Las Vegas has been the host of many a mega-fight over the years, but one coming up this November has gotten scarce attention by the general public. I’m talking about the challenge the Teamsters is mounting against the miserable failure otherwise known as the Clark County Education Association (CCEA).
And no, the label “miserable failure” is not open to debate. Just look at the product the school district, under contract with CCEA, is putting out.
Of course, the unionistas from both unions have very little interest in, you know, the education of children. Lord, no. This is all about which union will rake in all that union dues money. The unions are, after all, all about the unions. The kids are just a convenient prop to be trotted out at negotiation time and during legislative sessions.
In any event, the knee-busters over at the Teamsters want to represent Clark County teachers. Their campaign centers on the notion that not only has CCEA been a miserable failure at providing our kids with an excellent education, it’s been a miserable failure at shaking down taxpayers for better contracts and bennies. Go figure.
The problem is CCEA already represents Clark County teachers, so the Teamsters need to persuade said teachers to first fire CCEA.
Normally, such a decertification election wouldn’t be scheduled until November 2008, but for some mysterious reason, the decertification window appears to have been moved up to November of THIS year. Conspiracy theorists will muse that CCEA moved it up to shorten the amount of time the Teamsters have to “persuade” teachers to dump CCEA and accept the benevolent representation of Jimmy Hoffa’s brass-knuckled arm-twisters.
Here’s the thing: Whichever of these unions ultimately wins in November’s smack-down, the kids will lose. Only by allowing parents to pick the schools THEY believe are best for their kids will education be dramatically improved. And neither the Teamsters nor CCEA will ever allow that to happen. School choice is to unions what sunlight is to vampires.
In any event, here are two items I’d like to see added to this inter-union fight, just for the sport of it…
1.) The national union movement is pushing the notion of using “card checks” for certification of a union. That means union agitators can coerce workers into signing a “card” stating they want the union, and once 51 percent of the workers “voluntarily” sign such a card, the employer is forced to recognize the union without a secret ballot election.
Well, if “card check” is good enough to certify a union, why isn’t it good enough to DE-certify a union? Hey, hey…ho, ho…card check decert’s the way to go!
2.) If there IS a decertification election in November, let’s give teachers the kind of choice the teachers union won’t give to parents. Instead of forcing teachers to pick the lesser of two union evils, let’s add a third choice: “No Stinking Union at All.”
Frankly, in the only state where voters have the option of voting for “None of the Above,” it’d be the Nevada thing to do.
Posted on August 20th, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Nevada
The British and French goal to goad Hitler and Stalin into an exclusive war in the 1930s where the two monsters would destroy each other, which unfortunately wasn’t achieved because Britain and France stupidly thought that policies of appeasement would turn Hitler’s attention to the east.
The Iraq-Iran War of the 1980s where the two countries fought themselves into a stalemate and bled each other white.
And now we have two unions in Clark County fighting each other.
I would really enjoy watching all this except that the only people to be hurt from it will be the innocent ones (the children and many of the teachers).