I'm So Ashamed of My Union!

[IMPress Polly]

The Oklahoma Education Association, which is the state's affiliate to the National Education Association, called off the statewide teacher strike for their members yesterday, ordering them to return to work on Monday. The teachers are demanding livable wages that will allow them to work only one job, the restoration of proper funding for the state's public schools (20% of which are so underfunded that they're reduced to using four-day school weeks) after decades of budget cuts thereto, and the elimination of state subsidies to the gas and oil industries that have been the direction the state government has consistently pointed the difference in taxpayer money to instead in recent decades. Exactly none of those demands had been agreed to by the state government as of the time that the OEA proclaimed that the teachers they supposedly represent must return to work on Monday. To that end, the teachers plan to continue the strike next week anyway.

The militant mood of teachers was spelled on the signs they were carrying Friday, including, “OEA doesn’t speak for me,” “The movement didn’t start with the OEA and won’t end with the OEA,” and “We’re not leaving.” Outside and inside the capitol, teachers held impromptu meetings to discuss how to sustain their walkout next week.

“The unions don’t want a popular outcry and they are trying to sabotage this struggle,” Misty, a young teacher from the Oklahoma City area, told the World Socialist Web Site. “Teachers in Louisiana and other states are looking for a way to fight, and they should be brought into this. The unions and the media don’t want teachers in the rest of the country to know about our fight in Oklahoma, and they don’t want us to know what is happening across the US.”

They're right! The strike, which just concluded its second week, was organized by teachers themselves on social media. It is hence rightly understood as their thing to call off, not that of the OEA, which has done nothing but try to contain this outpouring of anger and end it by any means possible as quickly as possible.

Seriously, do unions EVER do anything to support the interests of the workers they supposedly represent anymore? Right now, I'm pretty embarrassed to belong to the NEA.

[Boris The Animal]

Public schools are a cancer on our society today. Nothing more than Leftist indoctrination centers. I would love to see more charter schools, more private schools, more homeschooling, and more parochial schools. Let the public screwel system die a quick death.

[texan]

If it were not ran by a bunch of idiot liberals they would be okay. Here is one of the latest from a teacher friend in Mesquite TX (Dallas Sub). He is also a middle school coach. Do not do anything to make a parent mad when coaching. Don’t raise your voice, don’t push the kids, just be there.


This is all from the politically correct society we live in now. It is absolutely ruining the country. You may now choose if you are male or female or undecided. Fing idiots.

[gamewell45]

The Oklahoma Education Association, which is the state's affiliate to the National Education Association, called off the statewide teacher strike for their members yesterday, ordering them to return to work on Monday. The teachers are demanding livable wages that will allow them to work only one job, the restoration of proper funding for the state's public schools (20% of which are so underfunded that they're reduced to using four-day school weeks) after decades of budget cuts thereto, and the elimination of state subsidies to the gas and oil industries that have been the direction the state government has consistently pointed the difference in taxpayer money to instead in recent decades. Exactly none of those demands had been agreed to by the state government as of the time that the OEA proclaimed that the teachers they supposedly represent must return to work on Monday. To that end, the teachers plan to continue the strike next week anyway.



They're right! The strike, which just concluded its second week, was organized by teachers themselves on social media. It is hence rightly understood as their thing to call off, not that of the OEA, which has done nothing but try to contain this outpouring of anger and end it by any means possible as quickly as possible.

Seriously, do unions EVER do anything to support the interests of the workers they supposedly represent anymore? Right now, I'm pretty embarrassed to belong to the NEA.

Sounds like it's high time you vote your union leadership out of office and replace them with those who support your position. That's what I would have done if I were in your shoes.