LOS ANGELES – Warren Fletcher says the public is getting the wrong message from the results of the recent United Teachers of Los Angeles presidential election.

He noted the small voter turnout in the first round of the election, and said that will give people the impression that union teachers aren’t particularly interested in their unions.

“Small voter participation numbers empower the enemies of public education,” Fletcher, president of the UTLA, was quoted as saying in a report from the Los Angeles Times. “Low voter numbers allow them to continue to spread the lie that teachers and health and human services professionals don’t want union representation.”

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But is that necessarily a lie?

The recent Los Angeles election attracted only one in four eligible voters, which was an increase from the previous election, according to the news report.

In the 2013 United Federation of Teachers election, more than half the votes were cast by retirees, even though voter participation among retirees decreased by 11 percent from the previous election. Participation among active members decreased about 30 percent.

In a recent leadership election for the private sector machinist union (the first since 1961), participation among members was reported to be very low.

So what does this all suggest?

The simple fact is that most union members (public and private sector) only join because it’s required for employment. The vast majority play no active role in the unions or display any particular interest in union business.

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They pay their union dues because the money is deducted from their paychecks. In states like Wisconsin and Michigan, which have banned local schools and units of government from deducting money on behalf of the unions, dues payments and union membership have dropped significantly.

The bottom line is that organized labor has a lot of trapped members who just want to work, but have no desire to participate in the collective bargaining system. The unions claim to represent the will of the workers, but there is very limited proof of that.

Perhaps another sign of member discontent is the result of the LAUSD presidential election itself. Of the relatively few members who bothered to vote, challenger Alex Caputo-Pearl drew 48 percent compared to Fletcher’s 21 percent.

There will be a runoff election, because neither candidate drew more than half of the votes, but Fletcher announced this week that he would no longer actively campaign, and basically conceded defeat.

So the presidential election of one of the nation’s largest teacher unions only had a voter participation rate of about 25 percent, and those who bothered to vote turned against the incumbent president by more than 2-to-1.

All of the above strongly suggests that most LAUSD members are not terribly involved in the union, are very unhappy with how the union operates, or both.

What other impression could we possibly form, Mr. Fletcher? The numbers don’t lie.