Teacher Union Boss Smears America’s Parents

As Randi Sees It, Children Are ‘Mere Creatures of the State’

A century after the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously affirmed that schoolchildren are not “mere creatures of the state,” American Federation of Teachers (AFT/ AFL-CIO) union President Randi Weingarten has published a book that effectively contends the opposite. 

In Pierce v. Society of Sisters, decided on June 1, 1925, the High Court struck down an Oregon law prohibiting parochial schools.

Speaking for the entire court, Associate Justice James C. McReynolds held that the law was an “unreasonable interference with the liberty of parents and guardians to direct the upbringing of their children,” and consequently violated “the Fourteenth Amendment” to the U.S. Constitution. 

But according to Ms. Weingarten’s screed, preposterously entitled Why Fascists Fear Teachers, allowing parents to decide what their children will be taught about public policy, morals and religion is extremely dangerous!

Weingarten Book Trashes Considered Stance Taken By Civil Rights Pioneer

Citing radical statist Diane Ravitch as her authority, Ms. Weingarten even accuses Christians who want their own children to receive a Christian education and Jews who want their own children to receive a Jewish education of aspiring to “control what everyone thinks and does”! 

The right of parents to choose the kind of education their children receive is far from the only pillar of a free society Ms. Weingarten’s book viciously attacks.

To cite just one other example, for at least a century and a half, civic-minded American thinkers and commentators have decried union bosses for resorting to coercion and intimidation against workers who refused to bend to their will.

One such eminence was journalist, abolitionist, and civil rights leader Frederick Douglass, who in 1874 penned an essay provocatively titled: “The Folly, Tyranny, and Wickedness of Labor Unions.” 

“On more than one occasion,” he wrote, “we have attempted to convince workingmen of the absolute injury to their interests of the labor unions of this country, and also their oppressions and tyrannical course toward fellow workmen, as well as their employers.”

As an African American, Douglass was especially outraged by Big Labor racism that denied economic opportunities to black workers, but this was just one of several evils of monopolistic unionism he identified. 

According to Ms. Weingarten, however, the only reason there is now, or there ever has been, to oppose monopolistic unionism is that you are a “fascist”: 

“[F]ascists don’t like unions” because unions “make life better for all working people.” Take that, Frederick Douglass!

Laws Handing Monopoly Privileges to Government Unions Make Randi Dangerous

National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix commented: 

“Ms. Weingarten’s ravings would not be a subject of grave public concern except for the fact that roughly two-thirds of the 50 states, including large population states like New York, Illinois and California, have laws on the books authorizing union monopoly bargaining over K-12 public educators.

“In states with monopoly-bargaining laws, elected officials and their appointees are required to ‘respect’ AFT and other government union bosses — but not parents or anyone else — ‘as equals and deal with [them],’ as radical national Big Labor chief Jerry Wurf gleefully observed in 1973. 

“That’s why Ms. Weingarten’s off-the-wall stances — including her recently elucidated stance that parents who generally agree with the views espoused by the late Charlie Kirk ought to have no say about whether their children are instructed by a teacher who applauded his assassination — matter a lot.

“With state labor laws stacked in her and other government union bosses’ favor, Ms. Weingarten’s extremist views are very apt to become public policy in city after city and state after state.” 

A second key reason why freedom-loving Americans ought to be concerned about the far-left agenda of teacher union bosses like Randi Weingarten, continued Mr. Mix, is that state monopoly-bargaining laws turn such union officials into political kingmakers. 

He cited business-bashing Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and avowed socialist Zohran Mamdani, who, as this Newsletter edition went to press in late October, was favored to win New York City’s mayoral race, as notable examples.

Committee Leads Charge Against Government-Sector Union Monopoly Bargaining

“Top bosses of the AFT and its Illinois and Chicago subsidiaries admit to spending a total of roughly $2.5 million to make then-Chicago Teachers Union [CTU/AFT] operative Brandon Johnson the Windy City’s chief executive in 2023,” noted Mr. Mix. 

“Even Weingarten aide Leo Casey now admits Mr. Johnson’s mayoralty has been a disaster. 

“In an email missive sent to fellow members of the radical Democratic Socialists of America [DSA] in May, which was leaked to and made public by school-choice advocate Corey DeAngelis in September, Mr. Casey acknowledged that roughly 80% of Chicagoans now disapprove of Mayor Johnson. ‘It is important to face squarely what has happened . . . ,’ wrote Mr. Casey. ‘It has not gone well.’” 

Both in order to improve the accountability and effectiveness of public institutions like K-12 schools and to reduce the inordinate clout union bosses now wield in electoral politics, the National Right to Work Committee has fought for years to roll back public-sector union monopoly bargaining. 

The battle has not been easy, but in recent years the Committee and allied groups have made a number of significant advances.

In 2017, for example, Iowans passed, with the Committee’s help, a rollback of government union monopoly bargaining that includes mandatory annual recertification votes for public-sector unions. 

West Virginia stepped up in 2021 to pass a ban on using taxpayer-funded payroll systems to collect union dues, while Arkansas prohibited monopolistic government unionism in courts, public schools and universities, and most state agencies.

In 2023, with the Committee’s help, Arkansas, Florida and Tennessee banned automatic payroll deductions for large swaths of government unions. “In her new book, Randi Weingarten doesn’t even try to defend counterproductive policies she and her lieutenants have pushed for, such as the ‘staffing surge’ of recent decades that has dramatically increased the number of nonteaching staff positions in public education,” observed Mr. Mix. 

“Instead, she seemingly hopes to derail the growing movement to curtail Big Labor special privileges by smearing its supporters as ‘fascists.’ For all the money and power she has at her disposal, I don’t believe this strategy will succeed.”

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