The Blue Wall of Silence Is Starting to Crack

[Cow Poke]

If you cannot or will not provide some substantive corroboration for your comments our exchanges on this topic are at an end.

Here's something else for you to totally stubbornly ignore, as is your habit...

A Simplified Overview of Teachers' Unions and How They Work (lawinfo.com)

Teachers Unions & Collective Bargaining

Disclaimer
A teachers' union is a special type of labor union designed to fight for the rights of educators. With roots dating back more than 150 years in the U.S., these organizations play critical roles not only in securing benefits for teachers but also shaping the way education works. For instance, thanks to lobbying by the National Education Association, or NEA, in the late 1860s, Congress created the Department of Education.

What Teachers' Unions Bargain For

Like other types of trade unions, teachers' unions use collective bargaining agreements, or CBAs, to protect their members. Over the years, collective bargaining has helped educators gain many rights, such as:

• Fair working conditions, compensation, and pay equality
• Tenure mechanisms that prevented qualified educators from being punished for their personal biases, political beliefs, or other unfair reasons
• Access to various benefits

When it comes to education policy, teachers' unions also work to ensure that educators can fulfill their job duties in the face of tough odds. For instance, the NEA played a critical role in shifting the focus from federal policies like the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which included 2001's No Child Left Behind Act, towards alternatives like the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015. At the same time, education policy is a very politicized issue, and not every lawmaker is onboard with the kinds of changes that teachers seek. These differences of opinion mean that individual educators may be subject to a variety of laws depending on where they are in their careers.

Absolutely nothing in there about the children - it's a LABOR UNION to protect the adults.

[rogue06]

You have provided unsubstantiated opinion and a selected instance. However, as I have just noted in another reply to you, you prefer simple answers to complex issues.

And as I noted you have a distinct and unpleasant habit of summarily dismissing everything that does not conform to your selected narrative. And if overcomplicating a rather simple issue is what is required to push your narrative you will do so without hesitation.

[Cow Poke]

If you cannot or will not provide some substantive corroboration for your comments our exchanges on this topic are at an end.

What a steaming load of crap! I have stated the case regarding unions --- because you can't dispute the FACTS, you're doing what you do so often --- run away.

What have I said about police unions or teachers unions that is false? You can't answer that!

[Cow Poke]

Offering unsubstantiated opinion tells me nothing.

These are facts. Dispute them if you can.

With respect to my reference to teaching unions, and as I duly explained, my reference was to the teaching profession.

Yes, you doubled down on your ignorance.

In other words unions established to defend/protect those involved in that profession.

And ONLY those in that profession ---- the Unions themselves teach nobody - and they only care about the interests of the teachers and other dues payers -- not the students.
Same with the police unions.

Now, you can keep on with your nutty prattle about "unsubstantiated opinions" with regard to the FACTS, but it doesn't change the FACTS.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Yeah, forgive me if I don't lose any sleep over your judgmental little prissiness.

If you cannot or will not provide some substantive corroboration for your comments our exchanges on this topic are at an end.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Unsupported summary dismissal and hand waving off of anything and everything that doesn't fit her preferred narrative.

How so H_A.

You have provided unsubstantiated opinion and a selected instance. However, as I have just noted in another reply to you, you prefer simple answers to complex issues.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

We have been supporting our remarks over and over and over.
You have been wrong on so MANY points, it's not even funny.

The "teaching unions", as you so ignorantly call them, teach nobody.
They are LABOR unions who have one goal in mind -- to advance and protect the interests of the teachers who pay their dues.

Same with "police unions" -- they are LABOR unions with one goal in mind - to advance and protect the interests of the police who pay their dues.

Those are what are called "fact" thingies.

Offering unsubstantiated opinion tells me nothing.

With respect to my reference to teaching unions, and as I duly explained, my reference was to the teaching profession. In other words unions established to defend/protect those involved in that profession.

[rogue06]

Selected instances and unsupported remarks.

Unsupported summary dismissal and hand waving off of anything and everything that doesn't fit her preferred narrative.

How so H_A.

[Cow Poke]

Selected instances and unsupported remarks.

We have been supporting our remarks over and over and over.
You have been wrong on so MANY points, it's not even funny.

The "teaching unions", as you so ignorantly call them, teach nobody.
They are LABOR unions who have one goal in mind -- to advance and protect the interests of the teachers who pay their dues.

Same with "police unions" -- they are LABOR unions with one goal in mind - to advance and protect the interests of the police who pay their dues.

Those are what are called "fact" thingies.

[Cow Poke]

I consider your response far too simplistic.

Yeah, forgive me if I don't lose any sleep over your judgmental little prissiness.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

If you really want to see the teacher's union philosophy summed up nice and neat, then the quote attributed to Albert Shanker, president of the United Federation of Teachers and then the American Federation of Teachers) for well over 30 years, says it all:

When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I'll start representing the interests of school children

Teacher's unions have been pretty upfront with the fact that they aren't there to improve education but rather to make union member's jobs easier.

Selected instances and unsupported remarks.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

They don't represent the teaching profession - they protect teachers - good or bad.



The liberals have been in charge of public education for decades.
The liberals are supportive of the public school unions.
The public school unions give very generously to the liberal politicians.

So, yeah, it's the liberals, and you are showing your profound ignorance of the facts.

I consider your response far too simplistic.

[Cow Poke]

Again, the NEA - the National Education Association - is not about education at all, but it's a LABOR union notorious for backing liberal candidates and causes, and spending massive amounts of dues payers' money on political causes that the dues payers don't necessarily support, themselves. But just TRY to get a job in public education without being fleeced by the NEA.

National Education Association a Left-Wing 'Lobbying Group.' You'd Never Know it Watching Networks

When even a liberal president criticizes the educational system, the groups happy with the status quo have problems. “We've got to be able to identify teachers who are doing well [and] teachers who are not doing well. We've got to give them the support and the training to do well,” said President Obama on NBC's Today Show Sept. 27. “And, ultimately, if some teachers aren't doing a good job, they've got to go.”

The president was discussing the new documentary on education reform, “Waiting for Superman.” Both the film and Obama's comments ran the risk of angering a huge, powerful liberal constituency: The National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union.

But while the media doesn't seem to have a problem with recklessly labeling conservative groups – when it comes to accurately describing liberal special interest groups like the NEA, news broadcasters appear to be at a loss.

The NEA, America's 3.2-million member teachers' union and a liberal lobbying group that is one of the largest and most powerful donors to the Democratic Party, was almost never labeled as such on MSNBC, CNN and the network news stations over the past year.

Just How Liberal?

The motto on the NEA's website is “Great Public Schools for Every Student.” The important word there is “Public.” The NEA is ideologically opposed to school vouchers and charter schools as a way break the monopoly of failed public schools, even as it fights increased accountability for teachers in an effort to make schools “great.”.

President Obama's Sept. 27 statements appear to part ways with the liberal policies backed by the NEA. His words, however, may just be lip service. In the recent Democratic primary for Mayor of Washington, D.C., (a city with some of America's worst performing public schools) Obama didn't endorse incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty who had been a major advocate for school reform..

In fact, the NEA helped put Obama in the White House, and its advocacy for liberal policies goes well outside the realm of education. An October 2008 press release available on the union's website announced a “multipronged communications blitz in 10 battleground states” that attacked “Sen. McCain's wrongheaded prescription plan for what ails America's health care system.”

The fact is, when Democrats look to their liberal base, the NEA is one of the stalwarts they count on. The NEA spent roughly $50 million on “political activities and lobbying” mostly for Democratic causes and campaigns in 2009. The organization has 16 in-house lobbyists, and also outsources to four other major D.C. lobbying firms. From 1990 to 2008, 93 percent of the donations made by the group went to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

...

[Cow Poke]

National Education Association (NEA)

(Bolding and Embiggening mine)

The National Education Association (NEA) is America’s largest labor union representing nearly three million employees, principally teachers. With affiliates in every state across 14,000 communities ^[1], NEA represents teachers, education support professionals, retired teachers, education faculty and staff, substitute teachers, and administrators.^[2] It exercises enormous political clout in everything from contract negotiations to issue advocacy and lobbying.^[3]

The NEA is a major political player, with its associated political action committees contributing nearly $143.5 million to federal candidates and committees—97% of which supported Democrats and liberals—from 1990 through February 2019. ^[4] The NEA is also deeply entangled in state and local politics and is a major contributor to left-of-center nonprofit organizations.^[5]

The NEA doesn't give a rat's rear about education - they are there to collect dues, line their own pocketbooks, and pay off politicians.

[Cow Poke]

If you really want to see the teacher's union philosophy summed up nice and neat, then the quote attributed to Albert Shanker, president of the United Federation of Teachers and then the American Federation of Teachers) for well over 30 years, says it all:

When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I'll start representing the interests of school children

Teacher's unions have been pretty upfront with the fact that they aren't there to improve education but rather to make union member's jobs easier.

EGGzackly. I don't know what teachers unions do in Europe, which is why I reserve my comments for things about which I actually know a thing or two.

H_A would be well advised to do likewise. She is suffering under the delusion that Teachers Unions actually care about education.