We are Fighting to FreeTeachers from Teacher Union Controls
Ernie and Alma Page
Ernie and Alma Page embody the struggle of all non-union professional educator groups.
West Virginia Professional Educators grew out of disillusionment over the NEA union activity in the late 1970s. At the time, all of WVPE’s founders, Ernie, Alma, Elizabeth Mow, Jean Hinkle, and Florena Colvin, were members of the West Virginia Education Association.
The turning point came when Ernie had recently been removed from his job as Executive Secretary of WVEA because of his resistance to its drift toward forced unionism. Union agents from Washington DC had been sent in to turn West Virginia Education Association employees into a group of union organizers. Read More
Tributes from Colleagues
Ernie and Alma, independent educators in West Virginia have you to thank for your steadfastness and your dedication and courage. If not for you there would not be an alternative teacher organization in your state. Many times you’ve had the opportunity to step back from the West Virginia Professional Educators, but you’ve persevered with resilience. Read More
Dear Ernie and Alma: (Excerpts from some letters written to Ernie and Alma for this occasion.)
I was so happy to have a choice so I could proudly feel and say that I belong to a group of teachers who put our children first. Also I always felt secure in WVPE backing my teaching career.
Nancy Davidson, retired teacher, Upshur County Read More
A Child’s Mind Is Too Precious to be Bargained For
West Virginia Professional Educators
The Pages were instrumental in founding the West Virginia Professional Educators and creating this list of reasons it opposes unions in education: Read More
Before the Janus v. AFSCME Victory: Annie Lee Hudson helped prove Abood unworkable.
Thirty-two years of teaching elementary school students in Chicago have honed Annie Lee Hudson’s ability to boil issues to their basic terms – and nothing is more basic than freedom.
Annie Lee Hudson rejects slavery. She made it easy to see why she and six other Chicago teachers fought heavy-handed officials of the Chicago Teachers Union in a lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Like her fellow teachers, many of them former union members, Mrs. Hudson was being forced to pay compulsory “agency fees” to the union hierarchy to continue teaching. Big Labor’s mandate: “No dues, no job.”
Annie Lee Hudson can pay the union or she can join the unemployed.
Union officials in turn were spending the compulsory dues they demand on activities which have nothing in the world to do with collective bargaining. Read More