Friedrichs and the UFT/NYSUT/AFT

Buffalo teacher and co-conspirator Sean Crowley has a good piece at the B-LoEdScene, Could There Be a Silver Lining to the Friedrichs Decision?

Sean raises so many interesting points and angles, whatever is left of my hair hurts.

Clueless in Seattle

When the Supreme Court rules in the Friedrichs case to end the ability of public sector unions to collect agency fees from non-members, we can likely anticipate something along the lines of a mass panic, widespread angst and people like Weingarten and Mulgrew declaring yet another victory. NYSUT will be torn between a twitter blast and videotaping ourselves doing a Last Tango dance. Lily and her posse at NEA will read Randi's memo and do whatever it says but they'll stretch it out for a few days to make themselves look more deliberative. They will fool nobody just as they did with their Hillary vote.

Lily just started following my on twitter. She must be a glutton for punishment. Or maybe there is a fake Lilly out there. The AFT and NEA Hillary endorsements will be a factor in any post-Friedrich's defections.


Lily has her own problems with the NEA Hillary endorsement, as chronicled by Mike Antonucci at EIA. A few of Mike's gems:

• Why the Long Facebook?

Posted: 05 Oct 2015 09:17 AM PDT

If you want to entertain yourself with even more reactions to NEA’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton, head over to its Facebook page, which at last count had 874 comments – almost all of them negative.

• NEA PAC Council Vote by State – Abstentions Critical
• “It was truly what democracy looks like.”
• Surprise! NEA Endorses Hillary
• Lily’s Mea Culpa? 
• EIA Exclusive: NEA Board Roll Call Vote on Hillary Endorsement 

Sean, who was recently elected to a position in the local union, focuses on the AFT/NYSUT situation.

So let's try looking at it this way and trust me I barely trust me but maybe this is the pony buried in that huge room of horse manure. If NEA and AFT are unable to collect money from members who simply check a box that says "Bugger Off Randi" on their deduction card, can you really see any future or present use for Randi let alone one that's worth the $550K she's collecting now? And trickling down the line -- as we all now these things do since Ronald Reagan told us they would -- does anyone think we need a Punchy Mike or a Karen McWho? An Andy Palotta or a Marty Messner?

As they say at AA: We think not! 

...what good do either of the two major union presidents do teachers? They ignore us on Common Core. They pay lip service to ending high stakes testing but there's no balls to any wall on the issue. It's just whining that's easily tuned out. They ignored us on Bernie Sanders and threw their weight (not ours) to Hillary effing Clinton a Gates crony and former Wal Mart board member who supports The Core and The testing and will give us the same F.U. the current resident of 1500 Pennsylvania Ave. gave us just as soon as he counted up the teacher votes he collected.

The current regimes serve Randi and Lily and a small band of merry pranksters who wouldn't know a smart board from a dry eraser. They are out of touch and out of step and they don't even have to give a shit because they have the process loaded up to keep them in power and keep teachers from getting any real representation. Anything that unloads this parasitic self serving dead weight from leadership positions in the teacher union ranks is a good thing in my somewhat jaded book.

To my way of thinking, the union leadership may also be looking for that silver lining - getting rid of most of the people who would oppose them and solidifying their hold on power even in a smaller union.

Sean has a bit of that same view regarding TFA:

Our current state in B-Lo with the T.F.A. bacteria is that we are somehow stuck with them as they are technically considered B-Lo teachers. I look forward to cutting this umbilical cord and setting them adrift once they are offered the chance to disaffiliate themselves with our union, one I am sure they will pounce on.  Once we're no longer stuck with them I think we set sail for the course Pittsburgh and other places have taken in bidding them adieu and encouraging them to avoid the door hitting them in the ass on their way out of town. Told you my glass was half full. 

 The current opposition in the unions won't go. But maybe some will move to another stage - urging disaffiliation and the formation of a new union, like Steve Conn is doing in Detroit. For the first time I have heard some of these people talking about that idea.

 

What if people who leave the unions who are committed unionists truly begin to start looking elsewhere?