AFT president visits East Bay, defends union rights The Education Report

The Education Report

AFT president visits East Bay, defends union rights

By Katy Murphy
Monday, March 28th, 2011 at 10:30 pm in OEA, budget, politics, teachers, union contract
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American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten came to the Bay Area today. I heard her on KQED this morning and again tonight, at a Commonwealth Club event in Lafayette.

Weingarten appeared in the “Waiting for Superman” documentary about the state of public education in the country; UC Berkeley Professor Bruce Fuller, who moderated this evening’s talk, joked that the audience might remember her as the “evildoer who resists all reforms presented in public policy circles.”

Weingarten’s central message was — no surprise, given what’s been happening in Wisconsin — in defense of collective bargaining. While it’s perceived to be an adversarial process, she said, it doesn’t have to be. Read the rest of this entry