Thousands of corrections officers, doctors, airport ground crew, diagnostic imaging technicians, nurses, Planned Parenthood workers, bus drivers, graduate students, and university professors gathered in Houston for the 88th biennial American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention this week. K-12 teachers were there, too, but they received little attention.
Leaders within the “teachers union” boasted of adding 185 bargaining units, making it “the largest healthcare union in the AFL-CIO” and the “largest union representing higher education, with more than 400,000 higher education members.”
Despite the AFT Convention’s “Real Solutions” theme, this week’s gathering focused on championing progressive causes, preparing for strikes, and pouring resources into the election— ignoring the real problems teachers face. On the convention’s opening day, AFT President Randi Weingarten spoke for almost an hour but never mentioned the heartbreaking learning loss, pervasive chronic absenteeism, and dangerous discipline issues that plague the nation’s public schools.
Weingarten instead informed delegates that “[f]ear, anxiety and despair have taken hold across our country” and then proceeded to stoke fear with statements like “the extremist, activist majority on the Supreme Court has rewritten the Constitution… They have laid the legal foundation for American autocracy.” She also lamented that “[o]ur planet is boiling” and “extremists want to cement their power and prevent others from having it.”
Weingarten warned that autocracy, tyranny, and fascism would result from union members not campaigning for her preferred candidate, and instructed them to vote “down this existential threat to democracy.”
On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris will address the convention’s 4,000 delegates. After the AFT voted to endorse her presidential aspirations earlier this week, Weingarten said Harris “has a record of fighting for us—fighting to lower the costs we pay, for reproductive rights, for worker empowerment, and to keep communities safe from gun violence.” No mention of K-12 education, of course.
To learn more about the AFT’s priorities, including climate justice, abortion, Israel-bashing, and “rewriting the economic rules,” watch AFT President Randi Weingarten’s speech to the AFT Convention and read “The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Disregards Real Solutions for Teachers” and “Independent Women’s Forum Exposes Teachers Unions’ Misguided Priorities Ahead Of American Federation Of Teachers Conference.”
For more information about teachers unions, check out the
IWF Education Freedom Center’s Teachers Union Resource Center