Randi Weingarten Has 'Hope in the Darkness.' And Also Some Fear.
Our nation’s teachers unions have had a whiplash of a year, from the statewide teachers’ strikes that have swept the country to last week’s Supreme Court ruling in the Janus v. AFSCME case that could severely hurttheir membership. America’s most powerful teachers’ union leader says there is much, much more to come.
For the past decade, Randi Weingarten has led the 1.7 million-member American Federation of Teachers. She has been a prominent voice in battles over public education, organized labor, and national politics. In the dark aftermath of last week’s Janus ruling, which will almost certainly drain members and money from public unions nationwide, she spoke to us about how working class interests can possibly try to survive and thrive in the age of Trump.
Splinter: Is it possible that the Janus ruling was even worse than you thought it would be?
Randi Weingarten: No, I expected it. I helped write the amicus brief for both Friedrichs [a nearly identical case on which the court deadlocked] and for Janus, and I had sat through the Janus hearing, which I found to be absolutely worse than the Friedrichs hearing. Gorsuch said nothing, but Alito and Kennedy clearly had their minds made up. Alito has had his mind made up for six years—how to weaponize the First Amendment against working people. And if you think about it, if you go back and read the Citizens United case, which uses the First Amendment to give corporations unfettered right to participate in politics, and now at the same time they’ve used the First Amendment to limit the rights of workers through their unions to have any power. It is the most ideological court that we’ve seen in modern history, and ideological about corporate power and about unfettered markets.
Splinter: What do you think Anthony Kennedy’s retirement means for labor law?
Weingarten: I know Kennedy gets a good rap because of what he did on marriage and what he did on sustaining Roe v. Wade. As a lesbian who just got married this March, I appreciate that. But on economic issues, continue reading: Randi Weingarten Has 'Hope in the Darkness.' And Also Some Fear.
