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Chicago Teachers Rip 'Big Money Interest Groups'
theodp writes "The striking Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is holding a massive 'Wisconsin-style rally' Saturday as ongoing negotiations try to bring an end to the strike that has put education on hold for 350,000 of the city's schoolchildren. 'The 30,000 teachers, school social workers, clerks, vision and hearing testers, school nurses, teaching assistants, counselors, and other school professionals of the Chicago Teachers Union are standing strong to defend public education from test pushers, privatizers, and a national onslaught of big money interest groups trying to push education back to the days before teachers had unions,' explains the CTU web site. 'Around the country and even the world, our fight is recognized as the front line of resistance to the corporate education agenda.' Some are calling the strike — which has by most accounts centered on salary schedules (CPS salary dataset), teacher performance evaluations, grievance procedures, and which teachers get dibs on new jobs — a push-back to education reform that has possible Presidential election implications. The big winners in the school strike, Bloomberg reports, are the city's largely non-union 100+ charter schools, which remained open throughout the strike. Charter school enrollment swelled to 52,000 students this fall as parents worried by strike rumors sought refuge in schools like those run by the Noble Charter Network, which enjoys the deep-pocket support of many wealthy 'investors.'"
Of course they do. They hate the competition.
and say they want a 30% increase over 2. They are already some of the best paid urban teachers in the whole country. Insane.
http://reason.com/reasontv/2012/09/15/the-deep-logic-of-the-chicago-teachers-s
Don't want to be held accountable, even opposing Obama's merit-based suggestions in favor of tenure, etc.
I'll say what I always said: it's about the children, alright, about using the children.
"U.S. Department of Education: 79% of Chicago 8th Graders Not Proficient in Reading." Teacher evaluations are a must. It is time to get rid of the ineffective teachers that are protected by unions.
How do you propose to do that? The government can refuse to engage in collective bargaining with the workers, but the workers still have the right to strike if they feel they are being mistreated. Organization of labor it is simply the natural consequence of the every American's right to freely associate, and people are free to decide they will not show up for work.
You could threaten to fire any workers who strike, but rehiring a large workforce is a costly prospect. Thus, collective bargaining is arguably the better option.
... Because that worked so well in Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, the result of the protests were:
* The teacher's union being flat out broken. The state won.
* A failed recall effort.
* A complete loss of support from many parent for the teachers. Demanding more money when people are struggling is never a hit.
-- $G
The teachers don't support any sort of reform, and the current system is obviously not working. It's just like the demonstrations in Greece and Spain against austerity. Childishness. Me! Me! Me! They don't care about the kids, or they would have their own reform plan.
They are against any kind of accountability for teachers.
They are against any kind of accountability for schools.
They are for keeping the current "more pay for graduate degrees" pay schedule, even though studies show that teacher graduate degrees have no correlation with student outcomes.
They are against school choice, even against huge evidence that school choice improves schools.
They are against pension reform, when pensions are bankrupting states like California and PA.
What are they for? More money and shorter school days.
We need a good public school system. But I can tell you first hand that public schools aren't always best. I have kids in both public and private schools, and the private school is far better. That's one small local example, I know, but the notion that it's just big money or testing that has adversely impacted public schools is ridiculous. There are some valid points there - there should be no candy machines in lunchrooms and teaching to tests can be a problem. But tenure, a sense of entitlement, an overplayed seniority system, and general lack of accountability for unionized teachers is also a big problem. The main problem as I see it is that there is no incentive in *any* of the public school schemes I've seen to strive for excellence. Mediocrity is the high bar most teachers and schools attempt to reach, and if they even get that far they are doing well. If you do what's minimally necessary, you will get paid, you will advance, you will get summers off, and you will eventually get your nice pension at 55. Do *you* get summers off? Do *you* get to retire at 55? Do *you* get to keep your job if you just sorta, meh, show up and just do what you have to do? No way you will be a teacher at the private school I'm familiar with if you aren't trying to help your students be the best they can be. It's just like that.
Of course public schools generally have a harder job than private schools. They have to deal with *all* the kids - including the dumb ones and the ones who parents have no concern for the quality of their kids education, for whatever reason. Parents who spend lots of money on private school generally don't do it capriciously - they care a *lot* about education and they put their money where their mouth is. So it's not completely fair to just blame lazy/stupid teachers (there are plenty of them for sure). Lazy stupid kids and their parents are equally to blame. Personally, I don't care about them. They should not be my problem or my kids problem. One way or another, public schools need to separate kids by ability and give motivated kids the chance they deserve. I know teachers and administrators who try to do that, but the system makes it very difficult.
I grew up in a northern Wisconsin city where the teachers stuck twice times in four years . It was NEVER about the children, always about pay. Chicago is a big Democratic city, you would think there would be no issue with the citizens WANTING to raise their own property taxes to support the schools. As for charter schools, they represent competition, so of course they are evil.
Conservative, mod down for violating
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Here in Canada they'r one of the biggest. The part about this that really irritates me is that they've been getting annual raises about four times the rate of inflation and threatened to strike during a huge budget shortfall at the first mention of pay freezes. A completely classless move. There are very large numbers of people waiting to get into teaching, yet the pay keeps going up. What ever happened to supply and demand? If there's that big a supply, the rate of pay increase (if any) should be at or below the rate of inflation, I think, especially for a public sector position like teaching.
Unions have a lot of money and political pull too.
In many ways they have more political pull per dollar. Because the Unions in the US need just as much reform as the business system does.
Why am I paying out of my paycheck to something that will use for political campaigning for a party I may or may not believe in.
That money should be used to pay for a small staff of legal experts, and for operations. The rest of the money should be held to pay for strikers pay during a strike.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
getting annual raises about four times the rate of inflation
Check your numbers. If the real inflation rate was as low as their request, then gasoline would be about $1.50, a day at the hospital would be about $750, a loaf of bread would still be 50 cents, higher ed tuition would still be about $1000/semester....
There are very large numbers of people waiting to get into teaching
For kindergarten teachers in my sorta-rich suburb, yeah the competition for teaching jobs is incredibly intense. For ghetto areas like big cities, where you need to wear a bullet proof vest, often there's racial hiring quotas, there are serious issues getting enough staffing. Its very much like the demand for police officers in different locales... oddly enough the nice places have 10 applicants per position, and the bad places have 10 positions per good applicant...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Ten posts in, and I already see the guy chomping on the high-salary-bit modded at +5. Before that becomes the focus of these posts, let me add something to reflect on.
There is not only a very strong negative correlation between the percent of a school's low-socioeconomic-status students (measured by a school's free-and-reduced lunch rate) and test scores*, but there has proven to be causation as well. Now, urban Chicago has some of the highest poverty rates in the state of Illinois. Creating a system where half of a teacher's evaluation (and, ergo, the chance they keep their job) is based solely on test scores is simply setting up teachers to fail. Teachers know this; when they (or anyone else, for that matter) are put into a position where their evaluation likely will be poor, due to circumstances far beyond their control, resulting in dismissal from their job, it will negatively affect their performance in the classroom. Then, with high teacher turnaround, the quality of new hires will just suffer precipitously.
This evaluation system was never meant or designed to improve teacher performance. It was designed to set schools up to fail. And Chicago Area Teachers have every right to stand up and stop it. Anyone who tries to complain about salaries is merely throwing a red herring into the discussion.
* source: The Star Tribune. It appears that, sadly, they removed the free-and-reduced lunch data from this year's test results. In previous years, I ran simple correlation calculations between a district's free-and-reduced lunch percentage, and the percentage of students who were proficient on the tests. The correlation coefficient was -.87 for math and -.92 for reading.
First of all, WTF does this have to do with tech? This is one of the most inappropriate stories for a News for Nerds site.
But, since we're all nerds, we do our homework, right?
Anyone who wants to engage in an informed discussion about this issue should, at the very least, read the fact finder's report:
http://www.ctunet.com/blog/text/FactFinderCOMPLETE.pdf
Yes, it's 80 pages long and still requires a fair amount of context.
I am so sick and tired of idiots blathering on about (a) lazy selfish goddammed overpaid teachers or (b) without unions we'd all be working 752 days a week in sweatshops.
I'm in a union, been down this road before, it sucked ass. I still have a love/hate relationship with unions. But unlike binary data, things in the real world are rarely black and white.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
Why should public sector be any different from private sector?
What is more democratic than voting for something to change?
So many of your current entitlements (by which I mean safe working conditions, 8 hour days as opposed to 14 hour days, paid vacation) was won by unions. You should take a history lesson my friend!
There are very large numbers of people waiting to get into teaching, yet the pay keeps going up. What ever happened to supply and demand?
Well, the better question is why does the Ontario government keep subsidizing the training of enormous numbers of teachers in taxpayer-supported universities, when there is an enormous existing surplus of teachers.
Perhaps 1 in 10 teachers graduating today from an Ontario university will be able to get a full-time teaching job after graduating.
"Public sector unions should be outlawed."
Why? This is (or supposed to be) a free country, you should be able to join any organisation you want.
"Private sector unions must be voluntary.:"
All union membership should be voluntary, and no employee, publis or private should be penalized for belonging to any union, politcal group or religious group.
Freedom of assembly and all that.
I am an employee of the federal government. Not only do I think I shouldn't be able to be in a union I'm not sure if I should be allowed to vote. I realize my salary come from taxing productive members of society. I do believe that my job is constitutional. But if those people that pay my salary decide they no longer want to fund the agency I work for I shouldn't have a vote in the matter.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Can't the union accept private school teachers as members
The problem is that the union currently represents people whose jobs are threatened by privatization; a deal would first need to be reached that allowed public school teachers to be transferred to charter schools and visa versa, or else the union would have members fighting against each other. One of the issues in this strike was the number of teachers who were fired when schools were closed; a while back, a tentative deal was reached where the city would give those same teachers first consideration for new positions. The union has to represent the interests of its members, and that means ensuring that the members keep their jobs.
It is also hard to say what the fight to unionize privatized schools would look like. Unions had to fight hard in the early 20th century, and have been under constant attack since the 80s. I doubt privatized schools would be willing to work with a union, and they are likely hiring teachers who do not seem like the sort of people who would want to join a union (what do you think they look for in job interviews?).
I'm also curious what would stop the city from hiring scabs
Finding qualified teachers who are willing to work for Chicago's school system is probably not easy. The schools are being opened for half days that include lunch (most students qualify for free or reduced price lunch, and so they would potentially be starving without that service), although with the custodians threatening a solidarity strike that might not last.
Palm trees and 8
you shouldn't have the right to unionise
I see you're espousing freedom as usual.
You have a very distorted view of history. The 8 hour day and 40 hour work week was instituted by FDR, ruled unconstitutional and then overtime pay was created as a fix. This was all part of FDR's fix to unemployment during the recession. The concept was if spread a little work around it was better then someone grabbing a lot of work at the expense of others. It was a mantra of the Socialist parties and the communists parties in th3 first part of the 1900's.
Safer working conditions would have been the norm without unions too. As soon as the government got into the habit of playing insurer for occupational injuries, working condition standards began being implemented by law and tort. You can thank the Unions for getting some state workers compensation laws passed though. But they have been in place long before Unions had legal rights to exist (1906 for federal employes and earlier in some areas). To claim safe working conditions outside a specific factory or a specific job is a little misguided to say the least. OSHA and MSHA are direct results of the government paying out for on the job injuries. They were created in the 1970's specifically to increase workplace safety and reduce the worker's compensation payouts.
No it wasn't.
For nerds, education is important. We are who we are because we love to learn. As intellectuals, nerds, and geeks, we benefit from anything that improves the state of education, and we suffer from anything that is detrimental to the state of education.
Palm trees and 8
In the US, food and fuel is specifically exempted from determining the amount of inflation.
Yes, that's exactly why that politically motivated figure is meaningless.
If you could exist merely by purchasing iphones, for food, energy, and shelter, then the inflation figure would matter. As it is, its merely a measure of how much the govt has already decided to raise social security payments.
We do the same game with unemployment. Someday, in the American workers paradise, none of us will have jobs anymore while reported unemployment will be 5%, and inflation will always be 2% even if the price of a cup of coffee is doubling every month.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Would you apply the same reasoning to government contractors?
Or to the employees of the privately run cafeteria inside the Pentagon (I assume there's such a thing, it doesn't matter, you get the idea: they make all their money through the government)?
What about government employees that own stock in companies and make more money out of that than out of their government jobs?
Honest questions, since you don't really give many reasons for your opinion. I don't know what you're doing exactly, but why are government employees (i.e. mostly schoolteachers, policemen, firefighters) not "productive" members of society? I don't think there's much disputing that the examples I gave add value to society.
Right. Back to those terrible days when high school graduates could actually read and write.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
I live in Madison (where the last big teacher protest happened) and am relatively close to Chicago. So I'm getting to hear and see all the news/adds relating to this nonsense. The teachers are getting a HUGE raise, and are only protesting because the schools want to be able to hire "Who they want" when filling positions that were previously made open by a layoff. The union wants them to be forced to hire the teacher they laid off. That's just fucking stupid. We've got charter schools here, and parents are desperate to get their kids into them, but there's not enough room. Every parent I know has their kid on a waiting list for a charter school. Even the democrats. So I'm a bit confused who these teachers think they'll get on their side.
If there are any restrictions corporate participation in the political process (in the name of freedom to exercise property there should not be)
So your ideal political system is basically despotic feudalism. I don't see why property should have a say in politics.
Give up your franchise because you work for the government? That's novel.
Working for the government doesn't change your citizenship. If you think that a weak argument, then consider this: you still pay taxes, and that alone normally provides a legitimate claim to a vote.
You're one of the people who decide what agencies get funded. Even soldiers retain the vote.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
Why am I paying out of my paycheck to something that will use for political campaigning for a party I may or may not believe in.
You need to investigate your Beck Rights. You are probably due a fairly sizable pile of money, and if you make enough of a public spectacle about it could potentially cripple your local chapter. Depending on how good or bad your local is, this could potentially help improve conditions, or it could make things worse. Make sure you fully understand the consequences before taking this approach. If you simply press the issue yourself, you probably will have a court battle ahead of you (you will win, this has been to the supreme court already). If you go about to all of your like-minded co-workers, you can expect a fair amount of backlash from the union.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Why? This is (or supposed to be) a free country, you should be able to join any organization you want.
It is illegal for a group of CEOs to join an organization dedicated to fixing prices. Or did you think that was a bad idea too? Both concepts undermine competition and are bad for everyone except those in the organization.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Why are you paying money out of your pay check for wars you probably don't think you should be in? After all your tax bill would be considerably smaller if the US didn't spend more on military spending than the next 26 countries combined.
That's a disingenuous argument. One thing has nothing to do with the other. You might be right about taxes, but it has no bearing on the issue at hand.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Yup. Competition from essentially unaccountable charter schools or private schools getting public money with little or no oversight, and under a variety of guises able to reject students with physical, mental or behavioral issues. There have been studies showing that the "new school effect" is what may account for any short-term gains in charters, and that renovating and relaunching public schools could have the same effect. Charter and private schools aren't expected to act like social service agencies, dealing with all sorts of damaged kids. The regular public schools are. And recent studies about the effects of stress on neurological development pretty much shows that these kids are being wired to fail by their environments. Poverty, home problems, crime, etc. are the actual problems.
The motivated parents who move their kids to a new school? Those kids probably have less stress than the kids who have parents who are having more problems and aren't focusing on them. Charter/private with vouchers will lead to tons of kids being left behind.
Please understand - the for-profits, consulting companies, etc. have NO interest in actually fixing education. Education is one of the few places where there's a lot of public money, it's staying public, and it's largely going to middle-class employees. The entire point of the reform - from the standpoint of these companies - is to siphon off a ton of that money. Their profit margin will be built by lowering wages - leading to lower-quality teachers over time - and eventually making the whole thing even worse.
I halfway expect to see some of these for-profit companies running juvenile detention facilities soon as well. They make money either way if they do.
And who is going to make that evaluation? How are they going to hire and fire?
In essence, you want a free market in education in which parents evaluate schools and outcomes, successful principals win and schools grow, and bad ones get closed. Government has a function in such a market: it can keep schools small and the market free and efficient (instead of having large corporations and churches take over entire counties or states), it can ensure that low income families can afford education for their kids through vouchers, and it can create some public schools to fill in gaps where there are market failures. But that's very different from the all-expenses-paid centrally planned public school system that we have right now.
Now try to get that past the teachers unions...
I'm from Wisconsin so after reading "The striking Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is holding a massive 'Wisconsin-style rally' Saturday as ongoing negotiations try to bring an end to the strike" I feel I should mention that teachers going on strike is illegal in Wisconsin. It's actually against the law.
Public sector unions are in a unique position whereby their members operate important or vital national infrastructure. The police in many places are forbidden to go on strike, in recognition of this fact. The bottom line is that if you have unions with often effectively unsackable members in charge of things like water and power, you're going to get bent over a barrel.
Your mistake is looking only at the history of the USA. There are other countries which got 8-hour work day and other labor protection laws literally decades earlier, and in all those cases unions have been instrumental. US was a late comer to that party.
The reason why laborers colluding is not bad is because the balance of power is tilted heavily against them and in favor of employers (which are predominantly large corporations today) in the first place. It may be a free market in a sense that you're free to take the offer or go elsewhere (where you'll be offered the same exact thing), but it's certainly not a fair market. Unions make it that much fairer.
It has everything to do with the matter at hand. Many states require that if it's a union job, you're required to join that union. Then union money comes out of your paycheck, whether you like it or not - much like taxes.
I think FDR said it best:
"[A] strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to obstruct the operations of government until their demands are satisfied. Such action looking toward the paralysis of government by those who have sworn to support it is unthinkable and intolerable."
It is illegal for a group of CEOs to join an organization dedicated to fixing prices. Or did you think that was a bad idea too? Both concepts undermine competition and are bad for everyone except those in the organization.
Nice straw man, but you unintentionally pointed to exactly the right comparison. CEOs head organizations which are comprised of many people gathering together to obtain mutual benefit, namely pooled resources that allow members of the organization to engage in activities and reap benefits that they could not individually. These folks all gather together to have greater bargaining power in the market. We even privilege these collectivist organizations under law by providing the individual members immunity for the (negative) actions of the organization.
Let me tell you about what my union did for me. I am a federal employee in a large building for a large agency. I get paid well and have many fine benefits. One day some years ago a rat died in the subfloor under my desk. I called in a work order for the dead rat and not much happened. A week went by and the rat smell intensified. I asked for an update on the rat issue and was told it was in the system and awaiting a tech. Another week and it was unbearable. I spoke to my union rep, he made a few phone calls, and the next day they took apart my floor and removed the dead animal from under my cube.
This is one reason you need the union guy. All of my managers agreed that there was a problem, but they all were powerless to fix it. The union guy put on his hat with the extra bit of legal force and the problem is solved.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Like teacher's unions?
I'm fine with that.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
It is illegal for a group of CEOs to join an organization dedicated to fixing prices. Or did you think that was a bad idea too? Both concepts undermine competition and are bad for everyone except those in the organization.
Nice straw man, but you unintentionally pointed to exactly the right comparison. CEOs head organizations which are comprised of many people gathering together to obtain mutual benefit, namely pooled resources that allow members of the organization to engage in activities and reap benefits that they could not individually. These folks all gather together to have greater bargaining power in the market. We even privilege these collectivist organizations under law by providing the individual members immunity for the (negative) actions of the organization.
The point wasn't that all organizations are bad and / or should be illegal, it was that not all organizations should be tolerated / legal. I can come up with lots of organizations that are good, or at least innocuous too. I was giving an example of an organization that was bad for the same reasons that unions are bad. That doesn't mean that unions don't have their uses, just that all else being equal, they are bad for everyone who is not in the union, including joe average citizen. Unions are not victimless, and some of their behavior should be a crime.
-=Geoskd
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Public unions should not be permitted because these guys are sitting on both sides of the bargaining table. They have massive clout and can influence local elections. This means they'll get a sympathetic ear elected, and when it comes time for contract negotiations, it's them and the guy they basically put in charge.
You can see how this turns out. Public unions reaping all sorts of benefits that aren't found in the private sector, cities literally bankrupt yet still being coerced into giving public employees raises.
Who represents the taxpayer in all this? Nobody, that's who. The main entity that funds all of this doesn't get say, and that's why it should be prohibited for public employees to collectively bargain.
The unions are just another corporation, like any other. Specifically, they are a commodities brokerage. Their commodity is human labor. This is capitalism how it was meant to be, competition amongst various business interests, all seeking special favors and protections from the authorities (which, on the face of it, is kinda wag the dog, since the authorities exist to serve them, and can be easily replaced). The ancillary benefits to the commodity is nice and all, but it's just designed to keep the product fresh. Pump it full of antibiotics and fertilizer, and 500 TV channels, and it will provide many years of reliable service. Damn near as long as a typewriter. But let's not dismiss the idea of organized labor. It sells. Whether it's intentional or not, it pushes back at abuses from the factory owners, while also forming gangs to shake down the completion. What are you gonna do? When people smell money, this is how they act. There is no 'socialism'. It's just business. If you want to pick sides, well, that's up to you. To me it's just a tiny part of the eternal battle for domination.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
because education is too important to run like a business, with profits maximized. I buy a lot of crap that I know isn't very good because I don't make a tonne of money. I don't want my kid to get a Ramen Education while Mitt Romney's kids are the only ones eating steak.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
either that or you're one of their shills (possible, but apologies if you're not since people hate being accused of that).
The rich learned long ago that the best way to stay in power and keep all the money was to pit groups of people against each other. Traditionally this is done with racial or cultural boundaries. Black/white, Christian/Islam, etc, etc. But since they've been globalizing the economy to take advantage of all that cheap labor they've got a problem. They're having a hard time keeping us segregated, and keeping a single large voting block they can count on. The "Southern Strategy" is breaking down.
So they're sicking you on public employees. They don't really have it that good, it's just that after 30 years of lower wages and longer work hours their lives look like heaven. That's the trap. You're too busy asking, why do those guys have food, shelter and health care? to ask "Hey, why don't I have those things?".
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"competition" This is not even a word that should be spoken if we are talking about education.
It is if you want any quality to result.
What we have now is almost zero competition, and the results suck.
Competition is what you introduce when you want results to stop sucking.
Government-enforced monopolies are usually not healthy for anyone.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You have a very distorted view of history.
I believe your own distorted presentation of history is misleading. The eight-hour workday was not an emergent property of depression era unemployment. The depression was simply fuel to an already existing fire. How legislation emerges is often as important as the emergence itself...
Carpenters in America went on strike in the early 1790's for a 10-hour work day. This had become a general public sentiment and by the mid 1830's Philadelphia workers staged a general strike -- organized and lead by Irish workers in the coal industry. The American eight-hour workday found its initial foothold in Boston in the early 1840's and by the 1860's it was being demanded in Chicago. Baltimore 1866, the National Labor Union made it the first and most pressing issue to normalize on an eight-hour workday. The Illinois legislature passed a (largely ineffective) eight-hour workday law in 1867. The ineffectiveness of the leglislation resulted in a city-wide strike in Chicago that lasted a week before crumbling. Later, in 1868, a similarly impotent eight-hour workday law for federal employees was passed by Congress. In 1869, Grant signed the National Eight Hour Law Proclamation. The movement persisted through out the 1870's and in the 1890's labor strikes of 10's and hundreds of thousands of peoples in Milwaukee, Chicago, Cincinnati, New York, and other cities and townships throughout America -- organized labor standing united for that which civilized management and government were unwilling (or unable) to deliver.
The fight was not just in the north... in San Fancisco, the eight-hour workday was implemented at a mill at the turn of the century -- following arbitration and in the face of boycotts and strikes.
Most notably in history, in 1914 Henry Ford called for the doubling of wages and the cutting of work hours from nine to eight. Many sibling companies, while unhappy with Ford's move could not argue with the productivity increase he demonstrated...and they soon followed with similar moves. In 1915, a series of strikes motivated toward the eight-hour work day swept the northeast...successfully.
The Adamson Act of 1916 (signed by Woodrow Wilson) solidified the eight-hour day in the United States for railroad workers. It was the first time in American history that the private industry workhours were regulated by federal authority. The law was challenged and upheld in Wilson v. New, 249 U.S. 332 (1917).
The Adamson Act blazed the trail for all the related legislation in America that followed...
Similarities around the world (timeframes) --
Australia, 1855-1956
Spain, 1873-1919
Portugal, 1919
Germany, 1899
France, 1936 (Matignon)
Russia, 1917
Iran, 1919-1946
Mexico, 1910-1920
New Zealand, 1840-1899
Puerto Rico, 1899
Puru, 1919-?
Uruguay, 1914-1915
Chili, 1924
Thats the point, I should not have to pay some 3rd party so that I can work a particular job. the government is one thing, we all have to pay the government, but there is no logical reason that joining a union should be mandatory.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
There are wonderful teachers who avoid teaching because of sentiments like this. I'm sorry, I'm not interested in entering a toxic work culture where I am demonized by the press, politicians, and parents. Where people on the outside lust over taking away my job security, and where my salary is a race to the bottom of supply and demand. Listen, if you want to restrict pay raises for public school teachers, great, go for it. Divide the country even further along class lines and support private charter schools without the salary restrictions, who snap up the most passionate, brilliant instructors.
That is a foul harvest to reap.
I guess I don't need this pesky AMA membership and Doctor's license (another unnecessary origination that should be voluntary). I'm off to practice medicine! Maybe if I practice enough I'll get it right!
Oh, and come off it. There are lots of good reasons to be required to join an organization before you can do something. Principles are lovely, but don't let them blind you to cold hard reality. For one thing, in a right to work state it's easy to discriminate against Union employees. When I say 'discriminate', I don't mean 'Not Hire'. I mean real discrimination. Like, 'Not sell food to' and 'Not allow to own a house'. This was done to blacks, so there's no reason why the powers that be won't do it to Unions. After all, Unions (and public sector employees) are the new Black. They're the group the rich pit the middle class against so you won't start asking questions like "How come there's 30 TRILLION dollars in off shore accounts?" and "Where did that national debt come from again?".
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You can't evaluate against a national average or even a state average. Why ? Because some school are in more difficult area with less funding and over worked teacher. Why should they be compared against a teacher in a high d nice area with lot of funding and no problem kid ? The evaluation would have to be done locally agaisnt the other average teacher and combined on the state and it get horribly complicated : was the teacher badly noted because of some kids that year , a criminal in shorts ? Was the next year incredible because he got a group of well nice kids wanting to learn, but in reality the teacher is bad ? teacher evaluation is horribly complicated and there is no way whatsoever that a a group would do it properly without funding. And you know what ? That will be more expansive for everybody because those evaluator will have to be paid. And if you go for a simple solution , then are very high chance is that you will not evaluate the teacher at all, but the environment and children. Which is pretty much idiotic.
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Of course, I don't even know that unions serve a real purpose, anymore. We no longer employ twelve year old kids for sixteen hours a day in dangerous machine shops for a nickel an hour and anyone who has been wronged can seek out legal representation.
How do you think we got those rights? How are we supposed to maintain them? There has to be a balance, no excess of power on either the amployer's side or the worker's side.
in some jobs, if you are not in the union, you cannot do some tasks. In this thread I read of a guy who couldnt use a voltmeter and had to have a union member hook it up every time he needed to use it, if he did it, he would have been written up. so yes, it is possible that they were not allowed to do anything because of the union rules. Not saying that is what happened, but only that it does happen
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Right, and that's why governers have recently killed the power of teachers, police, and firemen unions in many states. Because people can't elect anyone who will go against them. Oh wait, you are just totally wrong.
Then move to a 'Right to Work' state. There are plenty of them where you don't have to join a union if you don't want to.
All states should be right-to-work states. Being forced to pay protection money to hold a job is the type of thing the Mob does. Mandatory union membership has no place in today's world of massive amounts of government labor laws and regulations protecting worker safety and rights. Whether or not labor unions helped bring about those protections doesn't matter. The protections are there now, and public sector labor unions are without purpose other than to soak the taxpayer and gain political power & influence for their leaders.
Public sector unions should be outlawed. Both because they place essential services provided by government at risk from strikes, and because the taxpayers who pay the union wages & benefits have no say in how much the unions get, it's between the union and the politician they helped elect. It's two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for lunch, without the sheep being allowed a vote. It's corruption incarnate.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Don't get confused on labor unions either, they are not the same as trade unions which was active since the building of pyramids or before. The free masons are one of these unions.
One of the first international labor unions was actually a political group of socialists that included Marx
Your lexographic taffy-pull is an abomination. An abomination that may as well include the ufologists and vikings.
Seriously...? Red Scare is so last century. We have mobile computing now...and something called... the internets. They even have an app for that.
In an effort to further your myopic (and I dare say, subtly bigotted) vision of western civil society, your argument has gone from strawman to strawman-on-fire. Free Masons? What's next, Scientologists? Heaven's Gate? Perhaps you would like to cite the disappearance of the the entire Mayan Civilization or the genocide of the Native American peoples into your cause against civil society?
Personally, I think your argument would be more credible if you cited Hagar the Horrible or Starfleet regulations...
[/reductio ad absurdum]
Any modern economic or social discussion on the internet can and will eventually make a (sloppy, casual) comparison or reference to Marx... Reductio ad Marxium -- whether or not the citation to Marx is appropriate, such a discussion has achieved a nader. The abuse of out-of-context Marx references dilute and distort the legacy and the learnings from the body of knowledge. Because the reference may be appropriate contextually, casual use of Marx should be avoided.
It is illegal for a group of CEOs to join an organization dedicated to fixing prices.
And yet the largest price-fixing organization in the world, the Federal Reserve, exists by government decree.
Apparently the unions with their people "on the ground", bags of cash, and their purchased elected officials in several states disagree with your viewpoint, and are free to set things up how they like.
FTFY
And s I already pointed out in another thread, your second reason for them being outlawed is seriously flawed.
How is it "seriously flawed" that unions have a long history of backing politicians in exchange for favorable treatment at the expense of the taxpayer? Have you been asleep for the last six decades or more, or have you never learned any history except what people with an agenda have told you?
Elected officials in several states just took away a lot of power from Teachers/Police/Fire unions.
Yes, for the first time in a long time. And it was so alarming and unexpected, the unions outside of Wisconsin threw massive amounts of money and resources into the fight precisely to prevent this setting a new precedent.
Have you seen Detroit recently? I'm not far away and get to see the damage unions and the corrupt politicians.they own have inflicted. I've watched it happen first-hand over the last 50+ years. I hate it. My aunt and her family used to live there in what was once a nice lower-middle-income suburban neighborhood that now has packs of feral dogs out in daylight and the occasional black or brown bear wandering through. That's not exaggeration. There are YT videos.
The rest of the state isn't all that much better, with several large municipalities having state-appointed emergency financial managers taking over all authority for spending and the budget because the corruption and union favoritism and cronyism have bankrupted them.
Want things to go the other way? Convince other voters to vote your way.
How many times does it take? Seems like there are a lot of judges and other politicians and unions across the nation that don't want the voter's will carried out when it doesn't go their way. How far do they go in fighting the decision of the voters before you can say they want to disenfranchise the voters by making their vote meaningless? How many injunctions? How many failed recalls? How many legislators on the lamb in another state to avoid losing a vote?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.