Tioga Herald

As a lifetime member of NEA/AFT/UFF, I share this information with you.

We have been told that there is an organization with a great name distributing anti-union, anti-collective bargaining leaflets to union members in Florida.  The group calls itself the Freedom Foundation. 

Now, let’s get this straight.  There is nothing wrong with any group distributing information.  Here are two things about this group.  (1) Freedom Foundation sounds great.  A great name.  Everyone wants freedom. (2) the group refuses to reveal its donors. 

In other words.  A negative group of cowards.  Want to remain hidden while trashing unions. 

They apparently may be preying in states like Florida which is a “right to work” state.  But they are a nationwide group. 

All the years I was in Florida, there was a push to maintain “right to work” laws.  What it meant was this.  Right to work actually means “right to work” as long as you have never belonged to a union.  They are scared cowards.  There were a number of us who were never hired at St. Petersburg Junior College for full time positions, due to a coward of a president at that college who checked backgrounds of everyone who applied there and if he discovered you once belonged to a union, he refused to hire full time.  I was one of them.  I had worked in the public schools in New York and was a member of NYEA/NEA here in New York. 

What this SOB of a college president did was force me to pick up my family and move, selling a house which, had I been able to remain, I would have paid off in 2018.  Instead, I still had a mortgage and have one here in New York.  Due to a bastard at St. Petersburg Junior College.

These people are running scared.  I did have a wonderful job at Palm Beach Community College, working both full time and night time.  St. Petersburg Junior College and I was only able to work part time.  But, I worked with some wonderful faculty in Palm Beach as we increased our union membership from 40% to 80%, doubling our membership.  I give myself a pat on the back, along with the others there who accomplished this, as a team.  In other areas of Florida, colleges have brought in unions, one after the other.  DeSantis and company is running scared at this.  In fact.  I am happy to report that just two years ago, St. Petersburg College (once St. Petersburg Junior College) has now unionized.  DeSantis and others are livid.  So they are pulling out all the stops for “union busting.”  It is more than just anti-gay, anti-black, anti-Jewish, but also anti-union.  Sorry to say this, but DeSantis is one hell of a bastard. 

The whole idea of these Republicans, since supply-side economics was pushed, is to remove balance in society.  Unions provide balance, as long as they don’t push the envelope too far and make it unbalanced in favor of unions.  Some might argue that was the problem in the auto industry with the UAW.  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  But Reagan’s destruction of AT&T was truly about union busting under the guise of “deregulation.”  Deregulation is another form of dis-rupting economic balance, as well as supply side economics which is destructive to the demand side of the market.  Deregulation causes monopolies and centralized control similar to the centralized commune system in the former Soviet Union. 

When the 1% of stockholders in the regulated company for which I worked, were allowed to have “secret” stockholder meetings so as to destroy the company and make it what was good for the wealthiest – with a hatred of Franklin D. Roosevelt who put in place the BALANCES, thousands of us needlessly lost jobs at a corporation which was doing so well, it was considered a “cash cow.”  Ripe for the pickings of greedy criminals with the most money.  The IBEW at that company was also destroyed in the process, although I was not a member of the IBEW.

Now these Republicans are working to destroy balance in organizations with unions.  This is added to the attempts to destroy the very checks and balances built into our democratic form of government, established by our Founding Fathers. 

So, I ask everyone to watch out for a bunch of greedy liars and the “Freedom [NOT] Foundation.  For they are perverted cowards who hide their money.  They would be the first ones to not want money paid to unions hidden.  They think they are above the law.  This group of traitors to democracy and balance need to be stopped.  A vote for a Republican is a vote for fascist tyranny, not “politics.”