Sweatshops, Walmart, TFA, Bart Simpson and Hams for Hanukkah
Teachers unions are busier than ever pointing fingers, forming loopy alliances and making embarrassing gaffes.
A couple of weeks ago Massie Ritsch, assistant communications and outreach point man for Education Secretary Arne Duncan, left his job to take a similar position at Teach For America. And not a moment too soon!
As I wrote last week, the American Federation of Teachers has hopped into bed with the United Students Against Sweatshops. In fact, having given the group $58,650 in 2013-1014, AFT is the USAS’ biggest funder. The Harvard cell of the national group made news when it decided to target Teach For America. According to the Harvard Crimson, “The effort is part of a larger national movement started by United Students Against Sweatshops that criticizes Teach For America, a nation-wide program that recruits college graduates to teach in low-income communities for at least two years, for undermining the quality of public education.” (Emphasis added.)
Undermining public education? Funny, I thought that was the job of the teachers union.
USAS Harvard also demands that TFA sever ties with anti-union corporations such as Walmart, which funds TFA. Reason’s Nick Gillespie clearly gets the gut-busting hubris,
We’ve all heard the stories about how smart, ambitious, and clean-smelling Harvard students are, right? I mean, Harvard is like the Cadillac of college (and I mean back when Cadillac meant high standards and luxury, not whatever it might mean today), the gold standard in a world of fiat currencies. And the students come from money, with over 45 percent hailing from families pulling in $200,000 a year (and 21 percent coming from the above-$500,000 mark).
So you can rest assured that Harvard students know what they’re talking about. And these days, they’re trying to get the university to pull out of Teach For America if it doesn’t start only placing its participants in unionized public schools. (Emphasis added.)
AEI’s Rick Hess weighs in also,
Fashioning themselves the “United Students Against Sweatshops” (it’s okay to laugh at that), these kids have taken TFA to task for being “the man”—and for turning teaching into sweatshop-like work by allowing some selected recruits to enter the classroom without slogging through the entirety of traditional teacher prep. I’m not sure where the “sweatshop” piece really surfaces here, ed schools have a hard time making the case that their grads are better after the training, and research has suggested that TFA’ers are at least as effective as traditionally trained teachers, but whatevs… Somehow, I don’t think the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) are all that interested in sweating these details. I’m trying to make allowance for the fact that these complaints are being offered by a bunch of 20-year-olds who don’t know anything and who’ve given every indication that they’re being funded and stage-managed by professional labor organizers who have their own agenda. But still, for reasons that escape me, they’ve been getting a fair bit of attention. (Emphasis added.)
The real problem that AFT-USAS has with TFA is that it places a great number of its teachers in charter schools, which are overwhelmingly union-free. And of course, Walmart has been a long-time punching bag for unionistas and their fellow travelers. The giant chain is not unionized, which has enabled it to keep costs down by not having to wade through the collective bargaining process. If it were up to AFT-USAS, Walmart would be unionized, the result of which would be jacked up wages leading to increased prices, which would mean fewer customers, thus forcing worker lay-offs. Now there’s a great business plan!
The teachers unions’ efforts to defame Walmart know no bounds. AFT president Randi Weingarten thought she was being oh-so-clever when she posted “Really Walmart? Ham for Hanukah” (sic) on Facebook.
As EAG’s Kyle Olson points out, this photo is seven years old and was not even taken at Walmart – it was Balducci’s, a gourmet retailer in New York City. (And with all Weingarten’s self-righteous indignation, you’d think she would at least know how to spell Hanukkah!)
Interestingly, after being excoriated for this silly attempt to embarrass Walmart, it took her a week to remove the post. Perhaps though we can cut poor Randi some slack because she is sooooo busy!! In recent months, she has immersed herself in the Middle East (pushing Israel to adopt a “two-state solution”), developed a plan to contain Ebola and traveled to the Ukraine to “promote democratic values.” (Memo to Randi: Maybe consider spending less time play-acting as Secretary of State and tackle the New York City charter school that your union is systematically running into the ground.)
Weingarten has probably been too busy to see a recent episode of The Simpsons, which absolutely skewered the teachers unions.
Jack Lassen, voiced menacingly by Willem Dafoe, was transferred to Bart’s school during what Superintendent Gary Chalmers referred to as the “Dance of the Lemons,” in which school officials practice what little control they have over teacher unions by allowing principals to select their worst teacher to send to another school in the district.
“The union is happy, the parents are placated and only the children suffer,” Chalmers explained.
Lassen — among the group Chalmers refers to as “sociopathic child-haters who are only teachers because they got tenure after two short years” — doesn’t suffer Bart’s foolishness, responding to the mischievous one’s skeleton-in-the-closet prank by buzzing the top of his head with clippers.
When you’ve lost Bart Simpson, you just may have lost the country, as evidenced by the unions’ dismal return on the millions they spent in the November elections.
But back to USAS. Gillespie ended his Reason post with the following:
The Harvard prodigies and the organizers at USAS are about the last people standing who think that unionizing teachers is the last, best hope of improving American education, especially for students from lower-income, higher-risk-for-failure backgrounds. Good luck to them as their reactionary attitudes leave them further and further in the rear-view window as the rest of the country moves into a future of increased options for all, regardless of family income and ability to pay.
All I can add to that, Nick, is a hearty “Amen!!”
Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.