Long predating the bogus
“fact check” mania spawned in recent times by the mainstream media, for a
number of years the Baton Rouge Advocate
has run a version of it called “Ask
the Advocate,” providing some kinds of answers to questions presumably generated from stories in the newspaper. However, the answers don’t always accurately
capture the meaning and context of the issue in reference, which can mislead
when the discussion is politics.
A case in point regards its explanation of teacher union presence in
Louisiana. The relevant part of the article reads: “Q. There has been a lot of
talk lately about teacher unions. How many parishes in Louisiana actually
recognize collective bargaining for teachers? A. Seven of Louisiana’s 70 school
districts have collective bargaining rights with one of Louisiana’s two teacher
unions.” It then lists the districts and whether it is the Louisiana Federation of Teachers or the Louisiana Association of Educators that
represents in each.
Of slight annoyance, the snippet implies that only 7/70 = 10 percent of
teachers enter into collective bargaining. In fact, the proportion is a bit
higher, the latest
figure available being 11.6 percent. More perturbing, the way the question
is phrased, focusing solely on collective bargaining, restricts the inquiry
into the implied part of the question – there is “a lot of talk about teacher
unions” because they are inserting themselves forcefully into the political
process, which goes far beyond just collective bargaining. (It also negates the
fact that there actually are three statewide unions, the other being the Associated Professional Educators of
Louisiana, which has no collective bargaining units established and
declines to identify itself only as a union saying it is a broader professional
organization).
It also does not include the presence of an American Federation of Teachers
arm, the United Teachers of New Orleans,
which found its power retracted in the dislocations following the 2005
hurricane disasters (and which it claims
caused illegal dismissals of union members). It has been trying to coerce
collective bargaining out of the diminished Orleans Parish School District and
has advocated for the district expand through transfer of schools from the
Recovery School District with which it cannot bargain. Regaining status as a
collective bargaining unit, while it would not rule Orleans schools with an iron
fist as it once did, would serve to increase the state’s proportion of teachers
that are part of the collective bargaining process.
But UTNO provides an object lesson in wielding influence in the
workplace without acting as a bargaining unit. It crows
about how it has modified, drawing upon its past power, practices in both the
OPSD and RSD schools. The Advocate’s
diminution of the issue, intentional or otherwise, fails to capture this nonpecuniary
aspect of the importance of unions politically.
And it also completely ignores the pecuniary way in which directly teacher
unions may influence politics. The most recent data showed just in campaign
contributions from their last annual reports through a decade back the LFT and
LAE gave almost $5.5 million to state candidates. They get this money from dues
(for those members who do not request that money not go to political advocacy),
which come from members all over the state. In fact, earlier
this year the LFT claimed it has as members about a third of all classroom teachers,
while the LAE did not make such an exact statement but might have at least half
as many. Throw in A+PEL members, and approaching two-thirds of classroom
teachers are members of a union, explaining why the LFT and LAE can draw upon
substantial financial resources not only to donate, but also to pay for other
lobbying activities.
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