Right to Work Wins Big in the Beehive State
Utah Right to Work victory: New law ends union monopoly bargaining and protects public servants' freedom to choose their own representation.
Teacher Union Bosses Enable Child Abusers
How Can Big Labor Politicians Keep Courting NEA, AFT Support?
An array of government data as well as numerous media reports document the reality that there is an epidemic in America of sexual abuse of schoolchildren by teachers and other employees of K-12 government schools.
Union bosses and state laws that hand them monopoly-bargaining power over how educators are managed are a big part of this grave and growing scandal.
As Paul Zimmerman of the Defense of Freedom Institute (DFI) highlighted last year in a 38-page study, teacher union bosses have long wielded their monopoly-bargaining privileges to help accused employees “resign and move to a new school or district rather than face investigation and possible punishment.” This practice is often cynically characterized as “passing the trash.”
California Schools Need Not Be Informed About Applicants’ Suspected Child Abuse
During her tenure, pro-Right to Work Trump Department of Education (ED) Sec. Betsy DeVos attempted to deter Big Labor-influenced school officials from shielding sexual predators on their payrolls.
For example, a June 2018 letter from the DeVos ED warned America’s governors that failure to abide by a 2015 federal statute that at least putatively requires states to prohibit “passing the trash” from one government school to another could lead to a cut-off of federal education funding for their state.
Unfortunately, Ms. DeVos’s successor as ED secretary, Biden-Harris appointee Miguel Cardona, has stalled federal efforts to stop Big Labor and its cohorts from shielding child abusers.
As Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) pointed out in a 2022 letter to Mr. Cardona, during his reign the ED “has continued to extend” federal funding “to states that have failed to properly safeguard students from sexual predators . . . .”
National Right to Work Committee Vice President Matthew Leen commented:
“Top bosses of the massive National Education Association [NEA] and American Federation of Teachers [AFT/ AFL-CIO] unions and their subsidiaries wield vast political clout primarily because of their widespread governmental monopoly-bargaining privileges.
“And the outsized clout of union bigwigs is surely a major reason why sexual abuse allegations in government schools are typically met with, as a 2023 Business Insider report concluded, ‘shoddy investigations, quiet resignations, and a culture of secrecy’ that protects ‘predators, not students.’”
The massive, Big Labor-dominated Los Angeles United School District (LAUSD) is an especially egregious case in point, said Mr. Leen:
“As Paul Zimmerman notes, the 425-page contract between LAUSD and United Teachers Los Angeles [a subsidiary of both the NEA and the AFT] union bosses ‘prioritizes’ easing the transfer of accused teachers to other classrooms, even if they might pose a threat to students.
“In 2018, then-GOP state Sen. Mike Morrell [R-Rancho Cucamonga] attempted to curtail such outrages in California by prohibiting government schools from hiring applicants who had previously been ‘determined to be responsible for sexual abuse.’
“Incredibly, top bosses of the NEA-affiliated California Teachers Association [CTA] union pushed back hard against Mr. Morrell’s reform. Ultimately, it was so gutted that he had to withdraw it!
“As a consequence of CTA bosses’ ‘victory,’ today California law still ‘does not require school districts to disclose to prospective employers information’ about an ex-employee’s suspected child abuse!”
Harris-Walz Ticket Gladly Accepting Cash, ‘In-Kind’ Support From NEA, AFT Dons
Mr. Leen concluded: “The fact is, NEA President Becky Pringle, AFT President Randi Weingarten, and many of their lieutenants are complicit in some of the most horrible crimes being perpetrated in America, year in and year out. And their complicity has been well-documented.
“That’s why any decent person running for political office in 2024 would refuse to accept cash contributions or ‘in-kind’ support from NEA or AFT bosses.
“Unfortunately, in their lust for power, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, along with thousands of other federal and state candidates, will be raking in this campaign cycle a combined total of roughly $200 million in support from the national teacher unions alone!”
This article was originally published in our monthly newsletter. Go here to access previous newsletter posts.
To support our cause and help end forced unionism, go here to donate.
