Randi Weingarten has spent only a small part of her career in the classroom despite leading the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the second largest teacher union in the United States. Trained as a lawyer, Weingarten taught full-time for only three years and was a substitute teacher for three more.
However, according to a report and the Freedom Foundation, idealists, will collect pensions for more than 15 years after retirement. The amount can exceed $200,000.
Weingarten worked as a in lieu of diem between 1991 and 1994 and then became a full-time teacher for three years. Weingarten was too work as legal counsel to United Federation of Teachers (UFT) President Sandra Feldman until 1998, after which Weingarten became Union President.
But according to public recordsWeingarten is credited with having accumulated 15 years of “service credit” as a teacher—meaning that he can expect the pension benefits of someone who has worked in the classroom for more than a decade than Weingarten has.
How did Weingarten get pensions for 15 years? Mr. Maxford Nelsen of the Per Freedom Foundation, it is because of the union agreement of the UFT, which allowed him to have more than 11 years to count his “work” even if he was not in the classroom. This may have come from the “time spent… documents.
“Employees who are officers of the Union or who have been appointed as employees, upon proper request, will be granted unpaid leave each year during the term of the Agreement to perform official duties of the Union,” the collective agreement said. Public records as of November 2022 indicates that Weingarten was one of several such “teachers” who came out on contract leave.
Although Weingarten’s contract leave is unpaid, the New York City Department of Education used tax dollars to pay his pension for more than a decade.
Weingarten would not have been eligible for a pension without additional credit from his years of service, as teachers need five years of service to qualify for a pension. In addition to the 12 months of credit he received from substitute teaching, Weingarten only had four years of service credit remaining from his time teaching.
It is unclear how much taxpayers will pay for Weingarten’s pension. Assuming his average salary was $60,000 (public records (showing his last salary as a New York City teacher was $64,313) and collecting a pension for 15 years, taxpayers could pay Weingarten a total of $230,000, Nelsen estimates—not including any financial adjustments.
Weingarten is to argue this, say New York Post that his calculations are “completely wrong,” adding that “I have to check with the UFT and TRS [Teachers Retirement System] elsewhere or getting a quarter statement, I don’t have anything right now.” The UFT did not respond to a request for comment.
Students are not ahead of Weingarten. Although they have tried recently revise photo, Weingarten was a vocal supporter of the COVID-related school closures, promoting this. stupid policies such as forgiving all teacher loan debt and suspending teacher evaluations as necessary to reopen “safe”.
“The Weingarten case is a prime example of how corporations across the country can force taxpayers to fund partisan political campaigns,” Nelsen wrote, “and it’s time for federal and state lawmakers to embrace corporate influence.” .”