In New York state, a teacher who showed up late for class 101 times in a single school year and left early 47 times is still on the job. Thanks to the monopoly bargaining power of the teacher’s union, she…
The National Education Association has gone all in for the president’s re-election but it is teacher’s who will be paying the price for the union bosses political gamesmanship. The union has instituted a…
Big Labor is “refocusing” their political spending – funded through forced labor dues — to defeat state legislators who voted for reform measures like those in Wisconsin. Some in the media are portraying this as bad news for national Democrats…
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…
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…
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…
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.
From Hot Air (http://hotair.com/archives/2011/02/26/nea-to-double-member-dues-contribution-to-political-war-chest/) Amid substantial membership losses and a $14 million shortfall in its general operating budget, the National Education Association plans to double each active member’s annual contribution to the national union’s political and media funds.
(Source: December 2010 NRTWC Newsletter) Union bosses like AFL-CIO czar Richard Trumka claim that forced-unionism policies are in union members' best interest. But a new scientific poll shows union members overwhelmingly support the Right to Work principle. New Nationwide Poll Shows Union Members Support Right to Work A scientific survey of union members nationwide, conducted the week before the November elections by well-known pollster Frank Luntz for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, shows that Big Labor bosses are out of touch with the people they purport to represent as well as the public at large. The poll gauged the opinions of both private- and government-sector union members regarding key aspects of the agenda Big Labor bankrolls with union treasury funds, which consist primarily of dues and fees that workers are forced to fork over as a condition of employment. In the 2009-2010 campaign cycle, union officials funneled forced dues and fees extracted from an estimated nine million union members and forced union fee-paying nonmembers into what appears to have been their largest ever federal mid-term electoral war chest. Top bosses of the AFL-CIO-affiliated American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union openly admit to having spent a total of nearly $87.5 million, mostly union treasury money, on mid-term electioneering. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) bosses acknowledge pouring $44 million, primarily forced-dues money, into 2009-2010 politics. National Education Association (NEA) teacher union chiefs have owned up to siphoning $40 million into politicking over the past two years. Altogether, it's safe to say Organized Labor shelled out more than a billion dollars in reported and unreported contributions, including "in-kind" support like phone banks and get-out-the-vote drives as well as cash, to its favored 2010 congressional candidates. Four Out of Five Union Members Reject Forced Union Membership, Dues