Home  About  In the News  Publications  Blog  Join  Donate  > Inside Stanford  Stanford News CA high school exit exam op-ed in the SF Chronicle Op-ed on State Textbooks in the Fresno Bee State of the Union in Stanford Daily California Ballot Proposition Op-eds Stanford Progressive on Roosevelt Institution Zach Marks, higher education policy coordinator, discusses student work at the launch of the volume 25 Ideas for Socioeconomic Diversity in Higher Education News from the National Office Post-Election Center TI Launched Roosevelt LiveBlogs the Presidential Debate On Campus Midwest Regional Fall Policy Workshop Blum speaks at Vermont Campus Compact conference Coverage of the Johns Hopkins Chapter Launch > More "If a man does not have an ideal and try to live up to it, then he becomes a mean, base and sordid creature, no matter how successful." — Teddy Roosevelt    Prop. 75 Shackles California's Public Servants > Roosevelt Home > Stanford > Op-Eds > Prop. 75 Shackles California's Public Servants Your name: Your email: Recipient's name: Recipient's email: Message: To prevent spam, please enter the first letter of the recipient's email and the first letter of the recipient's name in the box below (for example, if the name is "John Doe" and the email is "bigjohn@johndoe.com", you would enter "jb"): by Tim Telleen-Lawton and Francisco Cendejas, , Roosevelt Institution at Stanford University The proponents of Proposition 75 tout the initiative as a way to give public employee union members more choice. In reality, Prop. 75 will give teachers and other public servants fewer choices and create bureaucratic barriers against their representation. Currently, public employees can choose to pay their unions for representation services, join their unions, or join their unions but prevent their dues from going to political candidates. If Prop. 75 passes, those three options won't change, but members who wish to consistently support politicians who have proven friendly will be forced to fill out the same paperwork year after year. Why have the funders of Prop. 75 spent millions to give union members no new choices and make them go through more paperwork? The answer is simple: Prop. 75 will make it harder for unions to support politicians that fight for teachers and other public servants. Even though corporate donations surpassed those of unions by a factor of 23 last year nationwide, there are plenty of politicians who would like that abyss to widen, including Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Prop. 75 turns political contribution through a union from a simple, one-time opt-in process to a yearly opt-in process. So, instead of teachers or firefighters being able to confirm once upon joining a union that they'd like to support political candidates, they have to do it year after year--even if they have no intention of ever stopping. The hope of the "Yes on 75" campaign is that union members will eventually grow tired of all the paperwork and neglect to fill it out. Unfortunately, we see from similar policies in Washington and Utah that this bureaucratic flood strategy works. We can't allow the law to make it harder for teachers, firefighters, police, and nurses to find representation in our government.   The Roosevelt Institution is a nonpartisan, nonprofit national think tank devoted to bringing students' policy ideas to the policy process. The opinions expressed on this site are exclusively those of its members. DC Headquarters: Roosevelt Institution / 2100 M St NW Suite 610 / Washington, DC 20037 || (202) 833-1359