Well, the teachers' unions aren't worth a SHIT if they don't represent you. You pay HUNDREDS of dollars a YEAR expecting them to help you when you need it, but instead they cut deals to cover up for negligent or malicious administrators. This is why I say repeatedly principals and administrators have ironclad job security. It's almost impossible to get rid of them.
I am not going to sit here and allow somebody to say it is only "one side" nonsense. Do you think my principal was right in FIRING me in direct violation of the union contract, of state law, of federal FMLA, because an asshole in H.R. wanted me gone to save money? And then when the asshole and the district's general counsel found out I really WAS sick and the principal completely violated state law about progressive discipline, they decided to rig the process in order to defend her negligence by tampering with witnesses, committing perjury, and most likely forging documents. Do you think I am making THAT up? Do you have any clue how "due process" hearings work? Do you understand that in the states where arbitrators preside over hearings, that they are picked by the school board and supposedly the union (which is in bed with them)? That the hearings are held on school property? That the union's lawyers can deny you witnesses, that they can make sure you never present your side? Do you understand teachers almost NEVER win these fake hearings and they have to sue the district's ass anyway?
Do you think I am making it up about the union's executive director taking a fucking BRIBE in the name of a job working for the man who spearheaded my illegal firing? This director was a witness for me, as she had REPRESENTED me in two hearings, and H.R. knew that.
If you want to see how these hearings actually work, watch the 1939 classic, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," and watch the part where Jimmy Stewart is having to go through a hearing. Teacher "due process" hearings really ARE kangaroo courts like in the film; Capra only SLIGHTLY exaggerates the hearing for comic effect. But I was howling with laughter watching the sequence because it was almost exactly what I went through.
Meanwhile, this POS principal is still at the district without so much as a slap on her wrist. Because she forgot to put on her privacy settings for Facebook, I found posts on her "wall" bragging she was spending this winter break in Hawaii having all kinds of fun. Not a fucking care in the world, not any hint of a conscience that she destroyed my career because she didn't know what in the hell she was doing and because a crook who didn't have all the information told her to do it. If she had a conscience, she would have resigned from the district. Meanwhile, I had to hock my mom's ring, an heirloom, to a pawn shop so I would have enough money to pay for auto insurance on a 22-year-old car and to buy food while waiting for my EUI check to be put on my card, probably next Tuesday.
Read the various NYC blogs, research Detroit Public Schools, research D.C. schools, research L.A.'s schools, and you will find the unions aren't worth a crap representing ALL teachers but are selling them down the river.
THAT'S why there is relentless privatization of public schools. The unions aren't stopping it.
Here is a video clip of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington featuring the kangaroo investigative hearing (about midway through):
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