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Category: Unions

Jan 01 2025

NJ Teachers No Longer Need to Know the Three R’s

Where DEI reigns supreme, competing standards must be abolished, for they are potentially racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/fatphobic/ableist/etc. Therefore, teachers are no longer required to be able to read, write, or do math — at least, not in New Jersey, thanks to a new law that goes into effect today.

Via Daily Caller:

Individuals seeking an instructional certificate will no longer need to pass a “basic skills” test administered by the state’s Commissioner of Education.

Democratic State Senator Jim Beach sponsored the bill. He says it is the best way to recruit more teachers. Paying them more wouldn’t work, because teachers are already compensated handsomely for cushy jobs by New Jersey taxpayers.

A powerful teachers union, the New Jersey Education Association, was a driving force behind the bill, calling the testing requirement “an unnecessary barrier to entering the profession.”

Maybe Big Unions are right for once. The three R’s are not relevant anymore, if all students need to learn is that white people are bad, homosexuality is good, and the planet is doomed unless we embrace hand-to-mouth Marxism.

New Jersey followed the example of New York, which scrapped basic literacy requirements for teachers in 2017 in the name of “diversity.”

Let’s see how well it has worked out in New York:

Only about half of New York students in grades three through eight tested as proficient in English and Math in the 2022 to 2023 school year despite the state spending almost twice the national average on education and New York teachers remaining some of the highest-paid in the country, according to the National Education Association.

Rather than recoil in horror at what New York is doing to its children’s future, New Jersey followed its example — confirming that Democrats know perfectly well the damage their policies will cause.

Hat tip: Maggie’s Farm.

Oct 12 2024

Brandon Johnson Uses Slavery to Justify Thievery

No wonder Brandon Johnson sides with rioters against law-abiding citizens. He is a looter himself.

From the Wall Street Journal:

On Monday Mr. Johnson replaced the entire Chicago school board with his allies after the previous board resigned en masse last Friday. The previous board opposed the mayor’s plan to take a $300 million high-interest loan to hand raises to the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which funded his election campaign.

Johnson ran on the Black Lives Matter platform. The scale of his looting puts even BLM to shame:

The Chicago school district is junk rated, so Mr. Johnson’s plan for a $300 million loan would cost CPS more than $700 million. The union wants 9% annual raises, climate initiatives and affordable housing units, among other non-teaching benefits that would cost between $10.2 billion and 13.9 billion, according to the Illinois Policy Institute.

The insatiable greed of public sector unions and their allies is driving the entire state into bankruptcy. Against those who don’t approve, Johnson brandishes the slavery card:

“When our people wanted to be liberated and emancipated in this country, the argument was, you can’t free black people because it would be too expensive,” he said. “They said that it would be fiscally irresponsible for this country to liberate black people. And now you have detractors making the same argument of the Confederacy when it comes to public education in this system.”

Meanwhile, as a result of unions running the schools,

Only 25% of Chicago students are proficient in reading and only around 20% are proficient in math, according to data from Wirepoints.

Other than the Brandon Johnson campaign, where does all the money sucked up by the CTU go? No one knows, because it has not produced a public audit of its finances since 2020 — in violation of its bylaws.

Yet again we see that Brandon Johnson personifies the Democrat Death Spiral. A city that would elect him has no future.

On a tip from Varla.

Oct 03 2024

Kamala Harris Endorses Greedy Dockworker Strike

As Joe Biden never tires of reminding us, Democrats are the party of Big Unions (even if Teamsters rank and file support Trump). It is on behalf of unions that Democrats want to make freelance work illegal. Biden’s love of unions is so obsessive that when asked about airstrikes in Yemen, he thought of labor strikes and responded by announcing his support for collective bargaining. So no one should be surprised that his last minute replacement Kamala Harris endorses the outlandishly unreasonable dockworkers strike that is a knife to the neck of regular Americans.

Via Daily Wire:

“This strike is about fairness,” Harris said.

She followed this with predictable Marxist duckspeak castigating businesses for making a profit and then accused Trump of not being pro-union.

The dockworkers union has donated more than $1.6 million to Democrats under union president Harold Daggett, who threatened to “cripple” the economy if dockworkers did not get the contract they wanted.

The willingness to cripple America is not the only thing union and wealthy Democrat bigwigs have in common. Commiela denounced executive pay at shipping companies. Meanwhile:

Daggett made $728,000 last year as union president, plus another $173,000 as president emeritus of the New Jersey local, POLITICO reported.

The New York Post has published drone photos of his opulent home:

The hulking, two-story mansion — located on a 10-acre property in Sparta, a leafy enclave 50 miles west of New York City — encircles a spacious backyard patio with an amoeba-shaped pool.

A covered outdoor bar is situated next to what appears to be a massive, brick pizza oven.

A gate on the far side of the patio opens toward what looks like a free-standing sauna surrounded by a spacious wooden deck. A expansive swathe of forest surrounds the property on all sides.

The posh compound is nestled in a picturesque section of the Garden State near the Delaware Water Gap…

Daggett is said to be a member of the Genovese crime family.

The union was already offered a staggering 50% raise, but Daggett turned it down. Also, he demands zero port automation, ensuring that the communist Chinese — unburdened by unions — continue to race ahead of us.

The Biden/Harris administration could stop the strike for 80 days under the Taft-Hartley Act but has declined to do so.

The strike is costing the economy over $3 billion per day. There will be shortages and probably layoffs for normal Americans, while Daggett and friends continue to live large in their mansions, ensconced in phony working man rhetoric.

On tips from Jack D and WDS 2.0.

Sep 19 2024

Teamsters Leadership Overrules Members on Trump

Despite pandering to unions by Democrats, Teamsters rank and file support Trump by a nearly 2 to 1 margin.

Results were Harris 34%, Trump 60% in the Teamsters electronic member poll and Harris 31%, Trump 58% in the research phone poll.

Support for Trump is so overwhelming that, given its commitment to democratic principles, the leadership naturally decided to endorse — nobody.

Teamsters President Sean O’Brien explained why there is no disconnect between leadership and membership. Unfortunately, he explained in meaningless duckspeak, leaving us none the wiser.

In addition to refusing to endorse Trump,

Then, the state offices of the teamsters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, California, Hawaii, and Guam all decided to support Harris.

One party represents our corrupt, incompetent, degenerate ruling class. Kudos to Teamsters rank and file for voting against it.

On tips from Jester, WDS 2.0, and Varla.

Sep 03 2024

Kamala Harris Does Foghorn Leghorn

If her conspicuous incompetence ever derails her political career, Kamala Harris will need a new line of work. Maybe she could do voices for cartoons. Her Foghorn Leghorn voice rivals Mel Blanc. She tried it out in Detroit:

Not many people reportedly raised as an Indian in a nice neighborhood in Montreal can talk like that.

Less hilarious than her cartoonish phoniness is that Commiela’s pandering to unions is likely to include destroying the jobs of the millions of Americans who work as independent contractors.

On a tip from Varla.

Jul 23 2024

At the Top of Public Schools

Any resistance to Democrat rule is an “existential threat to democracy and freedom.” You probably are not gullible enough to believe that on the say-so of the leftists running the media. But the next generation may grow up believing it, because leftists also run the schools.

Presenting Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and consequently one of the most powerful figures in the Democratic Party, which uses teachers unions to launder vast sums of taxpayer money:

If that’s the level of fanaticism displayed to the public, imagine what goes on behind closed schoolroom doors. No wonder they oppose cameras in the classroom.

On a tip from Wiggins.

May 06 2024

Chicago Teachers Union Displays Astonishing Greed

Where pathological greed meets radical leftism, there you will find teachers unions. In Chicago — launchpad of Barack Obama’s political career — the union has degenerated into a mob of looters:

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is negotiating a new contract with the public schools system and is understood to be calling for an extra $50 billion to pay for wage hikes as well as other demands such as fully paid abortions for its members, new migrant services and facilities and a host of LGBT-related requirements and training in schools.

To put the figure into context, the total base tax receipts for the state of Illinois last year were $50.7 billion.

Only 21% of Chicago 8th graders are proficient at reading. But no doubt they are well versed in alternative pronouns and know how to put a condom on.

Uselessness pays well where the woke are in charge:

Union President Stacy Davis Gates’ audacious plan calls for members to bank at least 9% wage increases each year through fiscal year 2028.

The average salary of a teacher in Chicago Public Schools is $93,182, according to research by the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative nonprofit think tank. Therefore, the average teacher’s pay will increase by half to $144,620 in the 2027-2028 school year, it says.

Not bad for unskilled part-time babysitters who take summers, weekends, and every conceivable holiday off.

That figure would equate to more than double the median household income in Chicago, according to Census Bureau statistics.

Yet the media bleats piteously that teachers are unpaid.

If you think the outrageous demands will be laughed off, consider that the mayor is ultraleftist Brandon Johnson:

Johnson, a former CTU legislative coordinator who was put forward by the union to run for mayor. As of June 30, 2023, CTU had funneled more than $2.6 million into Johnson’s campaign while he received more than $6 million from teachers unions altogether, according to the Illinois Policy Institute.

Chicago already spends $21,000 per year per student, producing so little benefit for the money that Davis herself sends her son to private school — though the preferredly pigmented Davis has proclaimed that school choice is racist.

Meanwhile, Illinois State Comptroller Susana Mendoza reports on what the liberal locust swarm has been doing to the state’s finances:

Illinois is on pace to spend an additional $6.2 billion more than it receives in revenue this fiscal year alone if the state continues its current rate of spending without a budget.

She observes that “the spending is open-ended and our fiscal path is catastrophic.”

Progressives interpret this to mean they had better grab fast before Illinois collapses and there is nothing left to grab. Those in charge in Chicago are the equivalent of a Black Lives Matter mob going through a department store.

On tips from Varla, Jack D, and WDS 2.0.

Apr 17 2024

“Death to America” Chanted at Teamster Headquarters

Joe Biden describes himself as the “the most pro-union president in American history.” It is largely on behalf of unions that his regime aspires to throw millions of Americans out of work by making freelance work illegal in the erstwhile Land of the Free. As with the civil rights movement, any good unions accomplished in the past is overshadowed by their current perniciousness. To get an idea of how malevolent unions have become, let’s peak through the basement windows at the headquarters of the largest private sector union in the country — the Teamsters:

“Death to America,” far left activists chanted as they convened in the basement of the Teamsters Union’s headquarters on Saturday to discuss plans on how to disrupt the Democratic National Convention on August 19…

They even learned to chant it in Farsi/Persian, the language of Iran, which has been at war with the USA since Islamists took over in 1979.

It was reportedly Shabbir Rizvi, an organizer with Anti-War Committee Chicago, who led the Farsi lesson.

As usual, it started with a denunciation of the Little Satan and quickly moved on to the main target. Rizvi’s audience of left-wing activists took up the chant with enthusiasm.

There isn’t any nuance here. These are the bad guys.

On a tip from Dr. Kufi Tutite.

Aug 02 2023

Being Drunk Excuses Crashing Semi

Personal responsibility has been canceled in favor of moonbattery. To the list of symptoms this diseased condition has produced, add drunken truck drivers:

A Quebec trucking company has been ordered to reinstate a driver who was fired after she drank at least nine beers before she lost control of her truck on a Pennsylvania highway.

Freedom has also been canceled. That’s why it is up to Big Government to determine who works for a trucking company, rather than the company.

The driver’s actions amounted to serious misconduct, but her drinking was the result of a disability — alcoholism — and trucking company Groupe Robert should have made a reasonable accommodation for her, labour arbitrator Huguette April said in her written July 18 decision.

The liberal media has used the same reasoning to excuse the many crimes committed by Joe Biden’s bagman Hunter, who is said not to be responsible for his behavior because he suffers from the disability of smoking too much crack.

“The night of the accident, she needed to drink,” April said. “She admitted that even though she knew she shouldn’t, the need was stronger, like something that she couldn’t control.”

Her blood alcohol was more than twice the legal limit when she crashed, reflecting the heavy burden of disability fate has saddled her with.

Now that we no longer have agency, behavior that used to be frowned upon confers treasured “oppressed” status. For example, ostentatious homosexuals can expect to be first hired and last fired as a reward for disease-spreading behavior that until recently was universally reviled, because indulging in it is “who they are.”

Likewise, if you are going to crash a truck, make sure you get drunk first. You won’t be held accountable if you can tell the boss that alcoholism did it.

Groupe Robert, meanwhile, told April that the collective agreement between the company and the union representing drivers is clear: The penalty for drinking and driving is immediate termination of employment.

But not if a moonbat judge overrules the agreement. Ostensibly binding agreements are meaningless where Big Government holds absolute power.

The union naturally sides with the judge:

Marc-Andre Gauthier, a spokesman for Teamsters Canada, the union that represents the driver and that challenged her dismissal, said it has an obligation to defend its members in work-related matters, regardless of the circumstances.

The Teamsters just destroyed Yellow Corp:

When struggling Yellow Corp. sought financial concessions from its union employees this year, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien refused and tweeted the image of a gravestone in a cemetery with “Yellow” on it. Congratulations, Mr. O’Brien. The trucking firm said Sunday it is preparing to file for bankruptcy, and some 22,000 Teamsters could lose their jobs.

The 99-year-old Yellow was the country’s third largest less-than-truckload carrier, combining shipments from multiple customers on a single trailer. Trucking competition heated up after Congress deregulated the industry in 1980. Yet Yellow’s labor agreements with the Teamsters have made it less competitive with non-union rivals.

Unions may help wipe out the entire profession, if truck drivers are made extinct in favor of self-driving vehicles in part to avoid drunken drivers.

On tips from Steve T, Brian Brandt, and Varla.

Jul 18 2023

Becky Pringle, Frightening Leftist Maniac

Unless you want your kids indoctrinated in a poisonous ideology based on sexual psychosis and racial hatred, get them out of public schools immediately. They are run by teachers unions, which are closely allied with the Democratic Party. That is to say, they are run by maniacs like Becky Pringle:

A recently unearthed video shows the head of the largest teachers union wailing on stage during a keynote address, calling students “our babies.”

As Creepy Joe reminds us, your children are their children.

During the National Education Association’s (NEA) July 3 Representative Assembly, Becky Pringle gave a keynote speech addressing more than 6,000 NEA delegates in Orlando, Florida. …

At the NEA’s representative assembly, delegates approved a new measure that calls for the organization and its members to promote sex-change procedures for LGBTQ youth.

Stand back for a blast of Becky Pringle:

The Hitler salute at 1:03 was highly appropriate. As Pamela Geller notes,

This woman is the leader of the largest teachers union in the United States, whose members have voted to push critical race theory in all 14,000 local school districts.

It’s true. In 2021,

the National Education Association (NEA) held its annual Representative Assembly, with delegates from across the United States voting on priorities and allocating funding for the upcoming school year, with the ideology of critical race theory — a form of race-based Marxism — taking center stage.

The union, which represents 3 million public school employees, approved funding for three separate items related to this issue: “increasing the implementation” of “critical race theory” in K-12 curricula, promoting critical race theory in local school districts, and attacking opponents of critical race theory, including parent organizations and conservative research centers. …

In the resolution, the union agreed to publicly “convey its support” for critical race theory, oppose restrictions in state legislatures, and use schools for political activism. The delegates pledged to “join with Black Lives Matter at School and the Zinn Education Project” to hold a “national day of action” on George Floyd’s birthday, recruiting teachers to hold political demonstrations and “teach lessons about structural racism and oppression.”

You wouldn’t entrust your children to Joe Biden. Don’t entrust them to Becky Pringle either.

On a tip from ABC of the ANC.

Mar 24 2023

Why Public Schools Must Be Abolished

Teachers unions are a cancer. In Los Angeles, this cancer has reached stage 4:

Local 99, which represents teacher’s aides, food-service workers, and other non-teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District ecosystem, demanded a 30% across-the-board salary increase plus a $2/hour addition for the lowest-paid worker, reported the Los Angeles Times.

The LAUSD offered a 23% raise, starting with 2% retroactive hike as of the 2020-21 school year and ending with a 5% boost in 2024-25, among other perks. However, Local 99 turned down the offer and determined not to continue negotiations.

Pathological greed inspired the union to go on strike, closing schools throughout the district.

American schools are dismal failures. Accountability is required to make them functional. In addition to raiding the public treasury and driving an ultraleft political agenda, teachers unions prevent accountability.

Like the socialist ideology they espouse, unions work great for the people at the top:

The Daily Mail reported that United Teachers Los Angeles president and BLM member Cecily Myart-Cruz, who represents over 35,000 members in the city, rushed off to attend an NBA game in a box suite after announcing the strike.

Suites run anywhere from $3,765 to over $12,547…

Students were set back when teachers unions, backed by the Biden Regime, exploited Covid as a pretext to avoid work. When asked about the impact keeping schools closed would have on kids,

Myart-Cruz told Los Angeles Magazine in August 2021, “There is no such thing as learning loss.”

True enough — because with moonbats like her in charge, there is no such thing as learning.

Test scores are collapsing. Instead of learning to read and do math, students are indoctrinated with antiwhite race hate and a depraved sexual agenda. The only constructive purpose of public schools at this point is to babysit children so their parents can work. But unions have made teachers too lazy to be relied on for even this minimal service.

Meanwhile, taxpayers are forced to pay over $24,000 per LA Unified School District student.

This isn’t education or even babysitting. It is a looting spree.

Boasts the arrogant union thug Myart-Cruz:

“You can recall the Governor, you can recall the school board. But how are you going to recall me?”

Here’s how. Public schools must be abolished. A voucher system allowing for competition between private schools would guarantee access to education and provide accountability that would radically improve the quality.

On a tip from Mr. Freemarket.

Mar 09 2023

Alarming Nomination Escalates War on Freelancers

We will know we no longer live in any kind of land of the free when the federal government has prevented us from working on an independent basis. This continues to be an objective of the Biden Regime, which wants to throw tens of millions of freelancers out of work on behalf of the unions that purchase power through Democrats.

This tyrannical insanity has already been inflicted in California:

The bill known as AB5 which restricts freelance employment so severely that it’s practically a ban on freelance workers has been blamed for contributing to the mass exodus with California unprecedentedly losing population every year that the law has been in effect.

It is harder to escape leftist policy when it is inflicted at the federal level, as Democrats have been attempting.

Now, Biden has nominated Julie Su, an architect of AB5’s war on freelance workers, as Secretary of Labor. …

California congressional representatives warned that Su’s AB5 has “cost tens of thousands of freelance workers and independent contractors their economic livelihoods.”

This is a big deal, and not only for the freelancers whose lives could be ruined. Senator Tim Scott notes that inflicting AB5 nationwide would “jeopardize more than 85 percent of our nation’s GDP.”

As the Labor Secretary, Su will be in a position to help Biden kill millions of jobs. Eliminating freelance workers was one of Biden’s campaign promises to unions.

A ban on freelancing would throw so many people out of work and wreak such havoc on the supply chain that inflicting it through democratic means has proven difficult. The PRO Act, a federal version of California’s AB5, passed the House when it was under Democrat control but stalled in the Senate. So the Biden Regime wants to inflict it through the Deep State, which does not have to face voters.

While the PRO Act would face congressional challenges, the Biden administration has been trying to use the Labor Department to create a backdoor assault on freelance workers by reclassifying the status of independent contractors under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

That’s where Julie Su will come in.

In California, Julie Su abused her power to terrorize small businesses and drive freelancers out of work, warning that she would be “doing investigations and audits.”

The bigger the government, the more it can hurt those it doesn’t like. Democrats are the Party of Big Government. If you are working class and can’t be forced into a union, they don’t like you.

Under Su, the Labor Department will move forward with forcibly reclassifying freelance workers while auditing and fining anyone who resists. This campaign of terror that began in California will go nationwide. Independent truckers will go out of business leading to further grocery shortages and a collapsing supply chain. Countless other professions will also fall apart.

Personnel is policy. With Biden personnel, the policy is to destroy our freedom and the economy so as to consolidate the power of the Democratic Party.

On a tip from Blackjack.

Feb 26 2023

Charter Schools Provide Better Education for Less Money

When Democrats pander to the pernicious unions that bankroll them by attacking school choice, it is at the expense of both children and taxpayers. Consider New York City:

The charters’ mostly minority student population bested its public school counterpart by up to 8% on both state math and reading tests in the 2021-21 school year, show statistics compiled by New York City Charter Center.

And the impressive results come courtesy of a relative shoestring budget, with city charters spending just $17,626 per student compared to the $35,941 spent on each public student, according to the center and Citizens Budget Commission.

The blacks Democrats exploit while pretending to champion benefit the most from charter schools:

Black charter-school students bested their public-school counterparts in [English Language Arts] by proficiency rates of 55% to 36% and in math by 46% to 21%.

Charter schools provide better education for less money. But rather than save taxpayers a buck and give kids a chance to succeed, most Democrats prefer to impose the mess they have made in Chicago:

In 30 Chicago public schools, not a single student can read at grade level. In total, just 20 percent of 3rd through 8th graders in the Windy City are proficient in reading and only 15 percent are proficient in math.

It isn’t because the Democrats who control everything there aren’t spending enough:

When all local, state and federal dollars are added up, Chicago’s per student outlay is now $29,207.

Nor is it because Chicago does not shovel enough taxpayer money at teachers:

[A] starting teacher makes $64,000 a year and can earn up to $122,000 per annum—not including pension and healthcare perks.

Teachers unions have so much sway in the Biden Regime, they dictate Covid policy to the CDC. But this isn’t only about unions. The more uninformed you have to be to vote Democrat, the more interest Democrats have in keeping the population clueless. That makes them want to prop up both the liberal media establishment and failed public schools.

On tips from Jack D.

Nov 25 2022

Now Teachers Unions Are Against Lockdowns

Teachers unions constitute a central pillar of the liberal establishment, brainwashing children with leftist ideology, strategically keeping them ignorant, and funneling vast amounts of money that originated with taxpayers into the Democratic Party. On orders from Randi Weingarten’s American Federation of Teachers, Biden’s handlers ordered the CDC to advise the Covid lockdowns that allowed teachers to avoid work.

Now that even liberals are starting to understand that the lockdowns were not only tyrannical and unnecessary but profoundly destructive, teachers unions are against lockdowns. Weingarten keeps a straight face while making an impassioned case:

Rank and file Democrats will use doublethink to erase from their minds that unions took the diametric opposite stance when it mattered. They think whatever they are told to think, whenever they are told to think it. To quote Occam’s Stubble,

We have always been at war with East Schoolclosia.

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