Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), speaks as Starbucks workers go on strike outside a Starbucks store in Brooklyn. Getty Images See more of our coverage in your search results.
Add The New York Post on Google Randi Weingarten knows full well that back-to-school shopping hits household budgets hard.
Teachers dig into their own pockets for classroom supplies; families stretch every dollar to cover notebooks, backpacks and clothes.
Yet the president of the American Federation of Teachers is using this very moment to push shoppers toward stores that employ unionized workers — even when those retailers are pricier.
Weingarten has launched an all-out campaign, complete with a dedicated website and a raft of print and digital ads, aimed at convincing teachers and parents to steer clear of Target.
The reason has nothing to do with the chain’s prices or product quality — and everything to do with partisan politics.
According to its own public materials, the AFT launched its “Shop Smart, Support Working Families” campaign because Target has refused to condemn the enforcement operations conducted by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In other words, it’s punishing the company for failing to take a political stand against federal agents doing their jobs.
The union’s website features a locator tool that claims it will help users find “back-to-school retailers that support union values.”
I tested the union’s new tool myself, entering San Antonio, Texas, as my location.
Within a 10-mile radius, the site returned three stores — all of them Macy’s outlets.
That’s not a coincidence; the tool filters for retailers that “employ a significant number of unionized employees.”
The practical result: Teachers and parents get steered toward higher-priced options during a season that Weingarten herself acknowledges is a financial strain.
Weingarten, who collects more than $500,000 a year in total compensation, sits comfortably in the top 5% of earners.
Yet while rank-and-file educators worry about covering basic classroom needs out of pocket, she deploys the union’s platform for political warfare over an unrelated agenda.
Meanwhile, the same AFT materials note that its members’ pension funds own 6.79 million shares of Target stock — a substantial stake, the union notes.
But directing members and other consumers away from a company in which those pensions hold a large position creates an obvious risk: Any sustained drop in sales could lower the value of the very shares meant to secure members’ retirements.
That means the AFT’s anti-Target campaign raises serious questions about fiduciary duty.
Pension trustees, after all, are supposed to put the financial interests of beneficiaries first.
Using union leverage to punish a company over immigration policy — something that has no bearing on union business, or on maximizing pension-fund returns — looks like a departure from that standard.
Congress is already examining Weingarten’s use of more than $1.4 million in union dues and resources to produce and promote her 2025 book equating conservatives with fascists.
The Justice Department should open a parallel inquiry into whether the AFT has deployed its pension funds and union power to bully companies over purely political disagreements.
Fiduciaries cannot treat investment holdings as weapons in culture battles: The law requires them to focus on economic returns for the workers whose money is at stake.
Actions like Weingarten’s damage the teaching profession itself.
Most educators entered the classroom to help students, not to serve as foot soldiers in someone else’s political war.
When union leadership prioritizes immigration disputes and book promotion over classroom realities, it leaves teachers looking like partisan actors rather than professionals.
The AFT’s relentless focus on political projects helps explain why so many teachers feel abandoned — and why student outcomes remain dismal.
New York City public schools spend more than $40,000 per student each year, yet despite that extraordinary spending 43% of the city’s students attend schools where more than half their classmates fail to reach proficiency in math or reading.
Money alone doesn’t produce results when leadership energy goes elsewhere.
Plenty of teachers — those committed to instruction, not ideology — reject this model.
Over the past year, more than 16,000 educators have abandoned the AFT and other teachers’ unions to join the Teacher Freedom Alliance, an alternative organization that focuses on the classroom, not on political score-settling.
Back-to-school season should be about getting kids ready to learn.
Instead, the AFT is making it another front in its political battle.
Directing members toward more expensive stores while their pensions hold Target stock is hardly smart shopping.
Teachers and parents deserve better than lectures on immigration enforcement when they’re simply trying to get by.
Corey DeAngelis is a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a senior fellow at Americans for Fair Treatment.
