Posts tagged Randi Weingarten
Op-ed: Placing teachers unions’ power above students’ lives
July 11, 2023 // Ms. Weingarten is the head of the powerful American Federation of Teachers union, and Mr. Pompeo’s assessment notwithstanding, President Biden’s secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, just appointed her to serve on the Department of Homeland Security’s school safety council. According to Mr. Mayorkas, the council will advise the department on school safety and help it “counter the evolving and emerging threats to the homeland.”
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.
Commentary: To Unions, Organizing Time Is Fine When It’s on the Taxpayers’ Dime
June 29, 2023 // Despite public sector unions, and particularly teachers’ unions like Weingarten’s American Federation for Teachers, facing mounting scrutiny for their role in school closures and broader left-wing political activism, the practice of release time has garnered little attention.
AFT’s Weingarten speaks at launch event of new progressive group
June 27, 2023 // Both AFT and the National Education Association (NEA) were listed as key partners on UFD’s website, along with SEIU, League of Conservation Voters, and the Center for Popular Democracy. It begs the question why unions, who should be focused on serving their members, are lining up alongside clearly political organizations to support–even headline–partisan political causes. UFD’s funding sources and its official registration status are not available online. However, several of its partner groups are well-known recipients of funding from progressive, dark-money organizations such as the Sixteen Thirty Fund. The Sixteen Thirty Fund received $91 million in 2020 from another progressive group called Arabella Advisors, which pulled in $1.6 billion in funding in 2020. Arabella Advisors, through the Sixteen Thirty Fund, spent $44 million in the 2020 elections in addition to funding progressive news network States Newsroom. AFFT previously reported that Arabella Advisors also funded a unionization effort in Congress through the work of an organization called Demand Progress Education Fund.
Commentary: The Left and their Union Masters
June 27, 2023 // Since Janus, government employee unions have lost nearly 800,000 members, taking with them billions in dues revenue that can never again be used to fund a machine that suppresses the rights of its own members in order to advance policies that rob the rest of us our God-given freedoms.
UFT’s new contract reminds teachers of union’s past failures
June 27, 2023 // In 2014, UFT secured a complex contract with New York City that included retroactive back pay for teachers that would be paid out over several years. However, the contract excluded teachers who retired or left the profession before 2015. Over 4,000 teachers never received back pay, which for some could have been as much as an 8% pay bump. The affected teachers were outraged. In response, American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten said, at the time, “Would UFT have liked it for all—of course; but not unprecedented practice [to not pay the teachers who retired].” UFT is an affiliate of AFT. Then, in 2020, after several years of payments, New York City informed UFT that it did not have enough money in its budget to finish the retroactive payments due to a pandemic-induced budget shortfall. UFT blamed New York City for delaying the payment for all teachers, and an arbitrator ruled the city must make the payments. UFT President Michael Mulgrew said, “This is far from a perfect solution for thousands of our members who are still owed deferred wages that can go back as far as years.” He explained, “The decision … makes it clear that the city must find a way to meet its financial obligations to its educators.”
Randi Weingarten Appointed to DHS School Safety Advisory Council
June 23, 2023 // In the fall of 2020, Weingarten denounced calls to reopen schools as “reckless, callous, cruel.” An AFT affiliate in Chicago similarly condemned then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot in 2022, who called her efforts to reopen school “rooted in sexism, racism, and misogyny.”
Public-Sector Union Membership Down 10 Percent Since Janus
June 20, 2023 // Maxford Nelson of the Freedom Foundation, a conservative union-watchdog group, has crunched the numbers and found that 733,745 workers have left the four largest public-sector unions since the Janus decision, which is a decline of about 10 percent. Those four are the National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
Biden’s rally with union workers will mark first big event of his 2024 campaign
June 19, 2023 // Several of the nation’s most powerful unions — including the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — officially endorsed Biden’s campaign on Friday. The first-of-its-kind joint endorsement among the unions and the backdrop of hundreds of workers are part of a meticulously choreographed effort to show the support of labor behind what Biden himself calls the most pro-union president in history.
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.