Your Union Leaders Are Betraying You

First published Monday, June 04, 2012

in Schools Matter.

Attention All Teachers (Educators): Your Union Leaders Are Betraying You

Though this article is about Massachusetts it perfectly true for California as well. Last year Paul Toner, the ostensible leader of the MA Teachers Association, surrendered his membership by capitulating without a whimper to the first step in the corporate blueprint to replace tenured and experienced teachers with a new generation of untrained neophytes who will cycle through the system after a two to three year stint.  That first step in that process was to establish a teacher evaluation scheme based on student test scores, and to link job security pay to those test scores.  Toner accomplished this feat without a vote by the rank and file--not even an opinion survey. 

This kind of open contempt for the teachers he was elected to represent in 2010 signified a transparent betrayal of teachers and children for the self-aggrandizing goal of cozying up to the corporate foundations and education terrorist organizations like Stand for Children (see Jonah Edelman spill the beans on the real goals of Stand on Children).

Now we find that President Toner has surrendered Massachusetts teachers once more in Step 2 of the corporate education deformers' plan to destroy teacher tenure, job security, and due process .  From Barbara Gordon posted Saturday on Facebook:

This week the Massachusetts Teachers Association's Board of Directors voted to put forward legislation that will end the use of tenure and seniority as the primary factors to use in layoff situations. Instead, the primary criteria will be performance evaluations and "the best interests of the students" with seniority being used only for "tie-breakers."  

This was a "legislative compromise" the MTA leadership worked out with educational terrorists Stand for Children, who had a ballot question that did the same thing and more, ready for the November election. The MTA leadership negotiated this compromise without input or approval from rank and file MTA members. Their position is that there is no way we could have beaten Stand on the ballot question so it was better to compromise and lose seniority rights and involuntary transfer rights than to fight and possibly lose those things and more.  

People are shocked and furious. Does anyone have any ideas for anything we can do about this? They are pushing to get this into the legislature and passed by July 3, the deadline when Stand for Children has to submit the final paperwork for the ballot question. 

We know we might lose the ballot question, but we wanted a chance to fight. If the MTA leadership will not fight for us, where are we? What are we paying our dues for?

And this from Tim Scott:

MTA & STAND FOR CHILDREN: As we know, collective bargaining entails negotiating with our employer over our compensation, hours of work and working conditions (broadly). Under these rules, we often need to organize ourselves to take action to ensure that we strengthen our contracts, while not giving away past gains. 

The current MTA leadership has now decided to take us in a new and very different direction and bargain (secretly in the beginning) with Stand for Children - a private anti-union, corporate front group - not only over contractual issues, but fundamental union rights. Instead of organizing members and allies to fight this aggressive assault by a group notoriously hostile to teachers unions, Toner and company chose to take a pathetic and defeatist stance to enter into "negotiations" with Stand, knowing that teachers rights and the the union's integrity will be significantly damaged.

There is one solution to this problem, and it is the same solution to the problem RIDDLED OFTEN CORRUPT NEA and CTA:  replace the duplicitous cowardly union leaders who have sold millions of dues paying union members down the river in mass, espousing the same at the local level and refusing to allow descent.  But even these measures will not be enough, for the new leaders must be chosen (which would imply the right for members to vote) from those few young men and women with courage and a willingness to lead the FIGHT. Who will restore the social justice mission that unionism was once based upon, a mission that advocates for children's rights to read and learn and grow, parents rights to have a say in school matters (COURAGE ENOUGH TO SAY THE SCHOOL BOARD SYSTEM FAILED AT THAT TASK), and workers' rights to the respect and dignity that is afforded teachers and school staff in other countries as a matter of course.


There is no future for educating all children, or parents emmeshed in their children's learning while having Gates and Broad control the voices of Educators by buying off phony leaders like Paul Toner, and ramrodding poorly thought out ideals (extrapolated from reading a lot of books, we're told) but having no significant idea what occurs in the classroom. That's right Neither ever taught. 


Let's not forget GATES built Microsoft on stolen tech that it's self was stolen by JOBS from Bell Laboratorys, and grew the behemoth MS without any real competition. He doesn't qualify as a sociology or education genius in my book. He just has a lot of money. So does the prince of Saudi Arabia. Are the Saudi Royals then education experts as well?

If the teaching profession is to be saved for now and the future, teachers must take back their unions (F... that, union leaders need to reach out to members in meaningful ways, open their accounting books, embrace descent) prepare for the impending fight to come (yes, be prepared to strike!) and reclaim the mission that made them a movement of solidarity among teachers, parents, and students.  There is no other choice, and there is no greater calling.