Members of the House Education Administration Committee advanced Governor Bill Lee’s proposal to raise teacher salaries to at least $50 thousand by the 2026/2027 school year, but not without a lengthy debate over the bill’s paycheck protection provision.
That section of the legislation would prohibit school districts from deducting dues from teacher paychecks for organizations and unions, including the Tennessee Education Association (TEA).
An estimated 46,000 public school teachers currently have their TEA union dues automatically deducted. Former East Tennessee teacher Lee Powers told members of the committee that some of those teachers don’t feel like they have a proper choice.
“As it’s currently designed there’s an automatic payroll deduction in the form of dues, and then if they are not in agreement with that immediate payroll deduction, they can apply to the state education association within a certain timeframe at the beginning of the school year to have it returned or reduced or to end their membership,” said Powers. “A lot of times, teachers feel the pressure that they’re automatically enrolled so they need to stay enrolled.”
The TEA is publicly opposing the legislation’s paycheck protection and Executive Director Jim Wrye pushed back on concerns that teachers feel pressured to join the union.
“Every member that is a member of TEA is a member because they volunteer to be one,” said Wrye. “I’m very proud to work in a right to work state.”
The paycheck protection provision has received considerable attention from members of the General Assembly and Halls State Representative Chris Hurt filed an amendment to remove it from the bill. Representative Hurt said he feel the provision isn’t fair to the TEA.
“We’re clearly targeting an organization. To be frankly clear this organization endorsed my opponent but that doesn’t make it right to target them,” said Representative Hurt.
Committee members disagreed, voting 12 to 8 against Hurt’s amendment.
Alcoa Representative Bryan Richey was among the 12. He says adding paycheck protection creates more local control.
“Local control is absolutely the best and it doesn’t get any more local control than the actual individual receiving the paycheck and an making the decision on where that goes. I think that’s kind of the intent for where the intent of this is going is for the actual teacher to decide whether they wanna do that or not,” said Representative Richey.
The legislation now faces a vote in the House Finance, Ways, and Means Subcommittee next week along with the full Senate.
