Looks like the teachers of the district may have a union representative forced upon them, even though this is a right-to-work state.

The leader of the Houston school district’s most powerful teachers union is flexing her muscle to force smaller employee groups out of the bargaining room with top-level administrators.

Gayle Fallon, the longtime president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, wants her union and an affiliated union for blue-collar workers to be the lone groups at the negotiating table with the Houston ISD administration.

Currently, several employee groups are guaranteed seats at private monthly meetings, where issues involving wages and working conditions are hashed out. Fallon’s union, because it is the biggest, has three of the five seats reserved for teachers groups at those meetings.

Yeah, that’s right – you will still be able to join any group you want, but if this proposal passes you will have no voice unless you join HFT/ That certainly goes against the spirit, if not the letter, of the law here in Texas. It also serves as a preview of the sort of thing we can expect in the future under the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” passes in Washington.

And before you ask, I am a member (indeed, I’m the building representative) of one of the major teacher organizations in this state. I’m not opposed to the existence of such groups, but I do object to one being able to crowd out the competing voices in this way.