Creation of Frankenstein’s Monster: More Money, More Power Demanded by Liberals for Thuggish Teachers’ Unions (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on April 13, 2011
The teachers' unions have become ravenous, powerful, and vicious, a figurative Frankenstein's monster
The government’s teachers unions have become huge, more powerful than they were originally intended, and are always in need of money. A ravenous, never-ending need for money.
If anyone threatens to slow down or cut off that taxpayer-funded or union dues-generated money flow, well, just look at what happened in Wisconsin. Death threats, vandalism, fraud, name-calling, intimidation — thuggish unions behaving much like Frankenstein’s enraged monster.
How much money IS enough for the teachers’ unions? Well, how much do you have?
From Patriot News Network, The Power of Teachers’ Unions:
The recent events in Wisconsin, in which unionized teachers behaved like third-world mobs, is a stark reminder of what a grave mistake it was to permit government employees to unionize. Since government employees have always had job security and benefits that many workers in the private sector couldn’t dream of getting, there was no need for them to unionize unless they wanted to use union power to intimidate legislators and extort more money from the taxpayers.
In fact, the sole purpose of unionization is political power, even among teachers. Indeed, it was Sam Lambert, Secretary of the National Education Association, who told the teachers in 1967 that “The NEA will become a stronger and more influential advocate of social changes long overdue…. The NEA will become a political power second to no other special interest group…. And, finally, NEA will organize this profession from top to bottom into logical operating units that can move easily and effectively and with power unmatched by any other organized group.”
Although the NEA had been established in 1857 as a professional organization, it wasn’t until 1962 that it became a labor union, after which it drafted model collective bargaining statutes covering teachers, which by 1980 were enacted into law in 31 states. Unionization also led to unified membership — meaning that a member of a local affiliate was forced to join the national organization and pay its dues.
Forced membership increased the number of NEA members from 713,994 in 1959-60 to 1.7 million in 1983, to 3.2 million in 2011. The NEA’s budget increased from $5 million in 1957 to $67 million in 1979-80, to $307 million in 2006-07. The NEA was also able to get school boards to automatically deduct from teachers’ salaries their union dues, which were automatically deposited in the union’s bank account, all at taxpayer expense.
Before the 1960s, only a small portion of public school teachers were unionized. But, ironically, that began to change in 1959 when Wisconsin became the first state to pass a collective-bargaining law for public employees. In those days, Wisconsin basked in the warm sunlight of progressivism. Little did they know that they were creating a potential Frankenstein.
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While the Wisconsin teachers have been part of the mobs demonstrating in favor of their collective bargaining rights, their curriculum is no bargain for the children they teach. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress test given in 2009, only 32 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned a “proficient” rating in reading, while another 2 percent earned an “advanced” rating. The other 68 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned ratings below “proficient,” including 44 percent who earned a rating of “basic” and 22 percent who earned a rating of “below basic.”
In other words, Wisconsin public schools are turning out functional illiterates by the thousands. Indeed, the test showed that the reading abilities of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders had not improved at all between 1998 and 2009 despite the increase in the amount of money spent per pupil each year.
This video illustrates simple explanations of what teachers’ unions want and don’t want, how they evade accountability, how uninformed liberals view the teachers’ unions and parrot meaningless platitudes, and how America better cough up the money without any expectation of accountability, or watch out.
“It’s for the children.”
Teachers Unions Explained
Chart compiled and posted by Jason at thathero.com showing the disparity of pay in Ohio through last year of private, government, teachers, and Ohio Education Association (OEA) employees.
Ohio Pay Chart through 2010: Private, government, teachers, OEA
Michelle Malkin analyzes the Ohio pay chart:
As Jason explains: “Consider the average OEA employee’s pay, stacked up against the averages for Ohio private industry workers, government employees, and teachers…The data (aggregated here in a single Excel workbook) from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Ohio Department of Education, and US Department of Labor paint a picture that belies the union’s class warfare routine. But hey, let’s play their game: while the OEA continues lobbying for higher taxes, think about where your income lands on the chart above.
As compensation for churning out leftist inanity and forcing school districts into promises they cannot keep, OEA employees were paid an average of $96,182.81 from 09/01/2009 to 08/31/2010. The Ohio Education Association’s fiscal 2010 report to the Department of Labor lists 235 employees – nearly half were paid in excess of $100,000.”
From Legal Insurrection, Now Add More Mr. Nice Guy – How To Oppose Public Sector Unions Without Opposing Public Sector Workers:
While Americans generally hold mixed to mildly supportive views of public employee unions in general, they tend to hold unionized government professions such as policemen and teachers in very high regard. In a recent poll, Americans supported unionization of government employees in well-regarded, high-status professions such as firefighters, police officers, and teachers by a 2-1 or greater margin, but were about evenly divided on office workers and janitors. Practically, this is illogical – lower-skilled, commoditized labor is more suitable for unionization, and public safety employees are especially poorly-suited for unionization. The same series of polls showed that labor union leaders are regarded as not demonstrating much honesty and ethics (even lawyers fair better!), and another found that organized labor is about as trusted as big business. This suggests that people do not always make the distinction between the public service professionals most commonly associated with government workers and the union bosses that represent them, and thus public opinion on public sector unions tends to represent a confused mix of the two. Reformers must hammer home these distinctions if they are to garner public sympathy.
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The power of public sector unions is built on a network of coercive laws and policies beyond collusive collective bargaining, many of which were also implemented in Wisconsin, though discussed less in the media. Reformers could focus on passing Right To Work laws ensuring individual government workers the right to choose not only to decline to join a union, but the right not to pay fees to workplace unions they refuse to join. Failing that, reformers could pass laws creating the right not to have money taken automatically from government workers’ hard-earned paychecks and given to politicians and causes not of their choosing without their consent. Reformers should promote more democracy in the workplace, forcing union re-certification elections more regularly and ensuring a secret ballot to prevent intimidation of workers. Public sector union reform should carry the banners of freedom of association, of freedom of speech, of democracy, of freedom of choice, and of good governance. Reformers can win by giving workers more rights, not by taking them away.
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