There were a lot of stunning comments coming from Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, in the course of our Twitter and internet exchanges yesterday.
None more stunning than this one on Twitter:
“i rechecked-cola, health benefits intact-if opt for temp -2 year cola freeze-like wage freezes many of us have taken.”
Folks. She rechecked.
Illinois retirees covered by state pensions have their COLA and health insurance intact.
Except not.
To keep them we must take a two-year freeze on cost of living or give up health care benefits.
Randi Weingarten’s idea of intact pension benefits.
Then there is the part about us.
“…like wage freezes many of us have taken.”
Now isn’t that what retirees – her own union members – want to hear from their president?
Stop complaining. Other workers have taken wage freezes. So should you.
In an interview on Salon last October:
My salary last year was about $360k. That’s about 3.5 times more than what my salary would have been as a NYC school teacher under the last contract I negotiated before I became AFT’s President. I love my job. I love representing educators. And I think that teachers should be making a lot more than they currently make.
And btw, in the corporate world, salaries for CEOs are not 3 to 5 times what their employees make. It’s hundreds of times more.
When Randi Weingarten is talking about the We Are One coalition of Illinois state public employee labor union leaders agreeing to unconstitutional freezes in our COLA, she compares herself to some mythical us who have already taken freezes. The us doesn’t include her, however.
When Randi Weingarten talks about her own salary, she compares herself to CEOs who make many times more than she does.
Is that what union members want to hear from their president?
Fred Klonsky 
I guess that Twitter is all in lower case (don’t know–tech-challenged person, here), but it’s telling that–to Randy–our COLA is as generic as, well, cola. Not important enough to be capitalized. Probably a silly analogy, but just sayin’,
And regarding Randi’s eventual retirement annuity…will it be based in $360,000 or the three and a half times less amount that she would have made as a teacher?? When I brought this up to some union higher ups in Illinois, their response was that their union salaries, while inflated compared to the teachers in the classrooms that they represent, we’re only a “drop in the bucket” in the pension system and so were inconsequential in terms of looking at them as cost saving revenue. I guess it is only the COLAs of us lowly educators that really count!!
I think Randi may have mixed up Illinois with Mayberry or some other place that never was.
There is an NYC teacher making more than 360K? where?