Posts tagged UTLA
Chicago Teachers Union secures clean energy wins in new contract
April 22, 2025 // If approved, the contract will result in new programs that prepare students for clean energy jobs, developed in collaboration with local labor unions. It mandates that district officials work with the teachers union to seek funding for clean energy investments and update a climate action plan by 2026. And it calls for installing heat pumps and outfitting 30 schools with solar panels — if funding can be secured. The Southeast Environmental Task Force led the successful fight to ban new petcoke storage in Chicago, and the group’s co-executive director Olga Bautista is also vice president of the 21-member school board. People for Community Recovery was founded by Hazel Johnson, who is often known as “the mother of the environmental justice movement.” And ONE Northside emphasizes the link between clean energy and affordable housing.
CALIFORNIA: Charter School Teachers Vote To Unionize (Commentary)
June 25, 2024 // Private sector employees have been most affected by these losses. While only 6% of these employees are represented by unions, 32.5% of their public-sector counterparts have these protections. One of the ways that right-wing politicians have tried to reduce these rates is to transfer education funds from public schools to privately run schools whose workers are not represented by unions. Since California voted not to allow school vouchers in 2000, Privatizer’s primary way has been through charter schools. This has been particularly true in Los Angeles which has more students in charter schools than any city in the country. Unions do not represent employees in most of these charter schools, but that is starting to change.
Opinion: Union Leaders Aren’t Fooling Anyone on Labor Day
September 6, 2023 // the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has formed a so called “Lavender Caucus” to advocate on its behalf for pro-LGBTQ legislation; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) issued a resolution demanding stricter gun control laws; the National Education Association (NEA) quietly published a gender ideology resource guide, “Schools in Transition,” in 2015 that laid the groundwork for some of the craziest positions on gendered bathrooms, high school sports and pronoun usage confounding parents and teachers across the country; NEA President Becky Pringle in 2022 issued a statement on behalf of her union excoriating the U.S. Supreme Court for its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson overturning Roe v. Wade and sending the abortion question back to the state; and, United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) President Cecily Myart-Cruz in 2021 asks her union to issue a resolution condemning the state of Israel for its “war crimes” against the Palestinians.
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.
Op-ed: Expect the Same Familiar Lies From Randi Weingarten on Capitol Hill Today
April 26, 2023 // In July 2020, Weingarten vehemently opposed allowing students to learn in person, even threatening a strike if her demands weren’t met. “(N)othing is off the table,” she said. And she meant it. United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) proudly announced it would not reopen unless certain conditions were met. These included the closure of privately operated, publicly funded charter schools; defunding law enforcement; adoption of a government-run Medicare-for-all healthcare system; implementation of a statewide wealth tax; construction of fully-funded housing for the state’s homeless population; and, increased financial support for the children of illegal aliens. Predictably, none of the conditions had anything to do with educating students and everything to do with pushing UTLA’s radical, leftwing agenda.
Why Government Unions—Unlike Trade Unions—Corrupt Democracy
April 9, 2023 // Newly-elected governors and mayors in most states quickly discover that they have no managerial control over schools, police, and other government operations. If an elected executive has the backbone to try to buck the union, and restore managerial powers when an agreement comes up for renegotiation, the executive in many states will find that unelected arbitrators have the final say. Near-zero accountability makes its practically impossible to transform a lousy school, or an abusive police culture, because the supervisor can’t enforce good values and standards. No accountability also removes the mutual trust needed for any healthy organization. Why try hard, or go the extra mile, when others just go through the motions? The absence of accountability is like releasing a nerve gas into the agency or school. Rigid work rules guarantee massive inefficiency. Basic services such as trash collection, and road and transit maintenance, cost two to three times what it would cost in the private sector. Need someone to help out or fill in? Sorry, not permitted. Need teachers to do remote teaching during the pandemic? There’s nothing about that in the agreement, so it must be negotiated.
Was the LAUSD strike illegal? That’s up to a judge to decide
March 29, 2023 // There are two types of strikes that can be declared: economic and unfair labor practice, said PERB General Counsel Felix De La Torre. An economic strike requires that union leaders first exhaust all avenues of negotiation. This requires declaring that negotiations have reached an impasse, enlisting the support of an independent mediator and carrying out fact finding research. While SEIU Local 99 completed the first two of those steps, it did not finish the third. An unfair labor practice strike, on the other hand, can be declared at any time. This is the type of strike that SEIU Local 99 declared after filing over a dozen unfair labor practice charges with PERB against the district. These charges include alleged surveillance of union members, retaliation against members, withholding of information and interference in union activities.