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Thursday, April 18, 2013

Shanker Blog » America’s Union Suppression Movement (And Its Apologists), Part Two

Shanker Blog » America’s Union Suppression Movement (And Its Apologists), Part Two:


America’s Union Suppression Movement (And Its Apologists), Part Two

This is part two of a two-part post. The first part can be found here.
As the war against American unions reached a fever pitch in recent years, there emerged a small group of right-wing academics and think tanks that have taken up the anti-union cause in intellectual circles. Of particular note for our purposes are Terry Moe’s book, Special Interest, and a recent studyHow Strong Are U.S. Teacher Unions?, which was jointly sponsored by the Fordham Institute and Education Reform Now[6]
Since I’ve already written a critique of Moe’s book for the American Political Science Association’s journal,Perspective of Politics, my focus here is mainly on the Fordham/ERN report.
Both publications tell a very similar story (all the more remarkable given the political and economic context I discussed in Part I of this post), in which incredibly powerful teacher union Leviathans invariably win the day in all