The Wall Street Journal ran a particularly interesting editorial on the National Education Association’s meeting here in Denver. As it turns out, many of the items on the agenda had little to do with education and everything to do with propagandizing of left-leaning politics.
Here are the examples (and their proposed costs!) from the Journal:
- Demanding Education Secretary Arne Duncan be fired: $2,500 (approved)
- NEA Support for International Day of Peace campaign: Cost unknown (approved)
- Educate members on why fracking is bad: $9,750 (someone tell Polis he doesn’t have to spend tens of millions) (approved)
- Press release to boycott Staples in solidarity with the postal workers union as the U.S. Postal Service has contracted work to Staples: $5,000 (approved)
- Creating a list of books that have “LGBTQ gender and nonconforming themes”: $6,500 (approved)
- Promotion of “clean energy” in curriculum: $10,760 (approved)
- Union president should send letter to Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder denouncing the NFL team name’s “institutional racism”: Cost unknown (sent to committee for further discussion)
- Support for reparations for “the lingering impact of slavery” and “subtle Jim Crow policies and thinking” inclucing “unconscious bias” (sent to committee for further discussion)
Perhaps what was most interesting was what the union voted down:
“…a proposal that would require the NEA’s board to provide written justification for executive officers’ raises, and another that urged the NEA to “bargain in good faith” with its internal union, the Association of Field Service Employees (AFSE), thus exemplifying “the behavior we advocate for in negotiations.”
So, the union refused transparency on officers’ raises and refused a proposal to negotiate in “good faith” with the union’s internal union (who knew there were unions within unions?). While the Journal article offers explanations for unions’ declining numbers, these two examples should be more than enough to show why teachers are thinking twice before jumping in bed with unions.