Thursday, February 16, 2017

Someone asked me a question today about what are the specific dangers that are now threatening the rights of teachers and unions? Here is my answer of the top of my head which means I'm living this threat to public education and the employees who serve and protect the students of America.

The main threat to teachers directly is the ability for the local, state and national union to be able to fight attacks on tenure. I foresee a direct attack on tenure throughout the country with republicans and DeVos using the "bad teacher" rhetoric to push through a way for districts to eliminate veteran teachers so they can hire cheaper younger teachers. This ties into the voucher charter school push that DeVos has historically pushed in the private sector which will strip districts of students and money across the nation depending on the State protections. This group of politicians will also push to make it harder for unions to keep members and their collection of dues thereby destroying collective bargaining rights of your union, throwing contracts into chaos which will erode the working conditions, compensation packages (including health) and retirement of all teachers. We will also most likely see unions rights to collect from members being challenged in the Supreme Court next year and it looks like they will rule against union organizing. That's it in a nutshell.