OEA Employee: "OEA's attitude is about power"

OEA Employees on Strike, Summer 2010

If We Are Ohio’s rhetoric is any indication, unions don’t care for elected officials who stand in their way. The Ohio Education Association (OEA) is the state’s largest public union, so their employees seem like the folks to confirm this! From an August 29, 2009 post on an official OEA staff blog:

Some negotiations are settled peacefully and uneventfully by enlightened boards of education who value their employees.

Of course, OEA defines “enlightened boards of education” as the ones who give OEA whatever it demands.

And then there are those boards of education whose modus operandi is to constantly be power-hungry, contentious, self-serving and extremely short sighted.

Am I the only one who thinks “self-serving” is an odd way to describe public officials who look out for the public?


Still, OEA staff are probably just mimicking the combative tone passed down from union bosses…

OEA talks a good game with its members — giving the impression that true collective bargaining is moving merrily along and that true progress is being made at the negotiations table. But actions speak louder than words, and the truth is that the OEA is acting every bit as bad as the worst boards of education across the state for whom its own members work. And the saddest part of all is that OEA’s attitude is about power — not about progress, fairness, the financial future of the organization, or any other factor upon which OEA’s conduct should be based.

Like so many quotes from OEA staff, “OEA is acting every bit as bad as the worst boards of education” is a criticism we can process one of two ways:

1. Unions will be unions – to get their hands on more dues cash, OEA staff say things they don’t mean.
2. OEA bosses demonize public officials while behaving the same way, if not worse.

Are OEA bosses hypocrites who mistreat their employees, or are OEA employees hypocrites who squeeze big bucks out of the teachers they claim to speak for? Whatever your political bent, you should be skeptical when the people benefiting from a broken status quo insist reform would be the worst.

Get the facts about the reasonable government union reforms in Senate Bill 5, and vote Yes on Issue 2!

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Cross-posted at that hero.