Hey Bob! The Left Wing Isn’t Too Crazy About NEA Either
Rich Gibson is an associate professor of social studies in the College of Education at San Diego State University. His writings about the internal workings of the teachers’ unions go back at least as far as mine, albeit from the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. His left-wing bona fides are impeccable. Nevertheless, his heartburn about NEA, AFT, and organized labor in general makes me seem like a union PR flack in comparison.
Gibson covered the 2009 NEA Representative Assembly for Substance News, out of Chicago. Each of his five daily reports is worth reading, but at least dig into the final day summary. Here are a few excerpts:
* “You can tell when NEA officialdom really hates a motion and wants to kill it at birth; they drag out retiring rule-of-capitalist-property-laws bulldog attorney Bob Chanin to quote chapter and verse.”
* ”[Linda Darling-Hammond] noted that California prisons spend more per capita than the schools do. She did not say that the guards are members of the AFL-CIO.”
* “Simply put, EFCA would make it easier to gin people into unions. It’s a one-sided view to see that as good. NEA’s brass is not about to explain that the AFL-CIO and the splinter group, Change to Win, have plenty of reasons why they cannot organize people. They are corrupt to the core, undemocratic, don’t believe that workers and employers have contradictory interests, and when push comes to shove, will use violence against their own members to, ‘protect the contract,’ that is, protect their dues income which can be cut by employers (Henry Ford said, in glee, ‘you mean I am the union’s banker?’) in the event of wildcat strikes. When workers join unions, they add a layer of enemies.”
