SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Union dues are big business

Further to Doretta’s posting yesterday about the power of the teachers’ unions, I suggest you read this cri du coeur by Joel Klein, the former chancellor of New York City’s school system. Mr. Klein, who had previously taken on Microsoft and won (until the decision was overturned on appeal), met his match in the New York teachers’ unions. The article is long - because it documents how virtually every one of his initiatives was blocked by the teachers’ unions - but well worth reading. 

And lest you think there is no applicability to Ontario, get out your calculator and calculate how much OECTA’s $60 surcharge (mentioned in Doretta’s posting) adds up to. On second thought, I’ll save you the trouble. At 45,000 members, the surcharge alone amounts to $2,700,000. That’s a lot of extra pocket money for a union that extracts more than $1,000 from each of its members as a matter of course every year and has an annual income in the neighbourhood of $50,000,000. And OECTA is the baby sister when it comes to the other two major teachers’ unions in Ontario - the OSSTF with 60,000 members and the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario with approximately 76,000 members. 

It would be hard to over-estimate the power of these organizations.