They really outdid themselves. In Wisconsin and across the nation, public-school-employee unions spared no kiddie human shields in their battle against Gov. Scott Walker’s budget and pension reforms. Students were the first and last casualties of the ruthless Big Labor war against fiscal discipline.
To kick off the yearlong protest festivities, the Wisconsin Education Association Council led a massive “sickout” of school personnel. The coordinated truancy action — tantamount to an illegal strike — cost taxpayers an estimated $6 million.
When they weren’t ditching their students, teachers were shamelessly using other people’s children as their own political junior lobbyists and pawns. A Milwaukee Fox News affiliate caught one fourth-grade teacher dragging his students on a “field trip” to protest against Walker at the state Capitol building.
The pupils clapped along with a group of “solidarity singers” as they warbled: “Scott Walker will never push us out, this house was made for you and me.”
Hundreds of high school students from Madison were dragooned into marches. When asked on camera why they had skipped school, one told a reporter from the Wisconsin-based MacIver Institute: “I don’t know. I guess we’re protesting today.”
Against a rising tide of rank-and-file teachers who oppose their leaders’ extremist politics, the national offices of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers shoveled millions in forced union dues into anti-Walker coffers.
According the WisconsinReporter.com, strapped state affiliates also coughed up major sums to beat back Wisconsin’s efforts to bring American union workers into the 21st century and in line with the rest of the workforce:
“The Ohio Education Association made a $58,000 in-kind contribution May 30, followed a day later by a $21,000 contribution from the Pennsylvania State Education Association. New York State United Teachers gave $23,000 on June 1, the Massachusetts Education Association gave $17,000 on May 31, and a group of unions based in Washington, DC, poured in $922,000 during the past week.”
Back in the Badger State, the Education Action Group Foundation caught Milwaukee teachers-union head Bob Peterson on tape this week bragging about how his school district organized bus runs and stuffed flyers into every K-8 student’s backpack urging them to vote in the recall election. No, this wasn’t a civic, nonpartisan get-out-the-vote effort. It was a purely partisan self-preservation campaign.
Peterson preaches that educators must be “teachers of unionism. We need to create a generation of students who support teachers and the movement for workers rights, oppressed peoples’ rights.”
Because, you know, asking teachers to contribute more to their pension plans is just like the crushing of freedom fighters in Iran, Egypt and China.
The blatant exploitation of bureaucratic authority over the nation’s schoolchildren isn’t sitting well with the public. A new Marquette University Law School poll released on the eve of the Wisconsin recall election showed that “only 40 percent of those surveyed said they had a favorable view of public-sector unions, while 45 percent viewed them unfavorably.”
From their first unhinged salvos 16 months ago in the state Capitol and right up until Election Day, the union bosses have made one thing clear as a playground whistle: It’s not about the children. It’s never about the children. It’s about protecting the power, perks and profligacy of public-employee-union monopolies.