Friday, February 18, 2011

Tennessee To Take Away Teachers Right To Collectively Bargain

And the assault on teachers - championed by Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Barack Obama and the "education reform movement" that has demonized teachers and teachers unions these past few years - proceeds toward its end game:

NASHVILLE — The Senate Education Committee voted along party lines Wednesday to abolish collective bargaining between teachers unions and school boards across the state.

The vote was 6-3, with all Republicans on the panel voting for the bill and all Democrats against.

Sponsor Sen. Jack Johnson said passage of the bill — SB113 — will remove 'an albatross from around the neck of our school boards across the state' and remove a roadblock to education reform.

...

House Republican Caucus Chairwoman Debra Maggart of Hendersonville hailed the Senate vote as a sign of legislative readiness to 'wrestle away control from the selfish interests of the unions and give it to parents and teachers.'

'This General Assembly has the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to throw off the shackles of the union bosses and be a legitimate difference-maker in the classroom.'

Make no mistake - this is the corporate friendly Republican Party pushing these union abolishment policies and laws across the country, but it has been "liberals" like Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, George Miller, et al. who have laid the ground work for this assault by their relentless demonization of teachers and teachers unions.

The ground is now fertile for public education to be privatized and teachers unions to be destroyed.

The union leadership - either clueless or in cahoots with the deformers - is powerless to stop this stuff now.

They have allowed the public education issue to be framed by the deformers and the corporatists as: "Public aschools are failures and it is the because of the unions."

Indeed, here in NYC, the brain surgeons at the UFT even decided to get in on the action and run a few of their own charter schools.

Instead of fighting this stuff from Day One, instead of asserting that most public schools are NOT failures, that the ones that are failures suffer from societal issues that CANNOT be solved by schools and teachers alone, they start charter schools, and agree to merit pay and invite Bill Gates to speak to union conventions.

They play on the deformers' field.

So no wonder this stuff is happening.

The assault on teachers, teachers unions and public education is coordinated, well-funded and backed by the most powerful and welathiest people in this land.

They smell blood and they sense the end.

And make no mistake - Barack Obama, Arne Duncan and Andrew Cuomo are right there with Scott Walker, Chris Christie and Rick Scott.

They just tread lighter because they walk a tightrope between keeping the unions on their side and the hedge fund managers funding them.

But when it comes to issues and policies, they ALL side with the hedge fund managers.

1 comment:

  1. And based, in part, for the RTTT funds they "won." Talk about bribery!

    ReplyDelete