This symbol is on the IEA web site.
The following telephone message received by a McHenry County teacher and presumably all other Illinois Education Association members:
This is IEA President Ken Swanson with an urgent message about a legislative emergency
You will be receiving in the mail an oversized postcard explaining what’s happening and the fact that the first week of January your rights to tenure, seniority, collective bargaining and the right to strike may all be under attack.
Some of these rights may be seriously diminished or lost without your help.
Read that postcard.
Please respond to this call to action.
We need your help. We need you to fight to preserve your rights.
I wish you and your family a great holiday.
And, please take the time to read that postcard and do everything it asks.
Whether we are successful in protecting your rights the first week of January will depend on your actions.
The IEA web site has an article that complains about the unions being seated at a table that is labeled “Unions,” rather than at a table labeled “Education Reform.”
The masthead of the IEA/NEA Illinois Education Association web site says the union want "to effect excellence and equality in public education and to be THE advocacy organization for all public education employees."
The article complains that those seated at the “Education Reform” Table have made campaign contributions amounting to $605,000 to obtain their seats.
It appears that the public employee unions are beginning to panic. The message from the IEA is one example. The *FIERCE* defense of teachers unions in the comments to recent articles concerning what to do to the pension funding crisis published in the Northwest Herald is another. Then there is the website laborunionreport.com which has an article describing the crisis in Chicago as our union-owned governor considers signing a pro-union bill that would deny tax funds to any municipality that haven’t funded their pensions – Chicago being behind. See: http://www.laborunionreport.com/portal/2010/12/%E2%80%A6and-so-it-begins-the-public-sector-ponzi-scheme-is-collapsing/
So, the unions know that the public is increasingly turning against them as their tax bills mount, their jobs are lost, and their homes are foreclosed, while union employees get fatter, retiring early on overstuffed state pensions.
WI governor-elect Scott Walker is even considering decertifying the public employee unions by executive order after he takes office.
To say that the unions are starting to mount a full court press to protect their benefits is an understatement. They are near panic.
Just wait until the muni-bond market collapses as investors start bailing due to the increasingly out of control unfunded pension liability. When the pols realize that they can’t raise funds because pensions make them too risky an investment, that’s when the game will be over for public employee unions.
The sooner the better J.