California’s unions prioritise progressivism over fair pay
In 2019, my children’s teachers went on strike for higher pay, and I supported it, which was a bit of a surprise. I’d always thought public-sector unions a mockery of the idea of organised labour — not workers bargaining for a larger share of the value they create, but bureaucrats extracting rents from taxpayers, via politicians. On top of this, I’d trained to be an English teacher. I saw up close the pathetic scholarship and inane doctrines that inform teacher education in American universities. To me, unionised teachers were a convergence of these two unhealthy forces.
With luck it all crumbles into the sea.
Parents nationwide are still battling the impact of stringent school closures and lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Chicago families are no exception.
At Wesley Yang’s Year Zero substack site, a left-leaning public teacher in a leftist school district published an article describing just how crazy things really are in such schools. While your children may be behind in reading, writing, and arithmetic, it’s clear they’re getting an extra-large dose of hard-left racism (and probably gender theory and America-hatred, although the essay doesn’t touch on those things). If you have children or grandchildren in public schools, or you simply care about America’s future, you should read that essay and then pay close attention to your next school board election.
One of the clearest villains of the pandemic was Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, a powerful and deep-pocketed union. Her tireless anti-child and anti-science efforts played a major role in condemning millions of American students to disastrous “virtual learning,” for a year or more in many parts of the country. The bluer the area, the more influence unions wield over elected Democrats — and the likelier kids in those jurisdictions were languish at home, denied crucial in-person instruction. And when they were finally permitted back into classrooms, after well over a year in many cases, the likelier they were to face unsupported-by-data 
