Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

The Detroit Public Schools has 9.7 percent fewer pupils this year than last, but district officials are still pretty jazzed because they ended up wih 137 more students than they had budgeted for.

Another victory for lowered sights!

If you don’t know who she is, drink in this report from KTLA-TV:

The Los Angeles Unified School District summarily fired McAllister for her remarks. Evidently this is permitted, even though substitutes can become members of United Teachers Los Angeles and are covered by a number of provisions in the collective bargaining agreement.

Since Ms. McAllister was so vocal and direct with her opinions, even in light of the consequences and the media glare, my question is this: Did she never before express these views to her co-workers or superiors? If she did, why wasn’t she fired earlier?

My sense is that you can spout this stuff and suffer no more than office ostracism, unless you do so in front of the cameras.

Charles Barone of Democrats for Education Reform had this to say about the, uh, “adjustment” to the Harkin-Enzi bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act:

“The NEA will always goldilocks you. Harkin took the evaluations statement Van Roekel made a few months ago and put it in the bill, and then didn’t have his support. What they wound up with was nothing.”

Hat tip: Russo.

Click here to read:

1) NEA Down 100,000 Active Members Since 2009-10

2) Last Week’s Intercepts

3) Quote of the Week

The Wisconsin State Journal has performed a service by creating a chart with all the state’s school districts and the collective bargaining status of their teachers’ unions – whether they are maintaining the status quo because they are still under contract, or seeking recertification through election, or not seeking recertification.

“They lied to us. They stole from us. They put our contracts and our families’ financial security at risk, and they got caught red-handed,” said Erica Boddie, a Sr. Receptionist and Labor Tri-Chair of the Workplace Safety Committee at Kaiser San Francisco. “Today the world knows without a shadow of a doubt that they are undemocratic and willing to work directly against members’ interests for their own personal power. They aren’t union reformers, they are union busters.”

Quick! Someone hire one of these guys to run our union!

That is apparently the reaction of the officers of the Clark County Education Association when they named John Vellardita to be the union’s executive director. According to the CCEA press release, Vellardita has “a proven record in negotiations, membership organizing, and union activism.” That’s one way of putting it.

Vellardita was one of the primary players in the massive internal struggle that engulfed SEIU and Sal Rosselli’s National Union of Healthcare Workers (background here). Vellardita was one of 16 defendants ordered to pay $1.5 million in damages by a federal court, stemming from their actions to prevent an SEIU trusteeship. Vellardita was involved in a series of cloak-and-dagger activities, including holding secret meetings in San Francisco’s Chinatown because he believed the union’s offices were “under surveillance,” presumably by SEIU.

Asked why he hired Vellardita over 13 other candidates, CCEA President Ruben Murillo said, “He has an issue back there. But we feel he did it for his members. They didn’t want to lose their local.”

Hundreds of union members attended a rally in Toledo, Ohio, to express their opposition to Issue 2, next month’s referendum that would restrict public employee collective bargaining.

That’s why most of them were there, but some members of the United Food & Commercial Workers Local 75 were there to pick up an easy $40, which is what their union pays members to show up at rallies.

There is much to criticize about such a policy, but I have a different set of questions than most commenters would have, I think. Like, how did UFCW arrive at the sum of $40? Was it after negotiations with the members? Who decided it was a fair amount? Why isn’t it $45? Or $60? Suppose the affected members demanded a larger stipend? Would UFCW meekly shell it out? Would union officers bargain them down to a lower price? Would they plead budget cuts and good stewardship of member dues and stick to $40? Or would they act unilaterally, stop the practice completely, and defy the members’ demands? Would they consider the members ingrates for asking for more money?

Ultimately, UFCW may find that the cost of paying members to attend political rallies comes at too high a price. Fortunately, there is an alternative. They can hire non-union labor.

Bad joke, right? Well, it would be if UFCW didn’t already have a precedent for it.