UFT/Unity Troll Opposition, sometimes on our dime

The UFT has apparently assigned people to monitor social media for critics and to respond in kind defending UFT leadership positions. Do they get paid extra? Maybe they need a union. DOE employees have been hounded for their social media posts even when off time.

Do people who work for us (supposedly) have the right to engage in attacks on UFT members who are critical of union policies? By virtue of being paid a salary - and not an insubstantial salary -- is part of their job to defend the UFT leadership on social media?

UFT officials at work

It would seem so as the other day I noticed on certain FB teacher chats a battle over some policy of other in which people who clearly work for the UFT attacking a critic, with one calling the critic anti-union. And when I looked at the time, it was clearly during working hours for UFT staff -- which for many is until 6PM.

If they were working for the DOE they would be in the rubber room. Maybe our union needs a rubber room. 

But what if they do this after working hours? Do they have free speech even if working for the UFT? An interesting question and I generally come down on the side of they do --- but I question if trolling for the leadership is really free speech.

Trolling means you are following a line --- talking points - we know they are because they are all so similar. Thus if the leadership says night is day, they all put on their shades. And if they reverse position they adamantly defend the position they were recently attacking.

Remember the common core and how punchy Mike defended it, only to abandon that defense not long after?

So is it really free speech when you are being handed a script?