Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker has sought to place himself as an inexpensive Republican—a relative average who introduced earlier than the 2020 election that he wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump and whose condemnation of Trump’s incitement of rebel on January 6 was featured in a video montage by Home impeachment managers once they made the case in opposition to the previous president.
But Baker has in latest weeks displayed a downright Trumpian disregard for the well being and security of public faculty lecturers in a struggle over reopening schools. In a rush to reinstate in-person studying, Baker clashed with lecturers’ unions over whether or not sufficient was being achieved to guard educators and different faculty personnel from the risk posed by Covid-19. That’s not unusual. Related struggles have performed out in states and cities throughout the nation, as officers have pushed for a speedy reopening whereas unions and their allies have argued that the vaccination of educators and staffers should come first—together with associated steps to guarantee that college buildings are secure and that protocols to stop the unfold of the virus are adopted.
However Baker took issues a step additional as he wrangled with unions over whether or not he was doing sufficient to guard lecturers. He attacked the unions in language so vitriolic, and dishonest, that his method drew comparisons with onetime Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, the anti-labor zealot who a decade in the past made assaults on public workers and their unions his precedence in a struggle that drew nationwide consideration.
“What’s Baker doing?” asked American Federation of Lecturers President Randi Weingarten, who has been on the forefront in arguing for science-based approaches to reopening colleges. Noting that “the educators try to have the circumstances for secure faculty reopening.” Weingarten questioned, “Why is Charlie Baker not doing what he can to make faculty reopening secure?”
What was weird about Baker’s combative method is that the 2 statewide training unions, the Massachusetts Lecturers Affiliation (MTA) and AFT Massachusetts, had gone out of their technique to work with the governor. They had been proactive of their method, arguing for a science-based “rapid vaccination plan for educators” much like the one already used to vaccinate first responders. In a February 10 letter, the unions proposed:
Simply because the state is transferring ahead with a plan to vaccinate public transit employees, we additionally want a plan to vaccinate all educators. We’re asking the state to put aside sufficient vaccine from the provision at present being saved in freezers to pilot our program in 10 to twenty high-need faculty districts on the identical time the state is continuous to vaccinate folks aged 65 by 74. As extra vaccine turns into obtainable, this system can be scaled as much as administer pictures to high school workers throughout the state.
That sounded logical, as did the union proposal to conduct the vaccination program at native websites, with skilled EMTs and firefighters administering doses. The firefighters’ union was on board, signaling that its members had been “keen to place our expertise to work with this plan.” Lecturers had been able to go.
“The state has no plan in place to get the vaccine into the arms of all faculty workers, so we’ve united with the firefighters’ union to create our personal,” defined MTA President Merrie Najimy in February. “Unions are charged with defending the well being and security of their members, which in the end protects their communities. By streamlining an onsite course of for vaccinating faculty workers, this union-led plan will make our colleges and communities safer. It’s time to behave.”
As an alternative of welcoming the proposal, the Baker administration let weeks cross, rejected the mannequin outlined by the unions, and ripped into the lecturers. “We’re simply not going to play that recreation,” sneered Baker, who has been beneath hearth for mishandling the general vaccination program.
The governor argued that “lecturers don’t have to be vaccinated to be educating youngsters,” and accused educators of “in search of their very own vaccine, and to not take part within the course of everybody else is collaborating in.”
A press release issued final week by the governor’s workplace declared that the administration was “dismayed that regardless of cheap efforts to prioritize educator vaccinations, the lecturers’ unions proceed to demand the Commonwealth take tons of of 1000’s of vaccines away from the sickest, oldest and most weak residents in Massachusetts and divert them to the unions’ members, 95 % of that are beneath age 65.”
Union leaders, who had met with the administration, had been shocked by the governor’s line of assault, which disregarded considerations about youthful lecturers with preexisting circumstances and sought to pit lecturers in opposition to the communities they serve.
“I’m really fairly shocked on the vitriol,” said Beth Kontos, the president of AFT Massachusetts, the state affiliate of the American Federation of Lecturers. “The governor characterizes it as us eager to take vaccines away from the sick and the aged, which is completely unfaithful.”
The unions defined that they weren’t attempting to take vaccines from different teams. Somewhat, as had been defined to Baker and his aides, they needed to make use of doses that had already been put aside for lecturers—who the governor needed to have journey to mass vaccination websites—and make them obtainable at area people clinics.
The unions’ method earned reward from dozens of state legislators, who wrote Baker and defined that the plan proposed by the firefighters and lecturers was “the surest path the fast, environment friendly and accessible vaccination.” One of many organizers of the letter, which drew help from Democrats and Republicans, Democratic state Senator Becca Rausch, voiced the sentiment of the legislators when she argued, “Educators and faculty workers will need to have #CovidVaccine entry earlier than a return to full, in-person faculty.”
Beth Huang, the director of the Massachusetts Voter Desk, a statewide coalition of teams engaged on voter engagement with grassroots organizing, made the Scott Walker comparability.
“Charlie Baker’s assault on lecturers’ unions for wanting vaccines earlier than instructing in-person throughout the pandemic jogs my memory of Scott Walker’s assaults on lecturers’ unions for the price range gap throughout a recession,” stated Huang, who was educated on the College of Wisconsin and properly remembers the storied battle in that state. “Baker is biz conservative minimize from the identical fabric as Walker.”
