RALEIGH – The North Carolina Association of Educators, the state’s largest teachers union, is upset with House Speaker Thom Tillis.
In other breaking news, recent Carolina summers have been hot and recent Carolina shooters have been cold.
Rarely do top Republican politicians and teachers unions get along. But what has made the NCAE particularly peeved at Tillis was a speech he made last weekend at the Republican Party’s state convention in Wilmington.
Speaking to hundreds of receptive GOP delegates, Tillis pointed out that most public-school teachers do not belong to the NCAE, and that its policy prescriptions were outside the mainstream of public opinion. Defending a provision of the Republican budget deal that eliminates government collection of dues for the NCAE, Tillis further argued that the interests of union members, students, and taxpayers are not always in line.
“They don’t care about kids. They don’t care about classrooms,” Tillis said of union leaders and members. “They only care about their jobs and their pensions.”
Union officials were livid. NCAE President Sherri Strickland sent a letter to Tillis stating that “nothing could be further from the truth and such comments and actions are not in line with the values of our educators or the dignity of your position.”
The state’s political class has, not surprisingly, sided with the union. But I don’t recall any similar effort to defend the policy arguments or political activity of other interest groups in North Carolina. For example:
• When the state’s Realtors and homebuilders lobby state and local governments against new taxes and regulations, they argue that they are standing up not just for themselves but for their customers, since the latter end up bearing a significant share of the burden when government makes housing more expensive. How often does the Left accept this argument at face value? Approximately never.
• When the North Carolina Medical Society lobbies against government-run health insurance or in favor of medical malpractice reform, they argue that they are standing up not just for themselves but for their patients, whose interests lie in private health care arrangements and lower insurance costs for medical providers. How does the Left view this argument? With derision.
• When most of the insurance industry recently endorsed a move to change the regulation of North Carolina’s auto-insurance market, its lobbyists argued that by restricting competition, limiting the introduction of innovative new insurance products, and forcing safe drivers to pay too much to subsidize risky ones, the state’s current system operates against the interests of most consumers. How many liberal lawmakers and commentators bought this argument? About as many as took Tillis’s side in his dispute with the NCAE.
The fact is that students, parents, and taxpayers who work in fields other than public education are not eligible for membership in the teachers union. Only public-school educators can join. Only about a third of them join the union, and many of those join because of access to liability insurance or other services that ought to be available at their workplace – not because they agree with the NCAE’s policies or political biases.
Both my parents made this choice during part of their respective careers in public schools, so please spare me the usual denials and obfuscations.
Perhaps Tillis painted with too broad a brush. Like my parents before them, surely there are many members of the teacher union who care deeply about the children they serve. But Tillis was not wrong to insist that the lobbying position of the NCAE should never be equated with the interests of students, families, and taxpayers.
The NCAE doesn’t represent these groups. It represents government employees. Moreover, because of the way unions typically operate, it is reasonable to assume that the NCAE’s positions mostly represent the interests of our poor-to-mediocre teachers, not our highest-performing ones.
I fully expect the leaders of the teachers union to fume and fuss about their spat with Tillis for months if not years to come. Good. It will give them something less destructive than usual to occupy their time.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.