{"id":657730,"date":"2026-08-25T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=657730"},"modified":"2026-08-25T21:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T21:00:00","slug":"a-teachers-union-hits-the-wrong-target-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/?p=657730","title":{"rendered":"A Teachers’ Union Hits The Wrong Target"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Teachers’ Union Hits The Wrong Target<\/span><\/p>\n

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Authored by Stephen Soukup via American Greatness<\/a>,<\/em><\/p>\n

The California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) is the largest teachers-only public pension system in the country, with more than $400 billion in assets under management.<\/strong> As of December 31, 2024, CalSTRS directly<\/em> held three-quarters of a million shares of Target Corporation, worth more than $100 million.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If one were to add in the Target holdings of the Teacher Retirement System of Texas and the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System (the second and third-largest teachers-only plans in the country, respectively), then the total value of shares owned would jump by another $60-plus million. Add in the remaining state teacher retirement systems, plus the city systems of Chicago, Denver, Kansas City (Missouri), New York City, St. Louis, and St. Paul, and the total value of Target shares directly<\/em> held by teacher pensions is well into the multiple hundreds of millions, at the very least. Add in the value of indirect<\/em> shares held through various index funds and ETFs, and teacher retirement plans hold literally billions of dollars’ worth of Target stock. Given all this, it’s more than fair to say that Target is a key component of teachers’ pension portfolios and, as a result, the company’s long-term success is directly linked to American teachers’ retirement security.<\/p>\n

And yet…<\/h2>\n

This past weekend, the American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest teachers’ union in the country and likely the most prominent, launched a new campaign urging parents and students to boycott Target for back-to-school supplies and clothes<\/strong>. Randi Weingarten, the politically active and politically connected president of the AFT, released a video<\/a> detailing the boycott and explaining why it is, in her eyes, an absolute moral imperative to teach Target a lesson. According to an AFT press release<\/a>, “The ‘Shop Smart, Support Working Families’ campaign was created in response to Target’s refusal to condemn the unlawful Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity that continues to roil communities around the country.” Weingarten herself complained that “We gave Target ample time to stand with the communities in which they operate and help their neighbors, but its silence about federal immigration abuses has been deafening.”<\/p>\n

The AFT is angry at Target because Target and its executives didn’t do what the union wanted: make its political<\/em> fight their fight. And it’s actively trying to damage the company because of that refusal.<\/p>\n

Taken together, these two facts – teachers’ pensions hold considerable equity in Target, while teachers’ unions are purposefully trying to harm the company – say quite a bit about the state of markets and politics in the country at the moment and suggest a handful of lessons that can and should be learned by outside observers.<\/p>\n

The first thing this strange confluence of circumstances tells us is that people, in general, neither understand what a publicly traded corporation is nor fully grasp its purpose. Corporations are, as a rule, portrayed in our popular media and perceived by most average Americans as far-off, distant, heartless organizations run by and for rich people. In truth, publicly traded corporations like Target are owned by their shareholders, the overwhelming majority of whom are just ordinary folks – like teachers – who are trying to save for their retirement. Public pension plans, 401(k)s, IRAs, etc., are the primary savings vehicles for most “investors.” The perception of investors as a bunch of “fat cats” on Wall Street who own everything<\/em> and manipulate everything<\/em> for their benefit is largely a myth, and it has been for decades. You, your spouse, your kids, your mom and pop, and their small business are the majority of investors and, by extension, the majority of owners of most corporations.<\/p>\n

There is no doubt that a significant disconnect exists between the owners of corporations (principals) and those who run them on the owners’ behalf (agents)<\/strong>. This is a longstanding concern that has prompted much discussion, consternation, and even confrontation over the decades. Moreover, with so many owners – literally millions<\/em> of people – many opinions on how best to run the company exist, and those opinions often and passionately conflict with one another. Given this, basic rules governing the conduct of the agents exist and are updated constantly. This is what’s known as “governance.” The most famous description of foundational principles of governance, designed to secure the interests of all shareholders, was provided by the economist Milton Friedman:<\/p>\n

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In a free-enterprise, private-property system, a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business. He has direct responsibility to his employers. That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That’s it. That’s what corporate executives are supposed to do.<\/strong> That’s how they are meant to treat their shareholders – by providing them a return on their investment. That’s the fundamental principle of governance: produce returns for all<\/em> investors.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, some people think that their opinions, wants, and desires are more important than other people’s right<\/em> to earn a return on their investment. They think that corporations exist to serve their ends and to accommodate their political beliefs and ambitions. Even more unfortunately, many of these people have been encouraged to think this by the very corporate “agents” who know better and who have moral and legal obligations to the contrary.<\/p>\n

In August 2019, for example, the Business Roundtable (BRT) – a nonprofit organization whose members are the CEOs of the largest corporations in the United States – issued a declaration called a “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation.” In it, the 181 signatories proclaimed that they and their corporations were dedicated to being less focused on shareholders and more focused on stakeholders<\/strong>. The chairman of the Roundtable at the time was Jamie Dimon, the CEO and chairman of the largest bank in the world (by market cap). “The American dream is alive,” Dimon lamented, “but fraying.” He implied that only the executives of the world’s biggest companies (the agents to their tens of millions of principals) could save the American Dream. More to the point, he implied that they could only do so by redefining the purpose of a corporation. “These modernized principles reflect the business community’s unwavering commitment to continue to push for an economy that serves all Americans.”<\/p>\n

Every CEO who signed that document alongside Dimon (and Larry Fink from BlackRock, Tim Buckley from Vanguard, Brian Moynihan from Bank of America, Michael Corbat from Citigroup, Jeff Bezos from Amazon, etc., etc., ad nauseam<\/em>) is responsible for sowing confusion among the people, for encouraging people like Randi Weingarten to think of Target as a tool to accomplish her goals. These CEOs may not fully agree with this declaration they issued seven years ago, and they may wish they hadn’t signed the BRT’s now-infamous statement, but that doesn’t change the fact that they did sign it and that by doing so they gave Weingarten and countless others the impression that corporations were the appropriate vehicle for their political aspirations.<\/p>\n

Ironically, one of the signatories of that document was a man named Brian Cornell, who was then the CEO of Target<\/strong>. Cornell retired from the CEO role earlier this year but remains the company’s executive chair. Even more ironically, Cornell was hardly the first of Target’s executives to play politics with the company’s resources and reputation. As I have noted elsewhere<\/a>, Target has a long history of getting involved in matters that are beyond its business purview. Indeed, Target has a well-earned reputation as a social-justice-compliant company – which is probably why Weingarten is so upset that it has resisted her entreaties. The lesson here is that “no good deed goes unpunished” (no matter how broadly one defines the word “good”). Once you decide to ride the social-justice wave, it can be nigh on impossible to bail on that wave before wiping out. The folks at Target are undoubtedly learning this lesson the hard way.<\/p>\n

The nation’s teachers are learning that lesson the hard way as well, whether they realize it or not. They are part-owners of the company that Weingarten and the AFT are trying to damage over politics. Indeed, it’s almost certainly the case that Weingarten herself is a part-owner of Target and, as such, is damaging her own pension returns. Of course, the catch here is that as an individual shareholder, Weingarten is free to make her own investment decision for whatever reasons she sees fit. As the president of a teachers’ union, however, she has certain obligations. She is not legally a fiduciary steward of her constituents’ pension funds, but she does have tremendous influence over those who are fiduciaries. The AFT’s Trustee Council openly concedes that it has more than 50 members<\/a> on 27 different pension boards. Additionally, the union produces a variety of materials meant to influence fiduciaries on their responsibilities to union members and beneficiaries. Randi Weingarten’s hands may be legally clean, but her house is a mess. She’s harnessed the power of her union and of teachers more generally to fight against a company of which they are all part-owners. That is the very definition of self-defeating.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the end, this is what happens when people forget – or ignore – the nature of capital markets and publicly traded corporations. No one, it seems – not the AFT, not the BRT, not the massive asset management firms that control more than $25 trillion in other people’s money – thinks of corporations as what they really are: the collected savings of tens of millions of ordinary people. They think of corporations as the means to their ends, not the ends of their true owners.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nTue, 08\/25\/2026 – 17:00<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Teachers’ Union Hits The Wrong Target Authored by Stephen Soukup via American Greatness, The California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS) is the largest teachers-only public pension system in the country, with more than $400 billion in assets under management. As of December 31, 2024, CalSTRS directly held three-quarters of a million shares of Target… Continue reading A Teachers’ Union Hits The Wrong Target<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":657718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,10,21,12,11,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-657730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cancel-culture","category-censorship","category-civil-liberties","category-election-integrity","category-equal-justice","category-free-speech","category-religious-freedom","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=657730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/657718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=657730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=657730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buglecall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=657730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}