‘Vote Democrat,’ NC School Officials Letting In Union Wannabes To Strong Arm Member Sign Ups, ‘Get Political’

RALEIGH – Lieutenant Governor Dan Forest announced on Facebook that his office was receiving reports from teachers of wannabe union representatives from the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) are being allowed free rein in many schools to force their political agenda, intimidate teachers into voting Democrat, and supporting the “Union.”

North Carolina is a Right to Work state. That means, essentially, that labor decisions are individual contracts between two parties, terminable any time, for most reasons, by either party. It also means we don’t tolerate the collective bargaining, intimidation, and abuse of non-compliant workers often associated with unions. For instance, public sector labor unions like a teachers union. Still, the NCAE seems to work around the legal barriers to do its best “union” impression.

The politicization of teachers is hardly new, but the latest iteration by the Left has pushed it to an extreme. Democrats, including Governor Roy Cooper, demonize Republicans for not (over)spending on education and teachers’ pay, the Leftists running the NCAE amplify the agitation with professional activists and teacher marches adorned with card-carrying communists.

Yet, like many other Leftist “unions” clamoring for survival, the NCAE’s membership rolls are bleeding members. The organization purporting to represent all teachers in their push for Leftist politics sports a grand total membership rate among teachers of…20 percent. That means, of North Carolina’s roughly 100,000 teachers, 80,000 of them have decided, in one way or another, that the NCAE isn’t for them. If school administrators sympathetic to the NCAE’s political cause, are helping apply pressure to teachers in their own schools by letting wannabe union reps in, that is a problem, wouldn’t you say?