No, the union bosses at the National Education Association are not talking about America bombing Libya but rather their declaration of war against politicians and taxpayers who question their ability to use the taxpayer spigot to fund their radical agenda. That’s why they are seeking to double their political budget through confiscatory union dues.
On March 28, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff
On March 28, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff
Some bills making their way through the Florida legislature are striking fear into the union bosses in Florida because it threatens big labor’s access to the wallets of teachers. One bill would would bar any public union from automatically deducting dues from members’ paychecks. Another would require unions to distribute annual reports on their financial activities. The abuse! The outrage! Making labor unions accountable to their employees and requiring them to collect their own dues money, rather than at taxpayer’s expense.
On March 28, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff
(Source: March 2011 NRTWC Newsletter)
Labels Proposed Rollback of Union Monopoly Powers As an ‘Assault’
As the cover story of this Right to Work Newsletter edition reports, last month Wisconsin teacher union bosses encouraged educators in Madison, Milwaukee, and other school districts to strike illegally in order to participate in protests against GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s monopoly-bargaining rollback proposal.
Most teachers rejected union bosses’ exhortations and reported for their jobs. However, the number of teachers who heeded the siren call of union militancy was sufficient to force multiple school districts, including Milwaukee’s, to cancel classes. Madison’s schools were closed for a total of four days.
Many of the striking union militants, convinced that they should be paid for protesting rather than carrying out their assigned duties, collected phony “sick notes” from pro-forced unionism doctors. Wisconsin taxpayers may have to furnish these outlaw teachers with up to $6 million in “sick pay” for work they were perfectly capable of performing, but chose not to.
Wisconsites quoted in media reports, including some who are normally sympathetic to Big Labor, are outraged by the actions of a relatively small share of Badger State teachers (in Milwaukee, for example, just a few more than 600 out of 5,400 teachers joined in the union-instigated “sickout”).
Former Union Czar Andy Stern: President’s Statement ‘Helped Enormously’
Even as they were losing the good will of the people of Wisconsin, however, teacher union zealots and thousands of other government union radicals who joined in their wildcat strikes got a “thumbs up” from the White House.
On February 17, the second day of illegal teacher strikes, President Obama took the extraordinary step of inviting a reporter and camera crew from a Milwaukee TV station to sit down with him at the White House for an interview.
Mr. Obama suggested he was okay with the portions of Gov. Walker’s reform package that authorize public agencies to divert a significantly higher share of employees’ wages and salaries into their health care and pension plans, and thus reduce taxpayers’ total compensation liabilities.
At the same time, the President blasted the provision that would, for the first time in decades, restore for most Wisconsin public employees the Right to Work without being fired for refusal to pay dues or fees to an unwanted union. (more…)
On March 17, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff
Government employee union woes are being felt from California to Maryland. George W. Liebmann, executive director of the Calvert Institute for Policy Research Inc., lists several problems in Maryland in his Baltimore Sun op-ed:
Marylanders need instruction in how entrenched the state’s teachers’ unions are:
1. Eleven counties, including all the more populous ones, allow unions to collect “agency fees” from nonmembers, generating huge war chests. While in theory such fees are not supposed to be used for political purposes, a famous [NRTW] lawsuit in Washington state revealed that nearly 80 percent of “agency fees” are in fact so used.
2. The State Board of Education has only qualified authority over teacher certification. A special board, eight of whose 24 members are named by unions and six of whom are from teachers’ colleges, can only be over-ridden by a three-fourths vote of the State Board.
3. Under a law signed by Gov. Martin O’Malley last year, another special board, two of whose five members are named by unions, has the last word in resolving impasses in school labor negotiations.
4. Local union contracts impose maximums on the length of the school year, limitations originally derived from the needs of agricultural societies
5. Maryland’s charter school law is one of the few that binds charter school teachers to union contracts, and it provides few checks against refusal of applications by self-protective county boards. Experimentation with “virtual schools” and distance learning is limited by a law binding employees to union contracts.
8. Contracts severely limit teacher attendance at PTA meetings, in some counties to two hours per year; and at post-school meetings, frequently to one hour a month. Evaluations and observations are severely limited; only a handful of teachers are ever found to be incompetent.
9. In all but three counties, third-party arbitrators, rather than the local board of education, are given the last word in grievance proceedings. There is a three-to-five step grievance procedure, making discipline of tenured teachers all but impossible. Out of a tenured force of more than 5,600, no more than two Baltimore City teachers were fired for cause, per year, between 1984 and 1990.
On December 29, 2010, By NRTW Committee Staff
Teacher Unions Must Collect their Own Dues
Governor Bob Riley speaks to a gathering of lawmakers and citizens before signing into law a series of sweeping anti-corruption reforms. Photo credit: Robin Cooper, Office of the Governor.
Alabama’s News 13: “A new era for state corruption reforms”
Governor Bob Riley signed what he called, some of the strongest anti-corruption laws in the country.
The legal departments at both unions are rechecking Senate Bill two.
Take a look at what some them will do: Ban the practice of secretly funneling money to political candidates, through political action committees, called “pac to pac transfers.” They also limit what lobbyists can spend on public officials and requires them to register and file disclosures.
Now a week old, Senate Bill 2 is being double and triple-checked by the legal departments of the state’s teacher unions. SB2 ends the practice of deducting union dues from paychecks. The unions say it’s political payback. Governor Riley calls it an end to financing political activity by special interest groups.
Jefferson County AFT President, Vi Parramore said, “I think hurrying an ethics bill through has been a disaster.”
Both unions agree, Hyche with the regional Alabama Education Association and Vi Parramore, President of the Jefferson County American Federation of Teachers, that senate bill two – ending the practice of deducting union dues from paychecks – was an attack on the AEA.
Parramore said, “But I think the bill is mean-spirited…”
Hyche said, “…the governor and Bradley Byrne hijacked the legislative process for political gain and for political payback.”
Where were these concerned union officials to be found when Harry Reid tried to ram through federally mandated monopoly bargaining on states during the Lame Duck?