RBE [Perdido Street School] has left a new comment on your post "Attacks on ATRs is Spear at All Teachers Plus Why ...":I agree that the UFT/AFT/NYSUT complex has been complicit, especially in the early decades of ed deform going back to Al Shanker. Joel Klein and Randi are both centrist Democrats and thus...
Klein didn't run rings around Randi. The givebacks from Randi were intentional. They're on the same team - both Clintonistas out for the destruction of a unionized workforce. It's WWE shit. They play adversaries in public, but it's all a show and behind the scenes they yuck it up while they strip workers of rights, compensation, protections, etc. They may not have liked each other personally, but make no mistake that personal animosity puts them on separate teams.
The UFT is a company union. We see this even more so with de Blasio, where they don't even bother to mount a defense as the DOE goes after veteran teachers, ATR's, etc. The big giveaways started under the "hostile" Bloomberg, they continue unabated under the "friendly" de Blasio. It will be interesting to see what percentage of the rank and file flee the UFT post-Janus. UFT leaders will call for "unity" and "solidarity," but that's just empty, meaningless Orwellian rhetoric from a union leadership that has sold out its membership time and time again.
Our union(s) are fundamentally neo-liberal in outlook. They do believe in the free market and when deformers apply it to education and charge that public schools are a monopoly, even if they don't agree, they have a hard time framing an adequate response and a campaign to counter this view.
When it comes to guns and butter issues where defense eats up a massive amount of money, they always support those expenditures. Same with jingoistic foreign policy.
And then there are the ties to the centrist wing of the Democratic Party and its policies that enforce the above -- I mean who is calling for a new Cold War against Russia, which is a fairly weal country in many ways?
These outlooks in essence turn our unions into a company union - if we view "company" in broader terms.
They r both Neolibs, and Neocons.
ReplyDeleteNeolibs believe in "free markets" as long as they own and dominate said markets (monopolies).
Neocons, believe in murdering millions of people (see Clinton, Bush, Obama foreign policy in Yugoslavia, Middle East, etc), when their"free markets" are threatened in any way.
The pair go hand in hand.
This evil hypocrisy ( on a much smaller scale) connected to unionism here-see how Salon.com mgt. is treating their staff that is attempting to unionize as we speak. "Liberal, socialist" Salon.com will not allow any stinking unions on their watch. I'd say this makes them a fake news company posing as fake liberals, and fake progressives.