Unholy alliance


Teacher unions stiffing teachers to increase revenue
I'm not surprised at this.

Some of the nation's largest teachers unions have joined forces with investment companies to steer their members into retirement plans with high expenses that eat away at returns.

In what might seem an unlikely partnership, the unions endorse investment providers, even specific products, and the companies reciprocate with financial support. They sponsor union conferences, advertise in union publications or make direct payments to union treasuries.

The investment firms more than recoup their money through sales of annuities and other high-fee products to teachers for their 403(b) plans — personal retirement accounts similar to 401(k)s.

New York State United Teachers, for instance, receives $3 million a year from ING Group for encouraging its 525,000 members to invest in an annuity sold by the Dutch insurance giant.

The National Education Assn., the largest teachers union in the country with 2.7 million members, collected nearly $50 million in royalties in 2004 on the sale of annuities, life insurance and other financial products it endorses.

Teachers unions across the country — including those in Las Vegas and San Diego and statewide teacher associations in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Oregon — have struck their own endorsement deals.

Since the teacher unions are the primary force behind maintaining the public school monopoly, this goes beyond disturbing.

Think about it. Public school teachers, who don't make a lot of money to begin with, are being fleeced by their own unions in a payola scheme that in part pays to prevent school reform that could raise those same salaries.

And the unions take their cut off the top.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Fri - May 5, 2006 at 05:02 AM  Tag


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