I feel the need to explain a little further my vitriol for the NEA. When I was a k-12 teacher, my school was a closed shop with NEA. Closed shop means that everyone that works there pays dues to NEA regardless of whether or not they choose to be members. Dues were approximately $600 a year. I never saw the NEA. The only time I saw them was when it was membership drive time. Teachers were not given copies of the contract (unless you hunted down a union rep (which was also not visible) and asked for one. This, of course, assumes that you know that you have a contract and that the union bargains for it. I never saw the bargaining team or even knew who they were or whether or not they were all high school people or not. When I was mis-assigned for an entire year, threatening my teaching license, I tried to file a grievance, and the NEA told me that I couldn't (who are 'they' to tell a worker what they can or cannot grieve). So that was my first experience with the NEA.

Secondly, I have fundamental philosophical issues with most craft unions today that are members of the AFL-CIO. 1) Craft unions divide workers into crafts - truckers union, nurses union, janitors union, receptionist union, etc. This makes it easy as hell for management to pit workers against each other. It happens all the time. Example: Nurses strike, Portland, OR c. 2002. Nurses had been on strike for a couple of month. The hospital management had *flown in strikebreakers*, set them up at the Hilton, gave them a private bus to bring them to work every day, paid them more than the regular nurses, and blew, in two months, all of the money the nurses had been asking for over the course of two years. People in Portland started to go elsewhere do to the moral questionability of the hospital's actions. When people stopped coming in, other workers who were not on strike got their hours cut. Then I saw a letter to the editor in the newspaper from a radiologist tech who was bashing the nurses, because *his* hours were getting cut. Divide and conquer is the oldest fricken trick in the book, and the AFL-CIO unions are set up in such a way that they are easily exploitable.

Solution: Organize by industry instead of craft. The medical workers union: includes all people who work in the hospital, so when one group goes on strike, the entire place shuts down. That will end the strike quickly.

2) Craft unions are headed by professionals who are, by and large, not people who have risen through the rank-and-file. These people make six-figures. That's where my fricking $600 a year was going. (due to a federal law I cannot recall the name of the law) I was able to see people making over $200,000 a year on union payroll - these people are in the top 1% income earners, and the union puts them there.

3) Craft unions are run like businesses. They consider themselves a service provider. The Union member pays dues in return for a service of legal support, a negotiator, etc. Many craft unions have left small shops in the lurch, because it will cost them too much to organize (read: they won't profit). These are the shops normally end up coming to the IWW. Furthermore, many employees of unions have tried to unionize and been subject to anti-union tactics by their own union. A union, in essence, is a group of workers acting collectively. That's it. It is not defined as a not-for-profit that spends millions a year lobbying political parties. It is not defined as something that must be sanctioned by the AFL-CIO. When the law protects workers "acting collectively to imrpove wages, hours, or working conditions", there is not a caveate that they must belong to a not-for-profit organizationt that calls itself a union. Five people in a shop, unaffiliated with any "union", collectively going to their employer and demanding sick pay is a union action carried out by a union.

4) Craft unions often dictate to their members what to do. The bargaining team in most unions is comprised mostly of union staffers. These are the people who bargain the contract. When in the IWW, anyone who was a member could show up to the bargaining session, and the workers *themselves* bargained for their demands, not some third party that will decide for themselves what the workers best-interest is. They essentially become an outside party that acts as another management. A benevolent management, but management nonetheless.

More can be read here.

So when you read my vitriol about the NEA or most other craft unions, I'm already starting from a position that they are nothing more than a business that acts as another management and is set up in such a way that workers will be pit against each other. So when I see evidence supporting this (such as my last post about the NEA), I will certainly spit fire.