Jim Hooker in today’s PolitickerNJ analyzes the waning power of NJ’s big teacher union, NJEA. Back this past summer, NJEA President Barbara Keshishian led “thousands of public worker union members” in a protest against the proposed health and pension benefits contributions reform package.

“Every politician who decides to turn his back or decides to turn her back on the men and women that you represent, just know this,” said Barbara Keshishian president of the NJEA before a dramatic pause, “We will remember.”
“Do not think you can sell us out in June and buy us back in November,” Keshishian went on from a big stage set up on the western end of West State Street; her words amplified by giant video screens and speakers.

And now?

“I’m not sure we were in a position to extract a price in this election,” says Steve Wollmer, an NJEA spokesman. “It just wasn’t that kind of a climate.”

Hooker asks,

So is the long-feared and much touted power of the NJEA and its sister and brother public worker unions overrated? Is the political strength of hundreds of thousands of unionized teachers, cops, firefighters and local and state government workers exhausted to the point of toothless tiger status?