So-Called “Collective Bargaining” Laws Handcuff Teachers To Union Bosses Who Prefer Conflicts Over Cooperation

“[T]he first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer.”

SAul Alinsky – the model Builder for teacher union actions

Unchain Teachers from their NEA and AFT Union Masters – End Monopoly Bargaining

Government mandated union monopoly bargaining rules force teachers to be subservient to union organizers whose goals and methods disrupt schools and often conflict with many teachers’ personal beliefs.  For example, the National Education Association union (NEA)’s goal of expanding a political power by manufacturing tension between teachers and school administrators may often a Buddhist’s teacher and create friction in the school that create less cooperation to solve day-to-day issues teachers need resolved immediately. 

Teacher union organizer-directed armies’ primary tools are conflict and confrontations rather than cooperation with a solution focus.  These standard NEA^[i] union techniques can only lead to unrest, unhappy work environments, and a decrease in cooperation.  Creating a hostile work environment impacting teachers, students, and classrooms across America. 

This union technique is not intended to bring about quick resolutions.  In fact, even if an issue could be handled with a quick phone call; NEA trains its staff to create a disruptive public action anyway.  These union actions lead to costly wastes of public educational resources of time and money.  But, these disruptions also build NEA and American Federation of Teachers union (AFT) political power.

The NEA’s conflict promotion technique is not new. Since at least 1972, NEA workshops have trained union staff to maintain a warlike mentality rather than a problem solving one.  Organizers are taught to look for opportunities to exploit to create ‘actions,’ which are the primary goal (i.e., activity rather than solutions are the goals).  Teacher union workshops teach staff techniques to create civil unrest rather than how to seek quick and peaceful resolutions.“[We] would not recommend exchanges of letters or private discussions with the superintendent as a way of building the organizations. Such meetings, or such correspondence might solve the problem, but they would not provide the kind of action that is exciting …â€

NEA Training Workshop[ii]

Most school children know that chaos and strife destroy communities, it does not build but them.

You might be familiar with the recent Red-for-Ed actions which are real examples of teacher union Alinsky disruptive training.  

A casual observer might dismiss these nationwide Red-for-Ed^[iii] teacher union campaigns as school systems in need of an emergency response.  But Red-for-Ed aren’t childish antics nor are they attempts to solve education problems.  Red-for-Ed activities are plots to produce ‘action’ for unions to maintain relevance as they also build a movement attitude among participants who union bosses often described as representing a fictional impacted ‘community.’ 

Union organizers are taught to create conflicts, particularly by manufacturing winnable actions to give parents and teachers feelings of unity and power that they will in turn associate with the teacher union(s).

This divisive union-directed conflict can be seen in the Red-For-Ed actions, use of Co-Vid fears, and recent embrace of radical and violent BLM riots and other disruptive actions designed to divide people by race.  

The following are just a handful of the thousands of articles documenting conflict and acquisition of political power at the expense of children, their education, and their futures.

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Orwellian Teacher Union Organizers

The Orwellian titled “organizer†creates mayhem and unrest to manipulate the “school community.†And intimidate the target which could be a school board member, supervisor, mayor, etc.  (Be wary of the multiple new ‘communities’ being talked about because it is a tipoff that an organizer’s disruption scheme is afoot.)  School boards and local officials provide useful targets to exploit, denigrate, isolate, and publicly and subtly intimidate. 

Alinsky-style organizing techniques currently are burning in our streets leading to violence, murder, looting, and destruction of buildings, cars, and other property. 

If the public continues allowing union bosses to paint targets on individuals and interrupt the lives of school communities, then their bullying behaviors will escalate ad absurdum.  A civil society must “nip in the bud†these bully tactics of isolating targets and bullying targets with the goal making others stay quiet lest they become the next target.

This scheme of targeting people and cancelling people is eerily reminiscent.  To paraphrase a formerly popular quote:  First they targeted a principal, and I did nothing. Then, they targeted a school board member, and I said nothing. So on and so forth, until they finally came and made me the target, and there was no one let I could ask for help.  It was said about the Nazis and it can be said about union organizers.

Most states force teacher silence and require teachers let union bosses speak for them

In most states in America, teachers are being forced remain silent and let Big Labor bullies speak for them or they will lose their jobs.  Exclusive representation, which also means you cannot represent yourself, is commonly referred to as “Collective Bargaining†but more accurately it is a “Monopoly Bargaining†power that prevents small groups or individual teachers from working directly with their principals to solve most school issues.  In Chicago and elsewhere this union power can prevent teachers from reporting bad teachers for remedial or disciplinary actions. 

This so-called collective bargaining denies teachers their constitutional freedoms and gags teachers and forces them to accept union organizers exclusively speaking for teachers despite the fact union organizers’ main goal is not fixing problems but inciting people and manufacturing unrest. 

A truly free society should unshackle teachers from these teacher union thugs who are not looking out for the best interests of the tens of thousands of teachers forced to accept NEA exclusive representation. 

NEA and Teachers goals diametrically opposed

Union organizers have their own goals which are often diametrically opposed to that of establishing a harmonious work-school environment for teachers and students.  The NEA’s role for UniServ is to drive conflict, create political power and disharmony.

“Uniserv, as Alinsky sees it, is a cover role. The real role is that of an organizer…â€

NEA Training Workshop^[iv]

The NEA even coaches its UniServ [should I add a footnote to ID UniServ?] organizers to dump their daily representation work on teachers:

“The way you get away from some of the [UniServ] business agent duties is to train teachers to pick up some of those duties. In other words, if you’re spending all your time working out grievances then the way to handle the job is to train teachers to handle those grievances.â€

NEA Training Workshop[v]

Freedom dies on the altar of collective bargaining

It is immoral to suppress individual freedom for phony claims of universal benefit.  NEA staff training since 1972 exposes the union’s disregard for the needs and desires of the teachers that they supposedly represent.   

States that require public employees to subjugate their will to monopoly bargaining impose unwanted representation of government employees by union agitators with little concern for teachers and children; except to use them as props to gain political power.

The NEA’s own training documents expose the union’s ulterior motives.

In August 1973, at an NEA staff training workshop on a college campus in Bemidji, Minnesota, Alinsky tactics were taught.  The training was a part of an expanding NEA effort to change the culture of the NEA and move it towards using confrontational tactics designed by Saul Alinsky. And if you are not familiar with Saul Alinsky his quote in his book Rules for Radicals supplies insight into the origins of the NEA’s current “organizing tactics.† In fact, the NEA workshop included Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals book as recommended reading, when you read ‘radical’ think ‘organizer’:

“From all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins – or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer.â€

NEA Training Recommended Reading[vi]

In the 1960’s Alinsky and his cohorts created a training center for disruptors that prepared special workshops for unions including the NEA.   This NEA Workshop (created in 1972) was entitled: “Alinsky For Teacher Organizers†“by J. Michael Arisman [should I add a note to ID?], Midwest Training Consultant and National Education Association.â€

“Generally, the Alinsky advice on tactics is guerilla war advice. To win: know the enemy, divide the enemy, …and personalize the conflict.â€

NEA Training Workshop[vii]

If the first Alinsky quote was disturbing, you might be more concerned to find out that to the NEA peaceful solutions to issues and problems are unacceptable.  NEA organizers must generate and win actions by creating public discord even when none previously existed.  This is where Alinsky tactics are used to rev up anxieties and hostilities.

“Alinsky has a very simple method for preparing your people tactically. He advises that you go into little battles you can win first, in order to build up your people’s confidence. He advises that later you make alliances that get you bigger battles.â€

NEA Training Workshop[viii]

The NEA union demands that its union organizers become disruptive instigators:

“Action is critical, especially with the white middle class- This group is not used to action. …the teacher’s power base [is] outside the membership and in the community…â€

“The organizer organizes around issues, not around problems.  A problem might last three to four years. An issue lasts 3 to 14 days. “

“[The] primary tactic is to get into action to stoke the brush fires, to get your organization alive, and keep it alive.†…The organizer must not resolve issues even though he might be able to. His people gain experience and confidence from dealing successfully with issues.†[Emphasis added]

NEA Training Workshop[ix]

Action! The NEA not only wants to isolate management targets; it needs to isolate its members from management and the community to prevent any friendly relationships with school board members or principals.  Not to isolate might cause people to see each other as human.  Union organizers must keep the designated enemies isolated, marginalized, and vilified to the point they seem inhuman.

“It is hard to deal with an enemy with whom you have a personal relationship.  You should not let your people fraternize with [the] enemy. Distance helps you to polarize the issue [and the people] – to make it an us—them affair.â€

NEA Training Workshop[x]

Once NEA organizers choose an issue, they are trained to “Cut†the issue:

“‘Cutting* an issues means: 1) polarizing it by creating an us-them situation in which your people believe they are 100 per cent right (2) personalizing it to a point where you are fighting a person rather than the system (the school board).†[Emphasis added]

NEA Training Workshop[xi]

The NEA encourages vile yelling and taunting of targets at their homes, schools, grocery stores, or anywhere they might frequent.  They are provocateurs trying to evoke frustration with a defensive retaliation response because they see physical violence as a desirable outcome to achieve. 

“This is very much a tactic of Alinsky’s. In fact, getting the superintendent to insult or to assault your people, he would regard as of higher value than ten weeks of formal training. The tactical essence, Alinsky says, is to figure out what reaction you can provoke that will best suit your needs.† [Emphasis added]

NEA Training Workshop[xii]

It is very important to understand that this manufactured chaos for the advantage of the NEA not for the good of teachers nor for good of ‘the children’:

“Alinsky’s approach to organizing people is to appeal to their self-interest. He does not believe people can be organized around altruistic motives such as the welfare of children or the good of education. It is self-interest that makes people move. … Alinsky believes that only if you involve people’s self-interests can you organize them for change.† [Emphasis added]

NEA Training Workshop[xiii]

Since we have gone down this path, here are few more NEA highlighted points from their staff training:

“Forget the older teachers four or five years from retirement.â€

“Organize the community by using the natural interest in the children to get into the homes. … Once teachers show interest in kids by visiting homes, they develop a relationship with parents.â€

“… the organizer never has issues to begin with. … The organizer has to touch the person’s self-interest to find the issues around which the person is willing to organize.â€

“… a very simple method for preparing your people tactically … go into little battles you can win first, in order to build up your people’s confidence.â€

“His primary tactic is to get into action to stoke the brush fires, to get your organization alive, and keep it alive.â€

“[Y]ou must “fix” the outcome of these fights. Find out what the establishment will give you without a fight and then send your people in to take it from the establishment…†[Emphasis added]

NEA Training Workshop[xiv]

Free Teachers and Students from this Teacher Union Madness

Unshackle kindergarten teachers from the NEA union’s tactics do not create calm kindergarten environments, but rather “stoke†dissent and anger among teachers entrusted with children from the ages of 4-6.

These teachers’ union want to push political issues beyond school:

“As pointed out earlier he [Alinsky] would advise them to become multi issue people, moving beyond the teacher contract issues to community issues.â€

NEA Training Workshop[xv]

Our nation’s children are entering into these deliberatively manufactured chaotic, stress-filled environments called schools,  Interestingly, there is an increasing rise of stressed out and childhood anxiety that parallel NEA union growing and increase use of Alinsky tactics in our schools.  Is the Alinsky and NEA a health concern?  There appears to be a correlation here.

“Make it and US vs. Themâ€

NEA organizers claim that they are fighting for the children, but they are just trying to expand their political power through intimidation that divides communities into an us vs them.  Or, as the NEA’s own workshop puts it, “polarize the issue – make it an us-them affair.â€^[xvii]

When the NEA uses Alinsky tactics, education quality loses, children lose, and teachers lose.  But, when the state forces teachers to unwillingly succumb to NEA authority, teachers lose their constitutional rights and their freedom.

The NEA’s own training documents and their own actions expose the teacher union’s ulterior motives.  Based on their own training, the state and federal election reporting agencies should classify the national, state, locals, and UniServ NEA organizations as political organizations. 

States and the U.S. Supreme Court need to end the unconstitutional power of any organizations to hand cuff and gag employees through so-called collective bargaining contracts.  Hundreds of thousands of teachers deserve to be released from politically mandated exclusive union representation that compels teachers to be held hostage to union negotiations over items unrelated to the school but are being driven the union’s national goals. 

At the expense of our children’s education, NEA and AFT unions are using intimidation and chaos tactics to build political power while undermining the school harmony for the teachers and students.  Union organizers are not interested in building harmony but creating a divided school community with teachers against teachers and parents against parents. This union behavior undermines schools, teachers, and especially the schoolchildren. And, state and federal laws force teachers to submit to often radical union-control over their classrooms. Monopoly bargaining must end in order to rebuild our classrooms.

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[i] NEA, is the National Education Association union which has become a major part of the Democrat National Committee (DNC), NEA officials hold super delegate positions at DNC conventions.

[ii] Alinsky For Teacher Organizers by J. Michael Arisman, Midwest Training Consultant and National Education Association Organizer (https://nilrr.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/1972_NEA_Uniserv-alinsky-notes.pdf)

[iii] “Funding for Students & Schools | NEA.†https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/funding-for-students-and-schools.

[iv] Alinsky For Teacher Organizers

[v] Ibid., page 10.

[vi] “Quote by Saul Alinsky: “Lest we forget at least an over ….†https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/97588-lest-we-forget-at-least-an-over-the-shoulder-acknowledgment.

[vii] Alinsky For Teacher Organizers, page 9.

[viii] Ibid., page 5

[ix] Ibid., page 3

[x] Ibid ., page 7

[xi] Ibid. page 8

[xii] Ibid. page 9

[xiii] Ibid. page 2

[xiv] Ibid. page 7

[xv] Ibid. page 8

[xvi]  NILRR staff demarcated the original graph with a line representing 1972 when the NEA began dramatically expanding its Alinsky conflict approach onto the education workforce and when the estimated two-contract cycle since Alinsky,(Age of Alinsky, represents the time when Alinsky Organizing Tactics have reign supreme over teacher union contract negotiations)  Chart from “The declining productivity of education†article published by the left leaning Brookings Institute   https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2016/12/23/the-declining-productivity-of-education/ I

[xvii] Ibid. page 7