The World’s Largest Oligarchical Organization
The WikiLeaks document dump exposes NEA’s manipulation of its purported democratic process.
The WikiLeaks email release, unmasking the Hillary Clinton campaign, has become a daily ritual. A treasure trove of communiqués has exposed Hillary to be just about everything that the right (and even many on the left) has said she is. The emails from hatchet man John Podesta, who goes by the title “campaign chairman,” uncover the double dealing and lies orchestrated by the Clinton camp. (Memo to Podesta: Was referring to Bernie Sanders as a “doofus” for his extremist position on climate change really necessary? Sheesh!! But kudos for not following up on the DNC suggestion to smear Sanders’ Jewish background. Too bad you and your cronies chose to slime Catholics, though. )
Lost in the daily email disclosures have been revelations that the National Education Association manipulated the endorsement process to ensure that Hillary was the union’s candidate of choice for president. As reported by Mike Antonucci, on June 13, 2015, four days after Clinton announced her candidacy, her director of labor outreach, Nikki Budzinski, sent a memo to other campaign officials discussing possible strategies for the upcoming NEA Representative Assembly (RA), set for the following month in Florida.
“They are sincerely doing their best to manage the activists at the RA. It only takes 50 signatures to raise a resolution on the floor and I have been warned about a Northeastern Sanders contingent. I think it would be good to be organized on our own behalf with a few key folks in the room (NH and IA leaders) in case anything comes up. I am a little nervous about this event. That said, their steps are moving toward a (sic) October 2nd/3rd endorsement all going to plan.”
NEA had not taken any formal steps to determine who its rank-and-file actually preferred for the Democratic nomination, but it’s no secret that there were many in the union who favored Sanders over Clinton, citing the socialist’s “opposition to charter schools, support for collective bargaining rights and free tuition at public higher education institutions.”
Then on June 19th, Budzinski warned colleagues of an impending endorsement of Bernie Sanders by NEA’s Vermont affiliate. That set off alarm bells and the manipulation machine was set in motion, which Antonucci meticulously details here.
Three months later, on Sept. 29th, an email sent by Podesta to Clinton explained that “despite the intense work” of NEA President Lily Eskelsen García and Executive Director John Stocks, there was no certainty that Clinton would receive enough votes from the union’s board necessary for the endorsement. As reported by Politico, Clinton met with them behind closed doors on Oct. 1st, a meeting coordinated by Podesta and Stocks that was deemed “critical” for the endorsement. The NEA also had a safety net in place that weekend: “They will not call the vote unless they are certain that they will hit the threshold,” Podesta wrote.
And later that same day, the announcement was made that Clinton was anointed, garnering 82 percent of the vote. In response, NEA president Eskelsen García continued the dog-and-pony show gushing, “It was truly what democracy looks like.”
In Chicago, maybe.
Clearly complaints by Sanders and his followers in the union that he was being treated unfairly were justified. Ironically, NEA still refers to its legislative and policymaking body as “The World’s Largest Democratic Deliberative Assembly.”
Any teacher who is troubled by the NEA’s politics and/or its backroom dealing has virtually no options. It’s true that in non-right-to-work states, teachers can refuse to pay for union politicking but they must still fork over about two-thirds a full dues share to the union.
Can teachers join a different union? No. Throughout virtually the entire country, they are stuck with the monopoly bargaining unit that they had no role in electing.
Can you imagine being forced to use the same legal firm that your grandmother did? Nuts, right? But not in Big Labor Land. Most teachers unions were certified 30-50 years ago. As The Heritage Foundation’s labor economics expert James Sherk points out, just 1 percent of current teachers in the largest school districts in Florida were on the job in 1975 when the first and only union election process took place. The other states that Sherk studied have similar statistics.
Union democracy? Oxymoron.
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.