America has faced great challenges during the past year and a half: the CCP virus, deep political division, and the aggression of communist China. How have our teachers’ unions responded to these challenges?
During the pandemic, front-line workers, such as doctors, nurses, and other hospital workers, dealt directly with sick and contagious patients, while other front-line workers, such as grocery store clerks and truck drivers, kept the material necessities of life available for all citizens.
Many other workers retreated to home to work at a distance, while yet others lost their jobs and had to make do without an income.
Not the teachers. Public school teachers’ unions refused to return to class even when religious and private school teachers were back in class. The evidence quickly showed that distance learning was an abject failure. Public school unions didn’t care what harm was being done to the children that they were supposed to serve. These unions decided to serve the preferences of their dues-paying teachers, who preferred to stay at home and get paid for doing so. No one could accuse public school teachers of rushing to the front lines.
While the teachers refused to go to class, they nonetheless demanded vast sums of additional money for schools and for their own benefits. It was not exactly blackmail, but it was shameless. However, the unions didn’t stop there. They meddled in domestic politics.
The United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) demanded as a condition of returning to the classroom that Los Angeles defund the police. According to a Freedom Foundation report about a teacher suing the UTLA:
“Defunding the police was one of several informal conditions UTLA claimed the school district would have to meet before its members would agree to resume in-school instruction. And like the union’s demand that charter schools be abolished, it had nothing whatsoever to do with making teachers safe during the COVID pandemic. … The union wasn’t asking for better wages, benefits or working conditions. Instead, it had prioritized the radical liberal agenda of its leaders above the legitimate workplace concerns of its members—and was willing to hold the parents hostage until it got what it wanted.”
I’m a teacher in Wicomico County and I refuse to pay for the union and the dishonest people running it. All you union members that think the union has your back are sadly mistaken. They care about your money and very little else. The state union has strong armed the local association into submission. Too much of your hard earned local money goes to salaries in Annapolis and political ideas. You think you have a say in the association business, but you don’t.
Slippery slope given the decrease with new teachers replenishing the old. Shame they pulled the defund card in LA but their deck is stacked. Fire them without replacement is a disaster, keep giving them everything is also a disaster. When does this all end….never
Barkeep, make me a double. Damn.
The majority of teachers who retire early for medical reason is from a diagnosis of Bipolar disease. Also teachers are not required random urine test, Polygraphs, physical fitness test or phycological test before spending 160 hrs a month with your child.
I am a senior teacher with 25 years experience. I do not belong to the WCEA. As a non- union teacher I repeatedly asked to return to the classroom, and was consistently denied. There was no reason for us not to be in person and working with students. As you can imagine, my stance was not a popular one, and I was confronted several times by other teachers to, ostensibly, “play ball”. I refused and don’t care – the WCEA is nothing more than part of a super pac that I refuse to be part of.
lets defund the schools not only defund but remove all money
Unions everywhere are past their usefulness.
They no longer support their members and no support the politicians.
Get rid of all unions!
national school voucher system get it on the ballot we demand it !!!!defund public education now. Unions are part of the marxist tumor AND MUST BE ELIMINATED!!