Voting beats big money
MEA member Chuck Alberts remembers Dec. 11, 2012, when the Michigan Legislature rammed through passage of union-busting bills to weaken organized labor’s collective power.
Back then Alberts was a new vice president of the Lansing Schools Education Association (LSEA), standing among thousands of protesters who filled the Capitol and the lawn outside as horse-mounted state police patrolled with batons and deployed pepper spray.
Gov. Rick Snyder signed so-called “right-to-work” bills on the day they passed, after saying he would not. “His word meant nothing. What he said wasn’t on his agenda was the agenda.”
Now LSEA president, Alberts reminds members that Michigan’s wealthy DeVos family was pulling strings behind the scenes as a major donor for Snyder and other Republicans.
“We’re talking history, but it’s still connected today because Snyder is still piping money in; his voice is being listened to because he has the dollars. And the DeVoses are still major players.”
Privatization and profits are the goal of Betsy DeVos (former U.S. Education Secretary) and other billionaire donors. In the Snyder years, she pushed expansion of for-profit charter schools in Michigan.
In addition, after public schools took a $470 per-pupil funding cut, districts were offered money back if they outsourced support staff jobs, such as food service, custodial, and transportation.
It began with vilifying educators, Alberts said. “The administration portrayed educators as lazy, greedy and responsible for the state’s problems.”
Job protections and collective bargaining rights were stripped away; teacher evaluation got tied to standardized test scores; and a culture of fear pervaded the profession. Paradoxically, however, the union strengthened because members saw its importance, Alberts concluded.
“Our success depends on our solidarity and political action. We can’t take anything for granted because when we do — big money wins.”
The Snyder/DeVos Playbook
During his two terms in office, Gov. Rick Snyder enacted many damaging education and labor policies backed by the ultra-wealthy west Michigan DeVos family and a network of Republican party mega-donors:
- Slashed education funding, incentivized outsourcing school jobs
- Expanded for-profit charter schools; 1-in-3 close within five years
- Forced educators to pay ongoing health-care cost increases
- Replaced pension with 401k-style retirement plan
- Removed rights to bargain key working conditions
- Tied teacher evaluation to standardized test scores
- Changed tenure to make it easier to fire educators
- Penalized unions if a contract expired with no successor
- Passed so-called “right to work” laws that aimed to bust unions
- Used emergency managers to take over districts, canceling contracts
- Created a scandal-plagued state “authority” to run 15 Detroit schools
Read all of the stories in our special report, ELECTIONS MATTER >> by Brenda Ortega, MEA Voice Editor:
