Layons
The Associated Press reports that quite a few of those 7,000 Arizona teachers who received layoff notices amid much caterwauling won’t actually be laid off after all. Teacher Beat wonders if the original notices were a scare tactic.
It’s interesting to watch how different locales and players handle budget deficits. Some fight to avoid layoffs at all costs, to the point where unions will accept furloughs, freezes and reductions in order to save jobs. In other places, it’s just the opposite. The union insists on pay raises and benefit enhancements even if means losing low seniority members to layoffs. And don’t forget the Ball of Confusion folks, who say “more taxes will solve everything.”
Now add in the situation at the Indiana State Teachers Association. Faced with a massive deficit, the union’s first instinct wasn’t to raise taxes (dues) or institute freezes or furloughs. Union managers issued layoff notices to more than one-quarter of their employees. The staff union president said “we’re trying to save the organization at this point.” It’s assured, however, that a dues increase is in the cards.
Today’s Wall Street Journal has an editorial on “Unions in Debt,” noting both the AFL-CIO and SEIU have seen large increases in their liabilities, leading to questions about their financial health.
I’ll have more on this on Monday, but NEA is unlikely to face such radical downturns because its members are better off than the average SEIU or AFL-CIO worker. A home health care worker can’t comfortably provide an additional $100 per year just to bail out her union, but an Indiana teacher can.
This financial stability, coupled with the failure to pass card check, actually strengthens NEA relative to the AFL-CIO and Change to Win unions. It’s strange that, should it so desire, NEA may soon have the opportunity to become the primary power broker in the labor movement. All the previous talk about whether NEA would ever join the AFL-CIO gets turned around. The new question becomes: Will the AFL-CIO join the NEA?
