As might be expected, the current issue of the NYSUT paper New York Teacher is full of denunciations of the governor's budget proposal, which one headline calls "a blow to education, health care", and others say "would put patients at risk", "hurts students, NY's future", is "job-killing" and "hits hardest at the most vulnerable". Nowhere did I see anything about what state leaders might do instead to cut spending or raise revenue so as to balance the budget. That's par for the course for public-sector unions, whose political clout is a key reason for the state's ongoing fiscal meltdown. NYSUT is always lobbying for pension sweeteners and other special breaks; its hard-headedness on charter schools this year may have cost the state hundreds of millions of federal dollars; and its ferocious opposition to vouchers, credits or any kind of benefit for private-school parents is obviously self-interested.
But the paper also brought to my attention an apparent case of virtue rewarded, an impending settlement of a strike at Holiday Inn Express in Latham, where the workers rightly got support from pols like Jerry Jennings as well as NYSUT (I'd missed the story in last week's TU). NYSUT has been a key supporter of the Labor-Religion Coalition and other causes that go beyond immediate self-interest. Its parent union's American Educator journal is often very good, not at all the kind of PC b.s. which a knee-jerk conservative might have expected. And I'm not sorry that my wife is a longtime member of this powerful union.
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