By Matthew Hayward Originally posted Nov, 202017 on Freedomfoundation.com With news that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear  Janus vs. AFSCME  and the widely held belief that Mark Janus will win, ultimately bringing right-to-work (RTW) to public employees all across the country, we can anticipate Big Labor will not just give in and allow people to walk away from paying dues. You can bet government union leaders are organizing all across the country to concoct new scams that will allow them to continue to treat public employees as a cash cow for their ideological fantasies and political realities. In fact, I recently attended a  conference  put on by the  Labor Education and Research Center (LERC) , a small, taxpayer-subsidized outfit headquartered at South Seattle College. The title of the conference was “ Emerging Leaders Conference 2017  –  Social Justice Unionism in the Face of RTW. Saturday morning started out with a radical left-wing panel dis...

By Matthew Hayward To paraphrase George Orwell, “All unionized teachers are equal; it’s just that some are more equal than others.” Once upon a time, teachers’ unions were established with the noble goal of protecting the rights of educators by advocating for higher pay and working conditions. The sales pitch also included heartfelt assurances that improved compensation for teachers would attract better-qualified candidates and produce better education outcomes. Over time, the unintended consequence for teachers is that, as the union grows, it becomes less transparent and less responsive to its members. Unions in general, and teachers’ unions in particular, eventually become more concerned with their own self-preservation and the accumulation of power than the well-being of their members, let alone satisfying students or their parents. And some teachers have become more equal than others. Union leaders often use their influence to protect the interests of veteran teachers who’ve been r...