Posts tagged National Education Association
HHS Appears To Forget To Redact Email Calling For Expanded COVID-19 Mandates For Students
September 13, 2023 // “It’s concerning … [if] the CDC was even seriously considering imposing COVID vaccine mandates on students nationwide,” Nelsen said. “But if they weren’t seriously considering it, then they shouldn’t have redacted or attempted to redact disclosure of the contents of that email.” A CDC spokesperson told the DCNF that Lubar “obviously was not referring to vaccines for children” but was instead referencing the testing requirement. “At the time, the vaccine was not authorized or recommended for kids under 12 years of age,” the spokesperson said. “That recommendation did not come until November 2021. She was commenting on the testing of school children to keep classrooms open and safe. Her comment came on the heels of CDC funding totaling $10 billion to make testing widely available to school districts and was concerned that not enough attention was being focused on testing of students.”
FLORIDA: Graduate student union could lose recognition under new law
September 12, 2023 // If a union doesn’t meet the membership requirements, its employer is no longer obligated to legally recognize and honor union contracts, according to the bill. Failure to meet the quota triggers an application process for the union. It is unclear whether the union is able to collectively bargain while in the application stage. GAU and its parent unions: United Faculty of Florida, Florida Education Association, National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers also have negotiated thousands of discounts for members, ranging from local restaurants to phone and insurance plans.
Virginia Tech graduate students and staff are launching labor unions
September 7, 2023 // It’s an effort that has been in the works for three years, as the groups have quietly recruited members while, across the country, campus labor unions have gained attention. On Tuesday, members of the United Campus Workers of Virginia Tech (UCW-VT) and the Virginia Tech Graduate Labor Union (VT GLU) will team up in a rally on the Blacksburg campus. They hope going public will attract new members and draw attention to their efforts to press university administrators for improvements for campus workers at all levels. Together, the unions have a potential membership of about 20,000 people affiliated with Tech.
Here’s why the US labor movement is so popular but union membership is dwindling.
September 6, 2023 // Labor laws in the US make it more difficult for employees to form unions: Around 27 states have passed "Right to Work" laws, making it more difficult for workers to unionize. These laws provide union representation to nonunion members in union workplaces– without requiring the payment of union dues. It also gives workers the option to join a union or opt out. Workplace sectors that were traditionally union strongholds, now make up less of the workforce, such as manufacturing, transportation, and construction.
New Book Details Government Unions Using Taxpayer Dollars to Push Radical Ideology on the Nation
July 6, 2023 // Teachers unions are writing the playbook of the hard Left. The Freedom Foundation obtained “Racial Justice in Education,” an internal document published in 2018 by the National Education Association. It illustrates, in shocking detail, the degree to which the nation’s largest teachers union embraces the tenets of critical race theory and shows how this neo-Marxist ideology serves as the fountainhead of the union’s support of a host of radical policies, from defunding the police to banning voter ID requirements.
A Mandate for Labor Error: Big Labor Radicalizes
May 25, 2023 // s for claims by some conservatives that embracing unions will drive electoral success, these notions arise from populist factions’ overinterpretation of the 2016 election results and under-interpretation of elections since then. Many note that in his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump’s efforts in the upper Midwest states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania were aided by his moderate stances on economic issues relative to the positions of prior Republican candidates like Mitt Romney. And this is generally true—but not on labor-relations issues.
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.
Op-Ed: Loudoun County teachers deserve all the facts
April 11, 2023 // NEA president, Becky Pringle, makes over half-a-million dollars each year, and VEA Executive Director, Brenda Pike, has a total compensation of $225,861, which is nearly five times higher than the average teacher salary in Virginia. Loudoun officials have estimated the school district will spend over $3 million annually to fund administrative positions that earn more than two times the starting teacher salary. The teachers and school staff members are not winners in this scenario. As I see in heavily unionized states, today’s model of collective bargaining for public employees reeks of a Ponzi scheme with all the money going to the top and very little benefit trickling back down to local teachers.
Progressive group pressures congressional office on staff unionization rule
March 21, 2023 // “Capitol Hill staffers’ unionization attempts are not about worker’s rights but building political power and political capital,” said Brigette Herbst, AFFT organizing director, “Unions today are a far cry from unions in the past because they care more about organizing ‘elite’ employees, such as university graduate students or Capitol Hill staffers, than taking care of blue-collar basic concerns. It’s just a new money grab from worker paychecks for union bosses to siphon to politicians.” “As with all public employees, when Capitol Hill staffers unionize, then they will directly negotiate collective bargaining agreements with the politicians that they work for and help elect,” she added, “how is this not a conflict-of-interest and a breach of public trust?”