AFT continues to use teachers as ATM machines to fund their pet leftist causes. The latest American Federation of Teachers annual financial disclosure has been released (H/T RiShawn Biddle). This year’s LM-2 is filled with goodies that are sure to warm the cockles of leftist teacher union members, but apolitical educators, centrists and certainly those...

Socialist teacher union honcho’s distortions about union political spending and “labor peace” are, well, par for the course. Shaun Richman, a former organizing director for the American Federation of Teachers, has written a bizarre piece for In These Times in which he claims that “the Friedrichs v. Calif. Teachers Association SCOTUS Case Could Actually Be...

Bain v. CTA is the latest lawsuit to challenge teacher union hegemony. For the third time in three years, a lawsuit has been filed in California that challenges the way the teachers unions do business. In May 2012, eight California public school children filed Vergara et al v. the State of California et al in...

Teachers who are not satisfied with their union must make their voices heard.  Are Unions Democratic? The Internal Politics of Labor Unions and Their Implications, a report just released by the Manhattan Institute’s Daniel DiSalvo, examines unions – specifically the public employee variety, with an emphasis on teachers unions. Addressing the democracy issue, he writes:...

Teacher union political gifting continues to be almost exclusively leftward bound, but teachers don’t have to finance it. Courtesy of campaign-finance tracker Open Secrets, we have a reminder of how lopsided teacher union political spending is. Education Week’s Lauren Camera posted a report Friday which spells out some of the nasty details. In House of...

By meekly surrendering paycheck deductions on a monthly basis, teachers are complicit in their unions’ policy making and politicking. In a great majority of cases across the country, when teachers get work in a public school, they join the teachers union. Or, more accurately, they join three of them. There’s the “local,” whose responsibility is...

Although California is not a right-to-work state, public school teachers have the ability to receive a yearly rebate of $300 – $400 from the California Teachers Association. Teachers have these options because the United States Supreme Court has held that a union can’t force a non-union member to pay for the union’s political and other activities unrelated...

California is a forced unionism state, meaning that once a collective bargaining unit is recognized by an employer, it’s pretty hard for any employee to avoid paying union dues. But even in forced unionism states, employees have rights. “National Employee Freedom Week” was initiated in Nevada last year by the Nevada Policy Research Institute, and...

A week in June is being promoted to advise workers of their right to opt out of union membership. Unknown to many employees throughout the country – especially in non-right-to-work states – they have a right to not belong to a union. This year, June 23rd – 29th is being dedicated to informing America’s wage...

Getting the facts to people who have been lied to for decades is essential for change. In my latest City Journal post, I argue in favor of an initiative that will be on the ballot in California in November. Proposition 32, which will appear on the November general-election ballot, would ban unions and most corporations...