Another thug union puts self-preservation over children
Last week, I showed you how the SEIU and other union thugs have routinely engaged in brass-knuckle tactics to intimidate volunteers who threaten their power.
Here’s another example to add to the Big Labor Bully file — straight outta Chicago:
We watched an interesting YouTube video the other day. It was brought to our attention by state Sen. James Meeks, the Chicago Democrat who is also pastor of Salem Baptist Church on the South Side. We think our readers should check out the video. It’ll open your eyes.
Meeks, who chairs the Illinois Senate Education Committee, has been in a war with the Chicago Teachers Union since he had some tough things to say about public education in a Tribune essay and in a speech at Rainbow Push.
The CTU responded with a vow not to give him another dime in campaign money until he apologized. Meeks promptly wrote a check for $4,000, giving back every dime the union had already given him.
No apology.
Good for him. Meeks, who has engaged in some rather unsavory racial demagoguery in the past, made headlines recently by likening the Chicago teachers’ union to a street gang and openly embracing private vouchers to help poor minority students escape from the city’s violence-plagued government school system. I hope it’s a sincere change of heart and that he is re-thinking the entire Democrat culture of dependency on government and public-sector unions.
Now, watch the video of the National Education Association’s retiring top lawyer, Bob Chanin, speaking at the NEA’s annual meeting in July, that Meeks recommended to the Tribune:
The Chicago Trib ed board notes:
Chanin closed his nearly 25-minute speech by explaining the influence of the NEA:
Despite what some among us would like to believe it is not because of our creative ideas. It is not because of the merit of our positions. It is not because we care about children and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child. NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power.
And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year, because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them, the unions that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees.
Oh, it gets more interesting.
This is not to say that the concern of NEA and its affiliates with closing achievement gaps, reducing dropout rates, improving teacher quality and the like are unimportant or inappropriate. To the contrary. These are the goals that guide the work we do. But they need not and must not be achieved at the expense of due process, employee rights and collective bargaining. That simply is too high a price to pay.
Too high a price to pay for educated children. Chanin got wild applause from thousands of NEA members at the San Diego Convention Centerfor his remarks.
We tried for several days to get NEA officials to explain those remarks. We wanted to ask if the rest of the union leadership believed that kids ranked behind collective bargaining on the teacher priority list. We’re still waiting to hear from them.
You can put the heat on the NEA yourself right here.
Remember: Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
The cultural and political Left’s culture of corruption has nowhere left to hide.
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Why am I not surprised at this?
I prefer fire. Preferably the temperature of the sun…
I don’t think the left was expecting any resistance to their new age of Hope-n-Change. So their ego’s are letting them think that, by electing The Won, they were endorsing the socialization of America.
Now they are trying to get us past a point of no return before we toss them all out.
The only thing worse than Union involvement in education is Guvmint involvement.
The entire DOE was created so that students in Appalachia and Louisiana backwaters could have the same education as students in the finer cities.
At present, we have no fine cities, and the education students receive in them is the same as students in Appalachia and the Louisiana backwaters.
I had a history “teacher” in the 7th grade (many years ago) who had NEA stickers all over his briefcase. He never taught from the book we received at the beginning of the year. Every day was “black history” day according to him and that’s what he taught. At the end of the year, another teacher who knew what was going on, gave me the history book and encouraged me to read it over the summer.
Later when I understood what the NEA was all about did I realize how one of their star members had the potential to ruin my education. I still think of him as my worst teacher I ever had. When I go home to visit family, I hope to someday run into him and tell him personally what a worthless teacher he was. And the teacher who gave me the history book… she was one of my best teachers. I still fondly remember her encouragement and attention she gave me… I was the first in my family to graduate from college and she had a huge influence in steering me that way.
The NEA disgusts me.
Now we know why Johnny can’t read.
Public employee unions are an idiotic idea and should always have been banned by law.
If a union in the private sector gets too greedy, the company (or companies) go broke. If a public employee union gets too greedy, the politicians just wait for a moment of high economic prosperity and then raise taxes on business.
If the politicians give way too much to the public employees in the way of wages and health and retirement benefits so that when bad times come around the taxes aren’t there to keep giving the inflated government goodies, then you have California.
Yes. It really is that simple.
Public employee unions must be outlawed.
If you don’t want to work under those rules, then go work in the private sector.
Remember: Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Never underestimate the power of bleach. As an added bonus, it allows you to smell them coming…
@Roland #846494- Yeah. What you said.
Since citizens fund public schools through taxes, the teachers should answer to the taxpayers. The NEA protects them from being accountable. How many teachers would get away with not joining the union or pay the mandated dues? The NEA has more control than local school boards. No government employee at any level of government should have job security, benefit packages or retirement plans better than what is granted to the private sector which funds them. How much better off would teachers be if they had invested the money paid in dues? The NEA is exactly what is wrong with public schools!
Coming soon announcement…..All funds allocated for public education have been expended, If you have a child that you wish to educate there will be a surcharge of $12,000 per student, or maybe it will be that you will need a license…$12,000 please…but be thankful NO NEW TAX will be needed. If you would like a successful conclusion to your child’s education a tidy donation to the NEA would go a long way to insure good grades.
I believe there was a time in America when unions were necessary. But that time has long since passed. Why do teachers unionize? Not for better education, like Chanin said, but for increasing their own pay and benefits. Kids come second. Or third. Or somewhere down the list.
Teacher’s unions by definition are not interested in the welfare of students. They are there for the dues, the power and the agenda.
There were 3.2 million people who were willing to give them millions of dollars of dues? Wanna bet those dues are not optional?
Drunk with power.
Let’s hope those union thugs use those 4Gs to give Jimmy Hoffa a proper burial.
Of course they’re not optional. As an educator in a union shop, I can either pay the dues and join the union, or pay the dues and not join the union.
Yet another reason for Parents to take their children out of any school that employs Union teachers.
The Union members who gave a standing ovation at that speech clearly do not have the best interest of your children at heart!
I remember when dismantling the NEA was a plank in the GOP platform.
But heck, I also remember when I thought the GOP really did want to reduce the size of federal government.
Then GHW Bush came along and decided he wanted to be the “Education President” instead of a Republican president, and now people think I’m a Libertarian for daring to broach the subject.
Make education competitive for money by basing it on results. The private sector is the only way to do this. Competition improves all service related jobs (as long as unions are not involved). Conversely, government involvement ALWAYS increases costs and decreases service. So many of our citizens are too stupid to realize this unfortunately.
Providing an education to children “need not and must not be achieved at the expense of due process, employee rights and collective bargaining. That simply is too high a price to pay.”
It’s as if schools exist for the union and not for the children. The children are just a necessary evil to be used as hostages to help the union obtain their demands. Otherwise, they wouldn’t even allow those annoying creatures to enter “their” schools in the first place.
That’s why my children are in parochial school even though the public school district is rated “excellent” by the State. ‘Tis better to indoctrinate children in faith than in ideology.
It’s interesting to note that teachers in the parochial schools typically earn less than public school teachers yet have no trouble attracting good teachers. Why is that?
We know that’s how you feel. That’s why many of us want to homeschool or send our children to private schools.
The No Education Association doesn’t give a hoot about the kids we’re paying them to give a hoot about.
the nea are a bunch of union (_?_)’s led by communists. they couldn’t get 20% to take the standard sat test and score national average of 1000 to save their life. yet they are supposed to TEACH our children.
But the job is not done until Johnny can’t formulate his own thought or opinion.
Ralph Gizzip;
’tis.
fify
This is a fixed game. The NEA doesn’t care about children, it cares about perpetuating its existence. Teachers have no options regarding the union. As long as their existence is asssured, they’ll do anything to perpetuate it including acting like thugs.
I do know that teacher unions don’t want the same kind of protections for substitute teachers, who, in some instances, have more qualifications and experience than regular teachers. Teachers like to beat up on substitute teachers and use them as scapegoat pinatas. I should know… I’ve been present for such exercises as a sub and even heard one teacher explain that subs are nothing more than paid “babysitters.”
The union is a haven for mediocre teachers who want to hide behind tenure. The only thing that will stop the downward slide of our public education system is getting rid of unions and letting a competitive spirit of academic achievement guide teachers.
Until that happens, no parent should even pretend their children are getting a “qualitiy” education, especially in the inner city.
Public schools are no longer about educating, it’s about indoctrination and control. The long march through the institutions.
And teachers quite openly have told me over the years that they aren’t there to help children achieve their potential….just make minimum standards.