* Last July the Florida Education Association filed a lawsuit against Gov. Ron DeSantis, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran, the Florida Department of Education, the Florida State Board of Education, Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez, Donald Duck and Johnny Rocco, trying to stop the reopening of schools.
Okay, maybe not all of them.
The union announced it with a large press conference, and the media followed up with multiple stories as the lawsuit worked its way through the process.
Funny, though, that on December 23, when FEA dropped the lawsuit, there was no press conference, and no press coverage that I could find. Yesterday, the Florida Phoenix broke the news. I still cannot find any other coverage. Needless to say, the FEA web page devoted to the lawsuit doesn’t mention dropping it.
* Also last July, I criticized the Fresno Bee for running a story about “many” teachers who were trying to form a union in the Clovis Unified School District in California because of the district’s COVID policies. The 2,000 Clovis teachers have never had a union, being represented instead by a faculty senate.
The “many” teachers turned out to be nine anonymous people, according to the story.
This week, the Bee ran a second story with the exact same angle. The headline reads, “Clovis teachers say district is rushing students back to campuses. Will they unionize?”
The story tells us, “One teacher said she has never felt more ‘voiceless’ or ‘unheard’ by the district. Every teacher said this has given them more of an incentive to unionize, and there is an active group of teachers who are working to create a union.”
“Every teacher” the Bee spoke to agreed. How many was that? Six.
Did the reporter speak to the faculty senate? No. To the California Teachers Association? No. To any teacher who thought this might be a bad idea? No. Did she ask how far along the union organizing had gone in the five months since this was last floated? No.
* The Progressive wants us to know “How Unions Helped Georgia Flip the Senate,” and certainly they did, but one in particular must have performed feats to match the multiplication of the loaves and fishes.
“Overall, the Service Employees International Union, with nearly two million members in health care and public service jobs, estimates that it and the other unions involved in canvassing, such as the Georgia Federation of Teachers (GFT) and the Communications Workers of America, made more than 10 million visits to voters,” the site reports.
GFT President Verdaillia Turner is extensively quoted about her union’s efforts in going door-to-door. Turner said the GFT canvassers hit south Atlanta, DeKalb County, Savannah, Augusta, Macon, Valdosta, near the Florida-Georgia line, and Dalton.
That’s an astonishing range, especially since at last check GFT has exactly 345 members. About one-quarter of the union’s total revenue went to pay Turner’s salary.
The union effort in Georgia deserved examination. How GFT ended up being the focus of The Progressive‘s coverage is a little harder to understand.
