Utah Council of Educators - Pseudo-Union?

An interesting group of teachers have formed in Utah, as the Salt Lake Tribune reports today. The Utah Council of Educators does not engage in collective bargaining, but is funded by member dues, making it more of a professional organization than a union. However, this association does engage in lobbying efforts and does provide educator liability insurance. The association probably gained members during Utah's well publicized voucher fight where the Utah Education Association took a leading role in derailing legislative efforts to install a voucher system. While according to their website the UEA has 19,000 members and the UCE only has a few hundred, it is still an interesting development that is not unique to Utah. According to the Salk Lake Tribune article:

   Utah is now one of more
than 20 states with such a nonunion education association. Though the
Utah council only has several hundred members, nationwide more than
300,000 teachers, school support staff and administrators are members
of such nonunion groups, said Heather Reams, associate director of the
Association of American Educators, which partners with many of the
groups, including the one in Utah.

    In several states, including Georgia, Texas and Missouri, the
memberships of these nonunion groups, which often include all school
workers, have actually eclipsed memberships of those states' teachers
unions affiliated with the NEA.

To a Midwesterner, where unions are still relatively strong, this movement to professional associations in lieu of teacher's unions is striking. It would make for a great legal-oriented dissertation to find out more about the structure and purpose of these relatively new groups.

Here are some links to some other non-union teacher groups: