News With Views By Lee Duigon
Has there ever been a worse idea than allowing public school teachers to unionize? Nothing springs to mind—except maybe the Soviet Union.
Teachers’ unions are dead set against Racism—right? Let’s see how right.
After a two-week teachers’ strike some months ago, the Minneapolis School District and the city’s teachers’ union have signed and just ratified a new contract… which is outstanding for its blatantly racist provisions.
According to the terms of the agreement, whenever the district has a need to reduce its teaching force, “white” (whatever that means) teachers are to be laid off first… and re-hired last. Because there have to be “Educators of Color protections” to make up for whatever “systemic racism” was practiced by other people in the past.
Normally, for years and years, everywhere in America, the standard for executing a reduction in force (“RIF,” in union parlance) was seniority. Teachers with the least seniority, regardless of skin pigmentation, were to be riffed first and rehired last. It was not a difficult rule to follow, and the unions seemed content with it. Until now.
How is this new standard anything but flagrantly racist? If the district were to apply the standard to favor “white” teachers at the expense of Educators of Color, the unions and the nooze media and what passes these days for our nation’s leaders would be crying bloody murder and demanding that a court nullify the rule toot-sweet. They’d also be calling for criminal penalties. So how is it just peachy-keen when the rule penalizes white teachers for being white? Heck, they could have drawn up a standard based on merit: best teachers, regardless of skin color, riffed last and rehired first. But then the usual suspects would be crying “racism!” as they always do whenever merit is even momentarily considered.
