Americans Forced to Associate With Union Bosses Who Loathe Them
In early October, the mammoth National Education Association (NEA) teacher union sent out a mass email targeting all of its reported 2.8 million members. Association with this radical organization is, of course, mandatory.
The purpose of the email, supposedly, was to assist NEA members who are actively employed as educators in “teaching about indigenous people.”
The so-called “teaching materials” included a map, as David Specter reported for Fox News on October 15, “that erased the state of Israel and labeled the area ‘Palestine.’”
According to Texas education graduate student Garion Frankel, they also included a “link to an article defending Hitler as someone pushed into the ‘genocide option’ by stubborn Jews who ‘enabled’ him.”
Laws Corral Jewish Teachers Into Union Whose Bosses Have ‘Declare[d] Jews Their Enemy’
Teacher union bosses now claim the map erasing Israel and the Hitler link were “mistakes.” However, as Mr. Frankel explained in an October 23 commentary for RealClearEducation, that’s hard to swallow. As Mr. Frankel noted, NEA officials have openly embraced so-called “post-colonial theory,” which “often castigates Jews as oppressive, elitist white supremacists, thereby allowing many activists to justify” terrorist attacks on Jewish civilians “as a form of legitimate resistance.”
In short, when union bosses erase a nation and apologize for genocide, they “declare Jews their enemy.”
Meanwhile, under special-interest statutes and constitutional provisions that are now on the books in the vast majority of states, educators and other public employees who don’t wish to join a union are prohibited from dealing directly with their employer on key matters pertaining to their jobs.
In practice, these state monopoly-bargaining laws force workers to associate with advocacy groups whose speech they abhor by accepting their representation. The only other options for dissenting employees are to quit their jobs, or be fired.
National Right to Work Committee Vice President Matthew Leen commented:
“Today, even in many Right to Work states like Florida and Virginia as well as in forced-dues states like New York, Illinois and California, Jewish teachers must allow NEA union bosses who evidently loathe them to speak for them on all matters concerning their pay, benefits, and work rules!”
Gross Injustice Isn’t Confined to One Union or One Group of Employees
Mr. Leen added: “Unfortunately, the injustice now being done to Jewish educators who are subject to NEA monopoly bargaining isn’t confined to one union or one group of employees.
“For example, monopoly-bargaining laws put thousands of Jewish higher education faculty members across the U.S. under the control of American Association of University Professors [AAUP/AFT] boss Todd Wolfson.
“Despite the fact that many countries and groups have openly dedicated themselves to Israel’s destruction, Mr. Wolfson and his cohorts publicly demand that ‘no weapons should be sent to Israel at all. Not defensive or offensive, nothing.’ AAUP kingpins also publicly support academic boycotts that pressure professors to refuse to write letters of recommendation for students who wish to study at an Israeli university.
“To cite just one other example, monopoly-bargaining laws force countless thousands of teachers who are Christians and choose to send their own children to Christian schools to submit to the control of a union empire headed by American Federation of Teachers [AFT] President Randi Weingarten.
“In a book she published in September, Ms. Weingarten denounced such parents as ‘aspiring to control what everyone thinks’ and does!”
Mr. Leen concluded: “Labor laws that force educators to associate with union bosses who hate them as a condition of working for taxpayers and serving public school parents and children make a mockery of the First Amendment.
“Unfortunately, federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have for decades avoided confronting directly the question of the constitutionality of government-sector union monopoly bargaining. But when a state law violates the U.S. Constitution, state lawmakers and chief executives have the duty to repeal or amend the law to bring it into accord with the Constitution, regardless of what the judiciary decides to do.
“And in 2026, the National Right to Work Committee expects to be lobbying for passage of bills that roll back monopoly bargaining in states like Idaho and Oklahoma.
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