percentage points. The margin of sampling error may be higher for certain subgroups. Results presented may not always appear to total 100 percent due to rounding. Data were sampled using weighted demographic information from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey Voting and Registration Supplement and state election authorities. Demographic information for actual voters in past elections was used to construct sample target weights. The Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs paid for all costs associated with this survey.