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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.'"
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
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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."
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.
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/
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
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.
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.