HARRISBURG, Pa. – A Williamsport teacher and 20-year member of the Pennsylvania State Education Association is calling the union out for misrepresenting her political position, and using her dues to do so.



Mary Trometter, an assistant professor of culinary arts at Pennsylvania College of Technology, filed a charge with the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board recently to stop the Pennsylvania State Education Association and its parent organization, the National Education Association, from using its members to promote their political agenda, Public Opinion Online reports.

According to the news site, Trometter’s husband received a letter from the unions urging him to join his wife in voting for Tom Wolf for governor in the Nov. 4 election. The problem is, Trometter supported Gov. Tom Corbett’s bid for re-election and she didn’t appreciate the union using her dues dollars in an attempt to convince her husband otherwise.

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The letter, signed by PSEA President Michael J. Crossey and NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia, was paid for by the NEA Advocacy Fund, which was financed by $12 million in membership dues, according to a statement from The Fairness Center.

The Fairness Center is a “free legal service for public sector employees wronged by their unions,” the organization’s website states.

“The PSEA is exploiting my name and membership for their political causes,” Trometter told Public Opinion Online. “It’s bad enough that my dues are going to this, even worse that they are trying to get my husband.”

The Fairness Center is backing Trometter’s charge against the unions because it’s against the law.

The Pennsylvania Public Employee Relations Act specifically forbids employee organizations from using membership fees to support political parties or candidates, David Osborne, general counsel for The Fairness Center said.

“The letter sent to Mary Trometter’s husband is contrary to a valid state law,” Osborne said. “For years, PSEA leaders have ignored this and other portions of the law it doesn’t like. This letter, as well as other PSEA publications, including their magazine called The Voice, which dedicated its most recent issue to urging members to vote for Tom Wolf, simply demonstrate their disregard for the law.”

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PSEA spokesman Wythe Keever told TribLive.com the mailing was a mistake. The personalized letters was something the union hadn’t done before, and Trometter wasn’t the only member to complain, she said.

Keever contends the union may legally spend member dues “to communicate with members and their immediate family” about political candidates, but ended up apologizing to dozens of members who complained about the letters that were sent to about 20,000 residents.

“We’d never done a mailing of this type before, and we won’t be doing it again,” Keever said.

The damage, however, is already done.

Wolf won the gubernatorial election with about 55 percent of the vote, denying Corbett re-election – the first time an incumbent governor has ever lost re-election in Pennsylvania.

According to TribLive.com:

Campaign finance reports show the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s two largest teachers unions, spent a collective $60 million in the 2014 election cycle. Most of their candidates, except Pennsylvania Gov.-elect Tom Wolf, lost.

PSEA is the state branch of the National Education Association.

Between June and September, records show AFT Solidarity and NEA Advocacy — Super PACs funded through AFT and NEA, respectively — gave a combined $1.06 million to PA Families First, a state political action committee that spent nearly $2 million in the same period to produce and air an “Oppose Corbett” ad.