Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind (21 page)

Similarly, you might also expect that all non-right-to-work states would be F states. But this is also not the case. As you can see from the chart, five states do not have right-to-work laws but don’t force their teachers to pay union dues either.

American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten argues that states that have a lower proportion of unionized teachers, like the A-grade states, have lower academic achievement than states that have heavily unionized teachers, but this is really comparing apples to oranges.
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Typically, the academic success of a state’s students can be most easily gauged by how much their parents earn or by their parents’ educational achievement, not by how unionized the state’s teachers are.
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Actually, there appears to be no demonstrable correlation between unionization and educational quality on a state-by-state basis.
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In reality, teachers unions harm our K–12 educational system in all 50 states by exerting control over educational policy and practices nation-wide.

In forced-dues states, most teachers find it a pretty easy decision to join the union. After all, teachers have to pay union dues anyway, so they may as well join the union and get whatever benefits of membership are offered. In the states in which teachers are not forced to pay dues to a union to get or keep their job, the unions have to entice, cajole, trick, and pressure teachers to join the union.

One of the ways teachers unions develop their membership in the least unionized states is to capture young, impressionable college students who are training to be teachers. A young teacher from an A-grade state told us that when she entered her mandatory student-teaching period, her teachers college strongly advised her to obtain professional liability insurance. This insurance would cover her in the case that
she was sued by one of her pupils’ families during her student-teaching period. During student-teaching orientation, teachers union representatives offered all student teachers a discounted union membership rate, which included this liability coverage, and many of them joined. The takeaway message was “Welcome to the teaching profession—meet your teachers union!” Once student teachers join the union, the teachers union simply works to keep them as members when they take full-time teaching jobs.

A veteran teacher who worked in a number of A-grade states says that teachers union representatives pressured her to join the union throughout her whole career. Again, the union reps presented liability insurance as a major reason why she should join the union. They told her that if a student sued her, the union would provide her with a lawyer and she would be protected by liability insurance—but only if she was a member of the teachers union. Otherwise, she would be on her own. The unions were so successful at planting this fear in her that she always felt exposed to liability and uneasy about not joining the union. Of course, the states could fix this issue by providing liability insurance coverage to all teachers, but it hasn’t happened yet. Teachers can also purchase this insurance inexpensively from other sources, but teachers unions have been very effective at presenting themselves as the sole source for professional liability insurance.
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Teachers unions are also effective at using sorority-style recruiting to sell the union as a social club for teachers. One teacher in an A-grade state recalls that union representatives were present with lots of fun giveaway items at the events that she was required to attend as a first-year teacher: “Here’s a mug, and come join this fun club where you will meet new friends and share your experiences—the local teachers union!”

In states that impose collective bargaining on teachers, teachers unions have much more control over schools and are much more intrusive in their recruiting. A young teacher who has worked in several B-grade right-to-work states recalls that in Arkansas and Alabama, she was under intense pressure to join the teachers union. As a new teacher in Arkansas, union representatives were present at the orientation meetings for new teachers. She was directed to meet her school
representative, who explained all the benefits she would receive as a union member and signed her up for membership and for her dues to be automatically deducted from her paycheck. When this teacher realized a few months later how much dues she was paying each month for union membership, and considered how little she benefited from the union, she decided to quit. But to do this, she had to visit the same in-school union representative and explain to her why she was quitting the union before her name could be taken off the union rolls. She recalls that this was a very intimidating process for her.

When this same young teacher moved to a school in Alabama a few years later, she was firm in her decision not to join the union. Shortly after she arrived at her new school, she was teaching a lesson to her kindergarten class when two other teachers barged into her classroom. Was there a fire or an emergency that demanded her immediate attention? No, these teachers were representatives of the teachers union. They proceeded to bully this young teacher in front of her class, urging her to join the union and help them achieve “100 percent participation” in the school. This teacher, experienced in the ways of union representatives by now, bravely refused. But although her experience of union intimidation may be typical, she’s the exception in staying out of the union—when pressured, teachers tend to join unions.

In many right-to-work states—especially the A-grade states that forbid collective bargaining over teachers—most teachers will tell you that unions don’t affect their classroom experience at all. But is it really true that the teachers unions have little power over education in these states?

Of course not. Teachers unions have woven a web that spreads over the entire United States, covering every state and nearly every locality. The teachers unions’ “support at the local level plays a major role in political campaigns.”
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Stanford professor Terry Moe notes, “While the stereotype is that the teachers unions are ‘weak’ in the states without collective bargaining, this is usually far from true. In any absolute sense, the unions tend to be quite powerful—just not as powerful as their counterparts in collective bargaining states.”
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But how have the
unions built their state and local operations in states that have little dues income? They do it with an innovative funding technique called “unified dues.”

Here’s how it works. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the teachers union bosses realized that they had a problem. Teachers were joining their local unions in droves, but not many teachers were joining their state and national teachers unions. After all, most education was local—so why pay to join the state and federal teachers unions?

The bosses found a solution: they forced local affiliates to charge unified dues. Now when teachers joined the local union, they automatically joined their state and national unions as well. Voila! Unified dues send tons of cash upstream to the state and national unions, giving these upper-level unions more funds for political activity and infrastructure building. The unified-dues system is now common to all government employee unions.

Here’s an example of how unified dues works in practice. For example, a full-time teacher in Westport, Connecticut, pays $852 in dues for the 2011–12 school year, of which $178.00 is sent to NEA national headquarters, $484.50 is sent to the state-level NEA-affiliate union, and $190.00 is sent to the local NEA-affiliate union.
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The national union then redistributes a portion of its funds to build infrastructure and fight important union battles all across the nation. The national teachers unions send representatives and resources to “underrepresented” right-to-work states where there are fewer union members, less dues income, and more limited teachers union infrastructure. Teachers union representatives invade right-to-work states like kudzu, colonizing new territory and taking it over: organizing workers, influencing educational policy, and supporting pro-union candidates there.

One observer explained, “In some states, the teachers unions [have] become the functional equivalent of a political party, assuming many of the roles—candidate recruitment, fund-raising, phone banks, polling, get-out-the-vote efforts—that were once handled by traditional party organizers.”
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And, of course, the teachers unions overwhelmingly support Democrats. When you look at the teachers unions, former Secretary of Education William J. Bennett said, “you’re looking at the absolute heart and center of the Democratic Party.”
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E. J. McMahon
of the Manhattan Institute adds, “NEA and American Federation of Teachers have been powerful forces in the Democratic Party for decades.”
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If you are surprised by the connection between teachers unions and politics, don’t be. Teachers unions, like all government employee unions, survive only by putting their loyal friends in our government. The degree to which teachers unions influence state politics is so extreme that in many states “the legislatures, no less than the educational bureaucracies, function as wholly owned subsidiary of the teachers union,” according to one education commentator.
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Nationally, teachers unions have political operatives in every congressional district in the United States. These political operatives have a dual job—assisting in day-to-day union work and managing teachers union political activity in the congressional district. These operatives are the backbone of the Democrat Party machine. They manage turn-out-the-vote efforts in local school board elections and Presidential elections alike.

In all fifty states, teachers unions elect their own bosses—the district school boards and other educational decision makers who can give unions power over teachers and educational policy. In his book on teachers unions, Terry Moe points out that under this corrupt system, “democracy is turned on its head.”
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Even in states with few union members, “the teachers unions can use their political power to help choose the very people who will be running their districts and making all the authoritative decisions about money, personnel and policy,” explains Moe.
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Because few local taxpayers pay close attention to school board elections, for example, teachers unions elect their candidates almost every time. Eighty-four percent of school board candidates that the unions endorse in heavily Republican-controlled districts actually win their elections!
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And let’s be serious—who among us bothers
to investigate school board candidates and votes in local school board elections?

State-level teachers unions present themselves as educational policy think tanks and the defenders and reformers of the public schools. These sham policy institutes provide legislators and decision makers with research, support, and guidance on educational issues from the “teachers’ perspective.” Well, maybe not actually the teachers, but at least the teachers unions! Many government officials rely on these
teachers union policy institutes for “objective” advice on educational issues. The teachers unions even set up front groups “to give the impression of public support of NEA policies,” reports Phyllis Schlafly.
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Often these faux-independent educational associations are funded by teachers union funds and staffed by current or former teachers union officials, but present themselves as nonpartisan, pro-education groups.
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Generally, no strong pro-parent and pro-taxpayer organizations exist at the state or local level to counter these front groups, or if they do exist, they certainly don’t have the funding and organizational power of the teachers unions or their front groups.

Even in the right-to-work states, state teachers unions are hard at work pushing their agenda and lobbying their legislatures. In Texas—one of the A-grade states—the Texas affiliate of NEA known as the TSTA explains on its website that “our lobbyists work with legislators before, during and after the biennial legislative session. They keep members informed of developments and alert them when action is needed, and they equip members with the skills and knowledge to elect pro-education candidates to national, state, and local office.” And if the state teachers union does all that in right-to-work Texas, just imagine what teachers unions do in heavily unionized states like New York and California.