Posted on Jun 16, 2015 by LaborPains.org Team
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), led by Randi Weingarten, has a history of misdeeds by its local unions. Some past local officials have gone to prison for years for corrupt practices. Now, two local AFT unions are riven by internal political squabbles, with Detroit’s union president facing recall and the local for Orange County, […]
Posted on Oct 29, 2014 by LaborPains.org Team
The New York State affiliate of Randi Weingarten’s American Federation of Teachers, the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), received significant bipartisan criticism over the weekend for an unbelievably insensitive attack mail piece that its PAC VOTE-COPE sent in a New York State Senate race. You can see it for yourself (as shown to the Buffalo News) below: […]
Posted on Sep 09, 2014 by LaborPains.org Team
Teachers unions are no different than private-sector unions when it comes to investing member money on political issues. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and its local affiliates have pumped over $585,000 into controversial civil rights leader Al Sharpton’s National Action Network (NAN). But AFT’s New York City local president, Michael Mulgrew, is in hot […]
Posted on Jun 12, 2014 by LaborPains.org Team
This week, teachers unions’ cushy status quo suffered a major setback, in California of all places. That’s odd in part because the teachers unions—specifically NEA affiliate the California Teachers Association (CTA), but also the AFT affiliate California Federation of Teachers (CFT)—have massive political power in the state. The two unions spent a combined $39 million […]
Posted on Jun 10, 2014 by LaborPains.org Team
Randi Weingarten likes to claim people who call her out are ultra-right-wing Tea Partiers, education privatizers, or agents of libertarian activist-philanthropists Charles and David Koch. In an interview with the Washington Post, Randi claimed that “the Koch brothers and deep-pocketed conservative activists” are behind “an anti-public education agenda of vouchers, privatization, and attacks on teachers […]
Posted on May 01, 2014 by LaborPains.org Team
For all of Randi Weingarten’s “reformist” posturing, the president of the American Federation of Teachers doesn’t seem to find many examples of actual reforms she can support. A New York City school principal once said Weingarten “would protect a dead body in the classroom.” Killing reforms is just another way to do that. In the past few weeks, we’ve […]
Posted on Apr 08, 2014 by LaborPains.org Team
The New York affiliates of the American Federation of Teachers—the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) and NYC’s United Federation of Teachers (UFT)—are big-time political players in the Empire State. Randi Weingarten, the AFT’s national president, first rose through the ranks—and first waged war on school reformers—as president of the UFT. Lobbying disclosure filings from […]
Posted on Mar 21, 2014 by LaborPains.org Team
Remember Karen Lewis? She is the radical President of the Chicago Teachers Union, American Federation of Teachers Local 1, which made national headlines in 2012 for going on citywide strike. (Our thoughts on that action aren’t subtle: You don’t block the schoolhouse door to stop reform of one of America’s lowest-performing school districts.) Lewis is […]
