One of our super best friends, AEI’s new hotshot, Michael McShane, has a piece in National Review Online on teacher union efforts in Louisiana to intimidate private schools from participating in the state’s voucher program with a letter to each threatening that those schools will individually be sued if they participate. This despite the unions losing the first round in courts to stop the program. If they can’t win in court, the unions hope to at least scare schools away from offering opportunities to kids the threat of legal harassment.
Here’s a taste of McShane’s piece:
While the union’s behavior is disgusting, it certainly isn’t shocking.
Unfortunately, this is just another example of unions choosing to harass educators when they have lost a political or legal battle. It was just about a year ago that the pro-union protesters who were attempting to recall Scott Walker put on a shameful display in Wisconsin. At Messmer Prep, a private non-union school in Milwaukee, protesters super-glued doors shut, creating a fire hazard that endangered children; they berated Brother Bob Smith, the school’s leader and an anchor to Milwaukee’s black community; and they denigrated the school’s teachers who had done nothing more than show up to work that day.
If unions do not like vouchers, there are plenty of outlets for them to voice their distaste. If they wish to change the law, they should lobby their legislators. If they don’t like the governor, they should try and vote him out in the next election. If they don’t like the way the court rules, they should camp outside in protest. Any of these remedies are well within both their rights and the scope of appropriateness and decency.
What they shouldn’t do is badger, demean, or harass people that are working hard every day to educate children. When they do that, they look less like an organization with the best interests of children in mind and more like a power-hungry interest group that will stop at nothing to maintain its hegemony.
I’ll pre-empt Ladner… BOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Since Jay beat me to the BOOOOOOOM what can I say but PA-DOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I became my local school’s Union Rep this coming year in part to fight to keep us from doing such cheap, dirty things. Pray for me.
I will. You’ll need it!
However that George Wallace phot is equally low, dirty, cheap and unfair. If you had a true sense of justice you’d take it off and apologize for it.
Joe-
No one is trying to imply that these union goons are motivated by racism, but nevertheless both George Wallace and these people are taking dramatic and misguided action in an attempt to keep disadvantaged children from having access to high quality schools. It was wrong then and it is still wrong now.
Why should we dismiss out of hand the role of race in shaping union attitudes? Labor unions in the United States have a long and storied history of racism that almost matches the racist history of the government school system itself.
One thing is perfectly clear: any Republican constituency that worked so diligently to preserve policies whose primary social impact is to destroy black people would not be getting the benefit of even the slightest doubt.
[…] Enterprise Institute research fellow Michael McShane’s comment addresses the bullying effort by the Louisiana teachers union. (h/t Jay […]
[…] Enterprise Institute research fellow Michael McShane’s comment addresses the bullying effort by the Louisiana teachers union. (h/t Jay […]