Hat tip here to Mike Antonucci, who discovered the blog Inside Labor while he covered the AFT pow-wow last week in Boston. It is written by someone with access to tons of important information within organized labor, and it is an interesting read. I just wanted to cut and paste what the anonymous insider/blogger had to say about the AFT's plan to spend millions of dollars organizing charter schools:

The AFT's expenditure of organizing funds on charter schools and higher education adjunct seems to make no sense. Consider charter schools: They are private-sector corporations whose employees often reject unions as bureaucratic, rule-driven, selfish and not interested in what's best for children. Few charter schools have existed long enough for the employer to establish patterns of anti-worker behavior. Charter school workers tend to be young, with almost no concept of what a union is or can do. Indeed, many hold deeply anti-union attitudes. But the AFT has an additional problem. It is perceived by almost everyone as "anti-charter school." Although the union's publications and statements often say that there is nothing inherently wrong with charter schools, all of its research finds charter schools wanting in a host of areas. Worse, the AFT has just about no experience in organizing private-sector education workers. It has never organized privatized bus, cafeteria or school health workers. Outside of the union's miniscule healthcare division, none of its staff have any experience organizing private-sector workers of any kind!

Nevertheless, faced with these problems, the union intends to spend several million dollars organizing charter schools. It isn't building a program. It isn't assigning organizers to the healthcare division to get private-sector organizing experience. It isn't building a research department to be able to support private-sector organizing. It isn't building a legal department to support private-sector organizing. It isn't building a community outreach or public relations capacity to support private-sector organizing. No, the union is merely going to throw a couple million dollars at the problem and hope the shit sticks to the all.

Let's take one look at how this might play out. The AFT undertook a charter school organizing drive in Boston. The state affiliate there is headquartered in Boston, well-respected, legislatively and politically effective, and wealthy. What did the union do? In June 2005, it sent out a well-written, carefully-thought-out, spell-checked letter to the charter school teachers in the city. The state federation spent nearly $20,000 per teacher -- and recruited 48 teachers out of 2,000, four per school.

Smart organizing. Real smart.

On the other hand, if you can get the Legislature to pass a law that lifts the charter school cap but MANDATES that the teachers be organized, even if they don't want it, it saves the union a lot of time, money, and (sometimes fruitless) effort.