Posts tagged CDC
Despite President Joe Biden’s repeated boasts, union membership continues to fall
July 18, 2023 // Union members do not always agree with Democrats on policy matters. Biden's own green energy agenda is coming up against labor resistance, with organized auto workers prepared to strike over the hazards and lack of benefits in electric vehicle production. Biden must also work to keep blue-collar union members from slipping into the Republican column as candidates like former President Donald Trump play up American manufacturing and the virtues of import tariffs. But more recent headlines showcase unions fighting their traditional battles over pay, benefits, and worker protections.
Teachers union presidents blast Supreme Court affirmative action ruling
July 17, 2023 // Weingarten said, “At the end of the day, those of us in education, and frankly for those of us in Labor … we fight for a better life for everyone. Neither of us are going to stop fighting for what kids and communities need to succeed,” Weingarten said. “Whether that kid is dyslexic or scarred by social media issues or, frankly, whether that kid, because schools were closed for a long time, has issues because of that.” Those words stand in stark contrast to her and her union’s actions, such as when AFT handcrafted school shutdown policies at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) federal agency in early 2021. Based on released emails, AFT sent a list of suggestions (which included closing schools) to the CDC, and the CDC adopted much of the AFT’s list in their final public health guidance that kept schools closed.
Commentary: How the Teachers Union Broke Public Education
June 7, 2023 // School closures were not just an issue that impacted teachers, kids, and parents—this policy will have decadeslong ripple effects that will reverberate through every aspect of society. While savvy middle class and affluent families may opt for charter and private schools as a solution, the poorest and most vulnerable children, such as my former students, will remain trapped in a rotting system. The children who never catch up will grow into damaged, illiterate adults who cannot participate in the labor force and who are plagued by social dysfunction and decay. Ultimately, the union will achieve its vision of remaking the world—only it will be a broken, disfigured world that no one wants.
Don’t Be Fooled by Randi Weingarten’s Rehabilitation Tour
May 8, 2023 // Weingarten worked for six years as a history teacher early on in her 40-year career. But for most of her life, she has advocated for teachers' interests, which is demonstrably not the same as "helping kids." To tell parents, many of whom are concerned by the two decades' worth of progress wiped out in math and reading for fourth-graders; the fact that eighth-graders' average math scores fell in all 50 states minus one; and may have in some cases initiated the exodus of some of the 1.3 million children from the public school system, that the person who helped keep schools closed has their kids' best interests in mind is deeply offensive. Her job is fundamentally to secure higher pay and more job protection for teachers who pay union dues, not to make sure your child is happy, healthy, or safe.
Randi Weingarten, teacher’s union helped coordinate CDC’s 2021 school reopening guidance, records reveal
April 27, 2023 // Powerful AFT boss Randi Weingarten spoke twice by phone with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky in the week leading up to the Feb. 12, 2021, announcement that halted full re-opening of in-person classes — including the day before the guidance was released, according to records obtained by the conservative watchdog Americans for Public Trust. AFT and its fellow union, the National Education Association, also asked the White House and CDC for help shaping its press strategy to show the rank-and-file they and the Biden administration were on the same page, emails reveal. The extent of the unions’ role in government policy was revealed the day before Weingarten is set to face a House select subcommittee hearing about the effects of school closures on America’s kids. The records show Walensky took a call from Weingarten on Feb. 7, 2021, five days before the CDC released its “Operational Strategy for K-12 Schools Through Phased Mitigation.”
Teachers union chief hires seasoned lawyer ahead of Hill testimony
April 20, 2023 // Randi Weingarten is lawyering up. The American Federation of Teachers president has retained a top white-collar defense attorney ahead of her scheduled testimony on school closures during the height of the Covid-19 crisis to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic next week. Weingarten is taking a swipe at the panel’s Republicans ahead of an all-but-assured grilling from conservatives looking to probe the union’s alleged influence over federal disease-mitigation guidelines the GOP blames for closing schools.
Push to unionize at college dorms is growing
March 31, 2023 // Colleges have been a breeding ground for illness and social havoc since the pandemic began, and much of the onus has been placed on RAs, who are appointed to shepherd the well-being of an entire floor of younger students. In the past, that has typically meant hosting events, mediating roommate disputes, and perhaps guiding an overserved first-year safely to bed. For this, RAs are compensated with free or discounted housing and meal plans. But in recent semesters, and especially since schools reopened during the COVID-19 pandemic, those responsibilities have ballooned. RAs who spoke with the Globe describe being deputized as “COVID police” to enforce masking and social distance, and wrangling students whose university — or even high school — experience was stunted by lockdowns and remote learning. Several schools later assigned RAs to longer overnight “on call” shifts and additional check-ins with residents.
Police union executive led scheme to smuggle opioids marked ‘party favors,’ feds say Read more at: https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article273770265.html#storylink=cpy
March 31, 2023 // The executive director of a California police union faces federal charges of running an opioid-smuggling scheme, federal officials say. Joanne Marian Segovia, 64, works for the San Jose Police Officers Association, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Northern California said in a Wednesday, March 29, news release. A criminal complaint accused Segovia of using her home and work computers to arrange at least 61 shipments containing thousands of synthetic opioid pills to her home over the course of about seven years, the release said.
Opinion: Imagine there’s no public employee unions
February 21, 2023 // But try as President Joe Biden has, it just hasn’t been enough. Automation (including not only factory machinery but also the gig economy), trade, high-profile union corruption cases, failing pension funds, and a string of adverse court rulings are among the many factors rendering private sector unions irrelevant to workers in most modern fields. This has led the unions to desperate measures, such as organizing esoteric, low-income professions, including graduate student teachers and video game testers. Yet the story is quite different for unions in the public sector. The unionization rate of public employees remains robust, at more than 33% of all government workers nationwide. Local government workers are the most likely to be unionized, at a rate of nearly 39%, and public sector union members are concentrated in states that mandate collective bargaining. The states with higher rates of unionization seem to correlate with the nation's least functional state governments: California (54.5%), Illinois (48.7%), New York (66.7%), and New Jersey (59.3%) among them. As their private sector cousins starve, public employee unions are fat and happy — a strange development, given that there was no public sector collective bargaining at all 70 years ago, when unions were at their apex.
Why Oregon Teachers’ Union Has Lost 20 Percent of Its Membership
December 13, 2022 // All told, the union’s active membership has dropped below 80 percent. “If OEA wants to blame someone for those defections, its leaders need only look in the mirror,” said Freedom Foundation Oregon Director Jason Dudash. “Our teacher outreach has been increasingly successful, but the arrogance of the unions themselves was a big help.” Until 2018, Oregon was one of 23 states without right-to-work protections for government workers, meaning teachers and thousands of other public employees were required to financially support union activities.