School librarian telling courts she no longer wants to be forced to pay union fees

School librarian telling courts she no longer wants to be forced to pay union fees from the salary she earns as a librarian at the Robeson Elementary Center in Birdsboro, part  of the Twin Valley School District in Berks and Chester Counties. 

Her suit backed by the National Right to Work Foundation joined by state-employed pharmacists from California and school workers from New York who filed similar lawsuits Wednesday, in different federal circuits, saying their First Amendment rights are violated when they have to pay a portion of union dues – “fair share fees”  – when they disagree with union policies, representation, and politics.

Rick Bloomingdale, president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, said  the teachers want “the good contracts, the good pensions, the health care, but they don’t want to pay for it. They think these things are going to miraculously happen without someone at the bargaining table pushing for them.”

The Pennsylvania State Education Association, a defendant, said: "This is another attempt to rewrite the law and use it as a political attack on unions and the people they represent." The union in Galaska's district, the Twin Valley Education Association, has 245 members and two nonmember fee payers.