Last Updated on May 4, 2021
Teachers unions are organizing a massive power grab and pushing for the use of radical left-wing curriculum in Virginia’s schools following the state’s legalization of public sector collective bargaining, a key piece of the left-wing agenda championed by Democrats since taking full control of the state’s government. Under the new rules, touted by unions as some of broadest in the country, public employees will have the ability to collectively bargain with their local governments, opening the door to hundreds of potential labor disputes statewide.
Long known for its enthusiastic support of right-to-work legislation, public sector collective bargaining has been banned outright in Virginia since 1977. Despite this, unions have managed to stick around, particularly in Northern Virginia’s D.C. suburbs and perhaps none more successfully than the Virginia Education Association (VEA), which appears to have spent the better part of the last year preparing for the May 1st change in bargaining laws.
Led by union President James Fedderman, the VEA has over 40,000 members across 130 local divisions and lobbied heavily for the legalization of public sector collective bargaining in the state. Under the new law, teachers and other public employee unions will have the ability to collectively bargain with local governments, though not the state, a piece of the law that even pro-Union observers say sets up the potential for hundreds of separate labor disputes and could force the state to step in, spelling an end to Virginia’s long-held status as a right-to-work state.
According to the VEA, collective bargaining will be the union’s top priority for the next two years, while the group remains focused on keeping teachers home from work due to alleged COVID-19 health risks.
“History beckons, and so VEA’s Organizing2Bargain campaign will be the Union’s top priority for the next two years,” reads a statement on the union’s website, while a COVID-19 “resource page” makes clear that the group “demands” teachers be given a stay-at-home employment option.
In addition to prolonging school shutdowns and alterations, the union says it will be advancing efforts to overhaul Virginia’s school curriculum, further increasing the radical left’s hold on public education, and will continue to support efforts by unionized teachers to push school districts farther left.
As previously reported by National File, in Northern Virginia’s Loudoun County, the local division of the Virginia Education Association has been at the forefront of a radical left-wing effort to embed Critical Race Theory and other anti-white, anti-American curriculum in to fabric of the school system – one of Virginia’s largest. In addition to pushing for the radical curriculum, unionized school teachers, left-wing parents, and even the county’s Soros-funded lead prosecutor are members of a Facebook group dedicated to doxxing and destroying district parents opposed to the left’s radical efforts. Some members of the group even suggested hiring hackers to obtain sensitive information on the parents and their children.
During the VEA’s annual convention, Fedderman reaffirmed the union’s support of the far-left in what the VEA calls a “fiery speech” to members, vowing to promote the Black Lives Matter agenda in schools and calling for the creation of a “tool-kit” to help teachers “protect” students from online “hate content.”
“We owe our students a rich and inclusive curriculum,” said Fedderman in advocating for a left-wing overhaul similar to that seen in Loudoun County.
