(Warner Todd Huston/The Union Label) – Teachers unions have been mad at the president. Despite that he bends over backwards for unions and has since day one, the teachers still aren’t happy. So, he’s trying what Politico is calling a “truce with teachers.”
In the past few weeks, President Barack Obama delivered two major speeches touting education reforms. He invited teachers to the Rose Garden and pushed the House to pass an emergency spending bill saving thousands of school jobs. This week, his education chief is traveling on a cross-country bus tour to highlight school success stories.
After all Obama has done for unions, teachers are still mad at him? It’s really unbelievable, but it does show how unions are filled with ingrates, doesn’t it?
So what does Politico pinpoint as the “boiling over” point?
Nationwide outrage among teachers exploded in March when both Obama and Duncan justified the mass firings of educators at a failing Rhode Island school. (Teachers ultimately kept their jobs in a concession deal.)
So it doesn’t matter that Obama has eviscerated the reporting requirements for unions to report their finances to the federal government, it doesn’t matter that Obama has given away billions of our tax dollars to make unions happy, and it doesn’t matter that he even put a union operative in the sensitive post of head of the Dept. of Labor. The teachers unions are mad because once he expressed the idea of holding them to account for the quality of their work.
This shows the extremism of unions. This shows that unions aren’t in any way interested in assuring the quality of their work, nor are they interested in the democratic principles of debate and compromise, not to mention that they aren’t interested in what’s good for kids.
As far as unions are concerned “negotiation” has a skewed definition: it means we win, you lose.
In the end, though, we know why Obama is attempting this rapprochement now. He wants their money for the coming elections.
