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Teacher: union has failed us

Last Friday we said that teachers unions’ first concern is not the interests of children, but their dues-paying members.  However, if this teacher is to be believed, NEA-Alaska isn’t even doing that terribly well:

I joined the Fairbanks Education Association almost 29 years ago. For most of those years, I was actively involved in “my” union. I was proud to work as an advocate for teachers. I processed many grievances, served on bargaining teams, recruited new members and served as FEA president.

FEA (our local), the National Education Association-Alaska (state) and NEA (national) were, I believed, organizations that walked their talk.

It is, therefore, disheartening to now find myself retiring from the school district as a nonmember who believes “my” union betrayed its most basic principles and values. It has also fundamentally violated the First Amendment rights of all agency fee payers by requiring, as a condition of employment, payment of a “representation fee.”

This compulsory fee has, in part, been used to defend the behavior of the union’s highest paid “at will” employee. NEA-Alaska’s executive director, Tom Harvey, is named in a lawsuit that was filed by the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2001 alleging that he sexually harassed and discriminated against three female employees of NEA-Alaska.

Because many leaders and members of NEA-Alaska and FEA either denied or ignored complaints from our own employees, it took the EEOC and eventually the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to force the hand of the NEA-Alaska Board to pay the $750,000 in back wages and medical expenses the EEOC said they were owed. If you include dues money spent during the litigation process, I believe the total cost is close to $1.5 million.

When a business allows a supervisor to bully employees, it sends a bad message. When a union allows it, the message is exceptionally bad since a union is the kind of organization that claims to champion the respectful treatment of workers. 

It only gets worse.  Go read the whole thing.