I have 15 minutes before I have to run out the door to take the kids to see the Gnome movie, but I wanted to quickly jot down a post about the union protests in Wisconsin.
OK. Here are my wise words. I've never studied Wisconsin and don't know enough about its culture and politics to say anything smart. Ha! Tricked you.
For whatever reason, Wisconsin was never one of the states in any study that I worked on when I did state politics and education. It would be really stupid to weigh in right now on the topic. As I read more, I'll have more to say.
I also think it's wise to not make any grand pronouncements on unions. Sometimes unions do a good job in forcing big businesses to give their workers fair salaries. Sometimes they are in bed with local politicians and they give union workers benefits and salaries that far outstrip the local population. I want to read more about the unions in WI to find out if they are the good kind or the bad kind.
Here in New Jersey, the unions have preyed upon ignorant, incompetent local politicians and garnered shocking benefits. Working-class families pay $10,000 to $14,000 in taxes for miniscule homes, so that the local cop can make $150,000 and retire with full benefits at age 55. The average salary for teachers in my town is $90,000; the gym teacher gets about $135,000. Superintendents who manage three small schools make more than the superintendent for Baltimore. State pensions threaten to bankrupt the state. Most non-union workers don't receive pensions and have to kick in something for their health insurance. I get a lot of griping e-mails from neighbors about the benefits that our town dishes out to the teachers and the police. And they put Christie in the statehouse.
On the other hand, there's much historical evidence that unions did a good job at reducing income inequality in this country. As their power has decreased, wealth inequality has gone up.
A friend just shot me an e-mail for a senior editorial job at iVillage, which is owned by NBC. The job was located in NYC, a very expensive city. They were looking for someone with at least five years of experience. The job description went on and on and it was clearly one of those work-til-you-drop type of jobs. All that for a yearly salary of $20,000. Gags. Where's the unions to stop that kind of nonsense?
I'm finally following Wisconsin and will keep posting links. At some point, I'll stop being so wishy-washy.

Would you make any grand pronouncements that doctors are evil? Sure, some are evil: the guy who gave Michael Jackson his drugs; the one who ran a disgusting, exploitative abortion business; the drunk who rammed his SUV into a liquor store here over the weekend and tried to steal alcohol. But overall, doctors do the world a tremendous service.
So do unions.
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“A friend just shot me an e-mail for a senior editorial job at iVillage, which is owned by NBC. The job was located in NYC, a very expensive city. They were looking for someone with at least five years of experience. The job description went on and on and it was clearly one of those work-til-you-drop type of jobs. All that for a yearly salary of $20,000. Gags. Where’s the unions to stop that kind of nonsense?”
Isn’t that one of those NYC trust-fund baby gigs, where you can’t take it unless you’ve got family money subsidizing your expenses? If you think about it, it goes a long way to explaining why so much journalism sounds like it was written by extraterrestrials.
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“All that for a yearly salary of $20,000. Gags. Where’s the unions to stop that kind of nonsense? ”
But that’s precisely the world that the Koch’s are working for, the one where every job whose monetary value can’t be directly measured and compensated gets sold for the absolute minimum that anyone is willing to take it for. That’s really not who I want teaching my kids.
It’s not what I want for a doctor, either, but no one is really talking about busting the physician union (which comes in the form of a limited entry guild in medical school, with supplemental labor from foreign sources managed so it won’t significantly affect home-grown employment or salaries).
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“But that’s precisely the world that the Koch’s are working for, the one where every job whose monetary value can’t be directly measured and compensated gets sold for the absolute minimum that anyone is willing to take it for.”
Like when some unions go on strike or protest WalMart and hire minimum wage people to picket for them.
How can you hope to support wages in a glamor industry like journalism where people are literally willing to work for nothing? (see, for example, Arianna Huffington’s business model).
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Writing seems to be very favorable ground for exploitation, because it’s just about always piece-work.
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My daughter went to the gnome movie and LOVED it. Best movie ever. Hope your kids like it. dave.s.
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(see, for example, Arianna Huffington’s business model).
Marrying a closeted guy didn’t work as well for Liza.
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“It’s not what I want for a doctor, either, but no one is really talking about busting the physician union (which comes in the form of a limited entry guild in medical school, with supplemental labor from foreign sources managed so it won’t significantly affect home-grown employment or salaries).”
I’m not sure what the threshold is for “really talking” (I suppose you mean it hasn’t been part of the political process) but increasing the supply of doctors has frequently been discussed. If medical costs are out of control, that is an obvious move, but somehow it wasn’t a part of the official health care reform discussion.
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Do you have citations or evidence you can show us for the teacher salaries you provide? We’ve been hearing a lot about inflated teacher salaries in WI too that just aren’t correct. If the average salary is 90K (and that figure doesn’t include administrator salaries to bring up that average, and the average isn’t vastly different from the median), that’d be interesting. I’m all for high pay for teachers, who are professionals who often require a masters degree, but I’d like to see the data.
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“We’ve been hearing a lot about inflated teacher salaries in WI too that just aren’t correct.”
They really are like that in Laura’s area of NJ, and I believe teacher salary levels are very similar in some parts of NY. Hopefully, she’ll post a URL for you.
I wonder if the issue with the WI salaries is that people have been citing a salary-plus-benefits number, rather than just salary?
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http://php.app.com/edstaff/search.php
for teacher salaries in NJ. To find the kind of numbers L is talking about look at districts, for example, in Bergen county.
But, I blame the problem on something closer to corruption, Egypt style, than political ineptitude and gullibility.
The tiny districts with three 180k + superintendents, all with the same last name are particularly telling, even though Mubarak isn’t the name they share
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Writing from Madison…
The national media isn’t quite catching the entire story.
1. It’s not about the money. The workers are more than willing to pay more for their benefits and pensions. They have accepted the Gov’s offer of pay cuts, as long as he left in the collective bargaining rights. He said no.
2. There is a $137 million dollar deficit, but Walker pushed through $140 million in tax cuts in January. (for special interest groups and corporations.) Yes, there is a fiscal crisis, but there are a million ways to deal with it.
3. The Green Bay Packers support 100% these protests. This may seem like a silly point, but they symbolize the way things work in WI. They aren’t a corporately owned team, they are owned by the people of WI.
4. The people who are marching are our firefighters, our nurses, our teachers. The policemen are walking around handing out brats to the protesters.
5. The real reason they need to keep collective bargaining is that the budget DOES contain numerous huge cuts to other programs. Education in the state could be facing a $1 billion dollar cuts. This means that there will be lay-offs and program cuts, and the teachers want a seat at that negotiation table.
6. There are also huge cuts to our Badger-care (Medicare) program and a provision to privatize numerous state resources. It also includes huge cuts to transit. And it almost completely wipes out the services to the disabled in our state. These items aren’t being covered, outside of Madison. But they are one of the big reasons for the protest.
7. Most teachers in Wisconsin really aren’t making that much money. For years, they have bargained lower salaries for higher benefits. One of the best teachers at our school makes $36,000 a year (yes, that included teaching summer school.) Yes, the union has some screwed up seniority rules in which the older teachers make a lot more – I’d love to see that fixed. But in general, an 8% cut in pay will affect most of our teachers in an adverse manner – and may discourage smart young people from going into teaching.
8. The reason the 14 senators left is to give this bill more time to be discussed and researched. The next budget doesn’t start until JULY. Walker wanted to push it through in 5 days. That simply isn’t necessary. We have time to look at all the provisions and debate. Yes, there is some debt refinancing that they are hoping to get done this month, but there are other ways to do that too.
9. The entire bill is about the privatization of public services – and the denial of these services to those who can’t pay their “fair share” One of the sub-groups who is hurt the hardest is the services to autistic children. Those will all but go away in this new budget. Completely go away…unless you can pay for them.
10. It is also about elevating Walker to the national political stage a la Sarah Palin. He doesn’t care if the people of WI don’t reelect him – the GOP has bigger plans for him.
Sorry this got so long. Maybe it’s time to temporarily re-awaken the blog. : )
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The most delicious part of Wisconsin is how quickly it put the lie to the “New Civility” blather. I await Mrs. Obama’s statement decrying the violent rhetoric on the signs there.
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“2. There is a $137 million dollar deficit, but Walker pushed through $140 million in tax cuts in January. (for special interest groups and corporations.) Yes, there is a fiscal crisis, but there are a million ways to deal with it.”
I don’t really approve of targeted tax cuts, but Politifact makes Walker’s tax cuts sound a lot better than you do:
“Walker signed a law on Jan. 31 that says that companies that relocate to Wisconsin will not have to pay corporate taxes for two years. The law stipulates that the company must move at least 51 percent of the workers on its payroll or at least those who account for $200,000 in wages. Walker also signed into law a bill that gives small tax breaks to companies that create jobs. It’s debatable whether these could fairly be considered “giveaways,” since they are intended to reward companies for creating jobs.”
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/feb/22/donna-brazile/donna-brazile-said-wisconsin-governor-proposes-tax/
As I said, I don’t really cotton to this sort of targeted tax break, but it’s arguably going to be good for the fiscal situation over the next few years, because if companies take Walker up on this (a big if), it will expand the WI tax base and revenues and enable WI to more easily carry its public workers. I’d also point out that there’s been a very similar proposal (tax breaks for job creation) at the national level, advanced recently by the Democratic Party. Depending how “small” it really is, it may not actually encourage any new hiring that wouldn’t have happened anyway, but it strikes me as very weird to try to make partisan hay out of these particular proposals. They are very typical Hail Mary moves for governments in financial jeopardy, of whatever political stripe.
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There is a rally in Trenton, New Jersey at noon on Friday (2/25) in support of the workers and unions in Wisconsin. Please attend!
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Last night the firefighters and police unions made a statement requesting to be included in the cuts in benefits (they’re exempt from the bill’s provisions) in return for dropping the provisions on collective bargaining. Both AFSCME and WEAC have said they would not oppose a budget that included all the proposed benefit cuts if it dropped the collective bargaining provisions. The rhetoric at the Capitol this past week has all been about collective bargaining, not benefit cuts.
On top of that, as K said, the governor has not proposed the budget, he simply tried to push it through in 5 days. I know this is not a parliamentary democracy, but the idea that nothing could be improved by having some sort of discussion is…. well, unlikely. The Republican caucuses are being treated just as dismissively as the Dems, in fact, but breaking ranks, unless enough of them can all jump together, is political suicide.
I don’t know the average teachers income. But my wife, with 16 years under contract, 2 Masters degrees and two separate licenses, and in one of the higher paying districts, brings in $52k. The salary schedules of many districts are online.
Public sector unions are very odd — they are barriers to reform (good or bad) and know that their company cannot go bust. But they are more than on balance a good thing.
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It’s not about the money. The workers are more than willing to pay more for their benefits and pensions.
They aren’t here. That would be fine (local salaries aren’t what I consider that high), but the lack of accountability is just astounding. A cop can be drunk, pull a gun on some guy (who did nothing), shoot the man in the hand, and not get fired. Plus the EMTs managed to let somebody die over 30 hours (during the giant 2010 blizzard) without anybody being held accountable. Plus, they actually marched in a parade in support of the officers who beat an unarmed high school student to the point of a long
hospitalization.
Plus, the giant fight locally was not to keep their massively underfunded pension, but to keep it from having to be managed by the state instead of overpaying local officials. The real danger was that the state has accountants who would feel compelled to issue honest reports about how underfunded the thing is and it would be impossible to hide the true cost of local government from voters.
Public sector unions are just another special interest group, no worse and no better than a giant corporation. Since unions distribute what they take more widely than a corporation, the unions have a slight edge there on utilitarian grounds, but that’s is a pretty small difference.
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Amy P, Agreed that there are potential benefits to some of his tax cuts – in the future (the other part was tax-breaks for HSA.) He pushed those through to take advantage of the fact that our neighbor to the south, IL, just raised their corporate tax rates. He even put up brand new “Wisconsin is open for Business” signs at every road on the border of IL and WI.
But those don’t even go into effect until the NEXT budget cycle. And he’s also trying to draw attention away from the businesses that are now leaving WI due to his refusal of the Federal Rail money. (They had already started building the factories to make the trains. They are now leaving.)
My point was that there are a number of ways to work our way out of this budget mess and his fabricated crisis of “I need to immediately lay off 6,000 people on Friday if you don’t agree” is NOT the way to work this stuff out.
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Teacher salaries in Wisconsin are far from inflated. My mom was a teacher there for thirty years (this is her first year of retirement, good timing?) and the most she ever made was $58k. She has a Masters degree and a ton of extra training and, obviously, decades of experience and yet she couldn’t even crack $60k. My sense is there are far more states that compensate teachers on a level like my mom’s than at the level afforded in NJ or NY.
My concern is, if these teacher’s unions get busted and teachers take a structural pay cut how in god’s name do we continue to recruit smart young people to this profession? It’s already hard to attract and keep young teachers and now on top of it we’re saying, oh by the way, you earn too much AND we’re trying to take away your tenure as well? Because let’s be honest, if these benefits go away they are never coming back and in five or ten years from now when the economy is moving again no one is going to be talking about raises or bonuses for teachers. Teachers give in the hard times but they don’t get in the good times.
So, who exactly wants to join a profession where you’re paid poorly, your benefits are only adequate, you don’t have job stability, the general public despises you, every joe on the street thinks he knows better how to do your job, and the work is emotionally, intellectually, and physically challenging?
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But those don’t even go into effect until the NEXT budget cycle.
We must be irresponsible until the last possible minute!
Our transit authority is cutting routes because if it does so now it will run out of money in five months and the cuts will let it run for 18 months. The drivers union is arguing against this. We riders are the hostage and anything to give us a bit of safety or consistency hurts their ability to bargain.
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“Teachers give in the hard times but they don’t get in the good times.”
Not entirely true. Or, it was true in the past.
I love unions, and I love teachers, and I love teacher unions, but I know they have benefited during prosperous times.
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and yet she couldn’t even crack $60k.
That’s about what ours make, but if you figure for 3 months off, plus (and I have no idea about Wisconsin) paying next to nothing for retirement and health care, they are well paid.
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“I love unions, and I love teachers, and I love teacher unions, but I know they have benefited during prosperous times.”
Can you explain how? My mom never received bonuses or extra raises when times were good and neither have any of my teacher friends who are younger and started their careers in a different era of teaching than my mom.
My mom was lucky to work in what I would consider the golden era of teaching. People respected the work of teachers and, although they were still considered underpaid, you could make a good living out of the profession.
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Its hard to know how to compare jobs. And there’s a lot of variation among teachers jobs — English teachers in high school may have 6 weeks more vacation than most workers, but even if you nominally add 15% to their salaries for that, the long hours of grading, preparing, etc take their toll. Most high school English teachers work much much more than contract hours. On top of that, there is no opportunity for on the job leisure, which most non-working-class jobs afford (as a friend of mine pointed out, the most shocking part of the Nixon tapes is just how much on-the-job leisure these guys are getting). Gym teachers? Well, that’s a different matter (similarly math and science teachers in my experience, but that is because they don’t teach properly — grading math and science assignments should be just as consuming as grading essays).
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I guess I still believe that a teacher that who makes $60k (at the height of their career, to be specific) is underpaid. Yes, they get time off in the summer, although it is more like two months than three, but they also work nights and weekends on things like grading, responding to parents, and planning activities. There are also a lot of teachers who buy supplies for their classes out of their own pockets.
That teachers are underpaid seems self evident to me based on the declining interest in the profession. Young people with other options will tell you they can certainly earn more elsewhere. This is especially true in math and the sciences where keeping smart young people in the profession is very challenging.
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$60k is, in my area, 200% of the median household income for the people paying the taxes. If you could calculate pension and health care benefits, the difference would be even greater. It is hardly absurd, but it is too much for them to justify based on saying how hard they work while the students keep dropping out or failing state standards.
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Does the average person in your area have a Bachelors and/or Masters degree and many years of experience in their field? My point is that for their level of education and experience they are underpaid. It doesn’t make sense to compare the salaries of people with those credentials with a population who typically only has a high school diploma.
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According to Wikipedia, 31% of Pittsburgh residents aged 25 and higher have a Bachelors degree. This is high for an urban area. Given that the largest employers are a university and medical center, the comparison is to an educated workforce.
Also, trying to speak charitably here, I have noticed that perhaps your average MEd program isn’t strictly comparable to a general Master’s Degree in terms of rigor, competitiveness, etc.
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Yes, but it is, sadly, probably comparable to the rigors of an MBA!
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“$60k is, in my area, 200% of the median household income for the people paying the taxes.”
Really? Is that ’cause PA has a very low threshold for paying taxes? Or are you including sales taxes or other taxes for which income is irrelevant?
I’ve never seen a calculation of what the median income of those who pay Federal income taxes is, but it must be above 30K, no? (given the relative large numbers usually reported for people who don’t pay Fed Income taxes, usually publicized by conservatives). Of course the payroll taxes change these numbers.
What I want to know is why it makes sense to prevent teachers from unionizing while continuing to allow police/fire/security personnel to do so. What’s the rationale there? If there’s some legitimate reason why tax-payer funded employees should have limited union/bargaining rights, it seems like the limits should apply to all the taxpayer supported workers.
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BJ,
That was confusing writing on my part. I just meant that the median income for the households in Pittsburgh is $30k a year. Local schools do get some state money and federal money (and currently federal stimulus money).
Pittsburgh and PA do have regressive tax structures compared to the feds. The city and schools are supported by property taxes and a wage tax (which is a flat-rate income tax with no deductions).
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“My concern is, if these teacher’s unions get busted and teachers take a structural pay cut how in god’s name do we continue to recruit smart young people to this profession?”
The outlook for the economy as a whole is so poor that I don’t think that is going to be a problem. Smart young people will go into teaching because they won’t have better options.
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“The outlook for the economy as a whole is so poor that I don’t think that is going to be a problem. Smart young people will go into teaching because they won’t have better options.”
Really? You think our economic is not going to improve, ever? I think this a long-term problem that has been plaguing the profession for decades now, a structural pay cut will only make it worse. I work at a University in a College of Education but I work with students from a variety of majors and they don’t seem to view teaching as an attractive option. They view it a very hard job where they’ll be compensated little for their efforts. There are still very smart students who go in to teaching but they either move on after a few years or they stick with it because they have a strong commitment to public service. That’s not to say that the rest of them are bad people or even bad teachers it’s just that they pool of kids entering the field who could be excellent teachers gets smaller and smaller every year.
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I would be willing to make a grand pronouncement that the move in Wisconsin is part of an ongoing effort to consolidate power and wealth into the hands of those who already have consolidated huge amounts of it. Fight back, because otherwise it’s only a matter of time before this hits hard in your own families. In other words, what makes you think that you’re not going to be next?
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Given that local public sector pensions are underfunded by $1 billion, what makes you think I haven’t been first?
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“Really? You think our economic is not going to improve, ever?”
For the near future, no, it’s not going to improve significantly. There are major structural problems with the US economy, and it’s not just a matter of jumpstarting it or praying and waiting. Housing was what kept up employment during the aughts (I can’t find the cite, but I think I remember reading recently that at one point, 40% of new jobs were in the housing sector), and housing is dead for the next 10 years at least.
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A friend just shot me an e-mail for a senior editorial job at iVillage, which is owned by NBC. The job was located in NYC, a very expensive city. They were looking for someone with at least five years of experience. The job description went on and on and it was clearly one of those work-til-you-drop type of jobs. All that for a yearly salary of $20,000. Gags. Where’s the unions to stop that kind of nonsense?
So, serious question: if a union were involved, do you think that job would still be there, only with a $60k salary offer instead of a $20k one?
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“Where’s the unions to stop that kind of nonsense?”
Well, if some people would stop providing high-quality online content for free…
(Just kidding. Please don’t follow this line of argument to its logical conclusion.)
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we had this discussion about teacher pay in NJ before.
NJ is an anomaly, as is its teacher’s union.
The real deficit problems are not unions or teacher’s pay or their pensions, but the decreased tax revenues since the financial crisis, and healthcare. Solving these is a whole lot harder than punishing the teachers and union-busting.
Teacher’s unions improve educational performance. Notice in particular that in ACT/SAT rankings, high school graduation rates, and NEAP ratings, Wisconsin is near the top; and all states that have made teacher’s unions illegal, are clustered at the bottom of the rankings.
In Bahrain the government is shooting the union protesters. In Indiana, Deputy AG Jeff Cox would like the state troopers to start shooting in Wisconsin too.
Unions aren’t perfect, but then neither is our current corporate oligarchy. In the absence of any other countervailing powers, I’d prefer to see stronger unions rather than no unions.
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Minor picky point, Doug K. Yes, strong union states have good schools, but there’s no evidence that strong unions are the causal factor there. Strong unions are in Northern states, which have high income levels. There is a lot of evidence that higher income leads to higher test scores.
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This race to the bottom is really depressing in what it says about where American society is going. Some teachers in some states might be overpaid, but as a whole, the profession is not. The unions in WI are willing to make concessions about money; they are not willing to give up their right to bargain. Why are middle-class people being asked to give up their rights? This is purely about union busting and pursuing a political advantage.
During the Cold War, I remember hearing about a Russian folk tale involving two peasants who live on neighboring plots of land. One peasant owns a goat; his neighbor does not. One day an angel comes down from heaven and speaks to the peasant who has no goat. The angel offers him one wish, anything he wants. The peasant makes up his mind immediately. “Please kill my neighbor’s goat”’ he says. I always thought this worldview was so anti-thetical to American society, and yet here we are.
A lot of people want to take away the good deals (not GREAT deals, just good ones) unions have negotiated for their members–a reasonable middle-class salary, secure pensions and good healthcare because lots of other people don’t have these benefits. That should be the argument for other people forming a union, not for destroying them. We should seek to raise everyone up, not tear them down. We all deserve a secure retirement and decent healthcare–we should be working together to secure them, not removing collective bargaining rights from groups because they have better benefits packages than we do.
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,i>I work at a University in a College of Education but I work with students from a variety of majors and they don’t seem to view teaching as an attractive option. They view it a very hard job where they’ll be compensated little for their efforts.
I am entirely convinced that it is not a compensation problem.
Compare the number of applicants for teaching high-school math to the number for teaching community-college math, at a salary half or less that of a high-school teacher.
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A lot of people want to take away the good deals (not GREAT deals, just good ones) unions have negotiated for their members–a reasonable middle-class salary, secure pensions and good healthcare because lots of other people don’t have these benefits.
That makes no sense. This is the public sector unions we’re talking about. It isn’t their goat to start with.
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“It isn’t their goat to start with.”
Sure it is. They traded their labor to get that goat. It’s as much their goat as for private sector unions or any employee with benefits.
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So, I have to give a goat just because thirty years ago, when the city had twice the population and a much larger share of regional income, somebody promised them a goat to get elected? I should have stayed in North Carolina.
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“$60k is, in my area, 200% of the median household income for the people paying the taxes. If you could calculate pension and health care benefits, the difference would be even greater. It is hardly absurd, but it is too much for them to justify based on saying how hard they work while the students keep dropping out or failing state standards.”
Your solution is to recruit worse teachers by offering less money? Or is the theory that there’s a vast pool of exceptional teachers that want less money, but don’t want to teach in private schools?
Either way, I look forward to seeing Pittsburgh’s experiment in ignoring 400 years of market-based employment economics.
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The argument that non-public union members should support public union members so that at least somebody gets benefits reminds me of the old joke about the solipsist. His colleagues got together, pooled their resources, and sent Dan the solipsist to Disneyland because if he goes, everybody goes!
SamChevre’s got a point. And based on my dad’s tales of teaching remedial community college math, the difference is not that the community college math course will be on a higher academic level than high school courses. With the really tough cases, my dad’s teaching 3rd grade math to 30-somethings, a truly sisyphean labor.
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Either way, I look forward to seeing Pittsburgh’s experiment in ignoring 400 years of market-based employment economics.
That would describe how it has managed to lose half its population.
As I said, I didn’t think the pay was too high in Pittsburgh. I don’t think it should be higher and there are too many employees (enrollment dropped by close to a 1/3 in the past 20 years). I do wish they could be fired for bad performance, as opposed to the current standards (you have to actually have sex with a student to get fired) and that they would make their pension plan shortfall be funded by their own members.
Things have not blown-up here yet, but I expect it soonish. There is a court ordered property assessment going on that will increase property taxes for nearly every middle class family in town. The letters are supposed to go out in July, but it is clear from the preliminary data that the initial hit will be something like 15% to 30% in most of the habitable parts of town. The parking rates are set to increase greatly to pay for (part of) the massive pension hole. The water rates have doubled in the past few years and are set to go higher (because our sewers are so old the EPA bitch-slapped us into a major upgrade to stop the fecal matter in the river thing). At the same time, the schools will lose federal stimulus dollars, probably without having managed to slow a massive drop in enrollment. The cost per pupil will seem even more absurdly high than usual because they are plugging the shortfall in their pension plan at the expense of today’s kids. All of this will come on top of a crumbling road network and a continual spate of corruption stories.
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MH,
That sounds Detroitish. Have you prepared an exit plan?
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I’m counting in gas going up more and figuring that UPMC will get to run the whole thing after the city goes broke.
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Don’t forget City Council passing on $220 million — not including allb the nifty technology upgrades that would have been included, too — just to spite the mayor!
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I argued, vociferously and frequently, against that very deal on the Pittsburgh blogs. I’m glad it fell through.
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And I’m glad I don’t live in Pittsburgh anymore. Win-win! 🙂
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Whatever happens, it will be an increase in the cost of parking and I rarely pay that.
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