Education Next is an influential rightwing publication. Its editors are mostly fellows at the free-market Hoover Institution. It is based at Harvard University, because its editor-in-chief is Paul Peterson, who holds a chair at Harvard. Peterson is one of the leading voices (perhaps THE leading voice) in the academic world for free markets and unfettered choice. He was once a strong supporter of public schools; he is now a strong advocate for vouchers, charters, and anything but public schools. Paul Peterson is a tenured professor who opposes teacher tenure. He also opposes teachers’ unions; he believes they are selfish and greedy and disrupt the working of the free market. Of course, professors at Harvard make double or triple what the average K-12 teacher earns in a year and work far fewer hours (nine hours a week of class time? three hours? none?). Paul, whom I knew well when I was a senior fellow at Hoover, is an amiable guy. He is also one of the most prolific of the academic boosters for privatization.
Paul Peterson’s influence can be seen in the new movement for vouchers, which have repeatedly been voted down by the public. He has trained a large number of scholars who are dedicated advocates of free-market policies and school choice. One of his former students, Patrick Wolf, is the official evaluator of the voucher programs in the District of Columbia, Milwaukee, and Louisiana. Wolf holds an endowed chair in the “Department of Educational Reform” at the University of Arkansas, a department led by another Peterson student, Jay Greene. Peterson and Wolf have written a number of articles together about school choice. On his website, Wolf says that he has received $20 million in grants and contracts for his research studies.
Peterson’s latest piece, written with Martin West, another of his former graduate students at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, says that the public doesn’t believe that unions should be able to collect dues from people who don’t want to belong to the union but enjoy the benefits that the union negotiates for them. If the public doesn’t believe in unions, then presumably the courts should be willing to strip them of the revenues that enable them to represent workers and to exert influence to protect workers.
Do workers need unions? Growing up as I did in the 1940s and 1950s, unions were seen as a force for progressive change, as the defender of workers, as builders of the middle class. I have never belonged to a union but I continue to believe that without unions, workers will be exploited, treated as chattel, paid below the minimum wage, expected to work long hours in poor conditions, and fired with or without cause. The New York Times recently reported on protests by farm workers, some of whom work nearly 70 hours a week, seven days a week, in substandard conditions. One said that he would be grateful to have one day off a week.
I can’t help but think of a recent tweet by teacher Steven Singer: #Unions are the only reason we have weekends, vacations, overtime pay, 8-hour work day, sick leave, etc.
As unions disappear in the private sector, we see vast numbers of workers who work long hours, do not receive minimum wage or sick days. We see workers who are exploited by corporations that do not have a human face and discard people like trash. To be anti-union is to be anti-worker and anti-middle-class. Unions have their flaws, but their fundamental role is to create better lives for their members. To lose them will exacerbate the growing divide between the 1% and the poor and will hasten the shrinkage of the middle class. That’s bad for America. It’s bad for families and communities. It’s bad for children. It is shameful.
Never,ever get rid of unions for all the reasons you said. You have read here the way I talk about our teacher’s union in Los Angeles. It’s not because I don’t support unions, it’s becUse I want our unions to do more than just collect dues, I want them to protect and further the improvement of working conditions for their membership. I think we see today thT this is not happening and it should. The basic concept and mandTes of unions is sound, we just need to get back to doing it right. The erosion of our rights and working environment is a direct result of the decline in our unions. The public has to stop drinking that Kool aide the 1 per centers are giving out, union extinction is bad for them and society as a whole.
Having a union in the district and membership in the union do not alone protect teachers. To me, the primary purpose of being in a union is to protect due process rights.
It was about the time that John Deasy became superintendent in Los Angeles that our rights began being trampled on more systematically and consistently, as his imperatives trickled down the food chain. Each level of responsibility passed the buck down, as the hunted became the hunters, until there were no levels remaining; thus, teachers became the ultimate prey.
UTLA has not had a large enough staff to follow up with the higher volume of grievances filed. Consequently, hundreds (if not more) grievances are sitting somewhere at LAUSD, apparently with no one particularly motivated to set up and conduct the hearings that teachers are entitled to by contract.
It’s disheartening to find out how difficult it is now for teachers and administrators to trust one another and work together to create an educational experience that fosters improved outcomes for our students.
The obsession with labor unions in the ed reform movement is interesting to me because it doesn’t track my experience as a public school parent. Our teachers are union members and I sat on a community panel on our public schools and I heard parent questions on testing, discipline, project based learning, high school credits, the ACT, IEP’s, tech in schools, and school lunches and transportation.
No one mentioned mandatory dues or labor union contracts, although these meetings were held over a period of months and coincided with a high profile contract dispute in an adjoining district.
It seems like a blatant political agenda to me and it’s amusing since one of the major tenets of ed reform seems to be scolding people for bringing political agendas into public education. Is anyone planning on calling them out for this, or is this yet another area where they get a complete pass in order to hold the political coalition together?
I also find the anti-union obsession by reformers to be very political because they act as if every public teacher in the country has access to a strong union. This is just not true in the South and other right to work states. There is no collective bargaining in these states, and teachers cannot strike. It is illegal for them to do so, and they would be fired immediately. Yet, the public schools in many of these states do not perform as well as the public schools in many states with strong unions for teachers. This fact is never mentioned by the reformers.
Any differences in student performance and outcomes between unionized and nonunionized states are mostly explained by differences in student demographics. The research that’s been done on the topic is at best inconclusive—this short blog post by Shanker’s Matt DiCarlo presents a summary of where things stand: http://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/revisiting-effect-teachers-unions-student-test-scores.
I live in a state, New York, where the question of whether unions are benefiting and helping to maintain a middle class is a little more complicated than what Diane has presented here. Public sector unions do a fine job of keeping their own members in the middle / upper middle class, but the trade-off is sky-high income and (especially, when it comes to education) property taxes. In part this has led to enormous numbers of middle-class New Yorkers migrating to other states (usually “red” right-to-work states, ironically), a gutting of private industry, particularly upstate, and a critical neglect of infrastructure. Until a national solution is found with respect to taxation, businesses will always migrate to where they will pay less tax—it’s why the center of the hedge fund industry isn’t found on Wall Street, but in the Connecticut panhandle.
I strongly support private sector unions, particularly ones that protect workers in low-wage service jobs like fast food and retail. There is real-world evidence to suggest that unionization provides stability, benefits, and higher wages for these employees while having a minimal effect on job creation and consumer purchasing power (it also needs to be said that there are some private companies who do the right thing for such workers even without unions). Public sector unions, however, are a different story. I think the concept of “capture” that Chiara likes to invoke when discussing for-profit businesses is something that should be a concern for citizens and taxpayers with respect to public sector unions.
Sky high teacher salaries? Really?. Is that why NYC had to turn to eastern Europe to recruit teachers who thought $41,000 was a great salary? Private sector unions are all but extinct. Public sector unions are only slightly effective at best. I guess that is a problem for you.
Maybe the key to elevating New York’s economy is to expect the New York’s millionaires to pay more. I am not saying that corporate taxes should be higher, but I am talking about the state income tax. New York City has the 4th highest number of millionaires in the world. Perhaps they should contribute more to the greater good.
As far as idle factories upstate go, all manufacturing, unless it is connected to oil and gas, is suffering due to globalization. It don’t know that the tax rate is the cause of the demise of manufacturing.
Tim,
I’d say the correlation of non-RTW states providing better schools and standards of living is pretty strong. Much stronger to suggest causation than your opposite argument. Look at states receiving the most government assistance and you will see a concentration in the (red state) South.
Public sector workers are not second class citizens and should have the right to assemble. The old argument “I support private sector unions, but not public sector” is inconsistent. If unions do indeed provide a benefit, they should be available to all Americans. Public sector works, in fact, contribute to society and are public servants, not public slaves. Taxpayers do pool their money and through the democratic process decide to hire teachers. Teachers are paid and it becomes THEIR money, no longer the taxpayers. If we started deciding to delineate society by who receives government benefit, not too many companies would quality as pure “free market” participants.
The argument against public sector unions is a fig leaf for a misogynistic, selective attack on teachers – the largest public sector unions. If conservatives were honest, they would admit that and the fact their views have not changed much in 100 years.
Tim,
Public sector unions are not a different story. What is good for fast food workers is good for teachers; middle class is middle class is middle class.
And furthermore, sky-high incomes for teachers? Where?
Actually, Tim, you just reminded me, that I have to pick up my private Lear Jet and my Porsche from the shop this weekend after putting in about $30,000 worth for repairs and tune-ups. After all, I will need them when I summer at my residence on the Riviera and perhaps snap up a few baubles at Bocca Lupo in Paris as an anniversary present for my wife.
But you know what that’s like, don’t you Tim. It’s a middle class thing that you and I, as members of the middle class, can readily identify with. Right?
I would go more into depth, but I’m afraid I will need the rest of this time to do the books, and then write out checks to my chauffeur, maid, cook, butler, fitness coach, shrink, and personal shopper at Le Bon Marche. It’s SUCH a drag to deal with this phalanx of hired help on this teacher’s salary, let me tell you . . . .
Any issues with teacher compensation show great variability from state to state, and if you do have an issue with teachers making middle class wages, then that is the government’s/overclass’s fault because FAR MORE OF OUR MONEY should be coming from federal dollars instead of from local home owners and their property taxes. Instead, my federal taxes go to pay for billionaire tax breaks, bank bailouts, and war campaigns that are as hackneyed and useless as you.
For once, Tim, do bother to think critically and in depth instead of putting blame on teachers and their unions. You don’t always have to be so Tim-witted.
But if you really don’t want to do, why not just shut up? It would be your magnificent and effective contribution to making the world a better place . . . .
I agree Chiara. That point has always frustrated me. And then even in non-union states (at will, right to work) we still have legislators approaching things as if we have a union problem and we don’t even have a union.
Once again, we need to ask the basic question, cui bono. who benefits from the union busting, free market approach? clearly not the 1%. we have learned that the free market failed in europe, just as deregulation and vouchers failed here. we will see the brutal effects of union busting, as what remains of our middle class falls away to nothingness and the 1% becomes a permanent reality. What vouchers and busting unions will yield is a a fatally compromised public work force and public schools condemned to slow and strangulation by state and federal defunding, teachers losing any job security, with consequent teacher turnover, decreasing numbers of young educators entering the field, falling real wages and shuttering public school buildings. Let us not forget that students will increasingly flow into private sector schools, with such schools supplanting public schools as the main provider of K-12 education. finally, and tragically students and parents will be force to attend private schools, where they will receive a constricted, rigid curriculum, driven by standardized testing and taught by under qualified ‘ teachers and administrators. What will happen to children with special education needs? children wwho are limited english proficient? perhaps they will be warehoused in crumbling public school buildings and taught by an oppressed, demoralized work force.
the free market proselytizers and privatizers will get what they want and what they need. children, parents, communities and educators will get neither. The class system will become rigid, with a permanent, majorly under class..
there is no hope from the Democrats, who have either believe or been coopted by the now dominant ideology and emerging education paradigm (see, for example, clinton, warren and to a certain extent, sanders.
the only shreds of light – and there is light – come from the growing parent resistance opt out movement and the small educator resistance, stopping the free market deformers blitzkrieg must occur by local organizing and wringing control of school committees and elections
Charters are useless if they do nothing to benefit the neediest, most vulnerable students with innovative strategies; that is supposed to be their intent and mission. Nobody needs a charter to serve the most teachable. Teachers in public education have been doing that very well for decades. Unfortunately, the main goal of privatization today is to make profit for a few at the expense of many. If charters reject the neediest, the government is actually supporting privatization which then makes conditions worse for those left behind. The government should not be contributing to a two tiered system of education. This should be a civil rights lawsuit.
The main argument I hear from the non-union crowd is that we don’t need unions anymore because we have laws that protect workers. Where do they think these laws came from – Fantasy Land? Additionally once unions are gone who is going to fight to keep these laws on the books? The Koch Brothers and the politicians they own, like Scott Walker, will gut these laws faster than Regan fired the Air Traffic Controllers.
The argument I always hear involves the market – if an employer doesn’t treat its employees well, then the talented ones will go elsewhere and that employer will be stuck with the losers who can’t go anywhere else, so companies realize it’s in their best interests to treat their employees well. Of course, hundreds of years of contrary evidence doesn’t seem to change this argument because “things are different now”.
Sucker born every minute.
things are different now. We have I-phones.
🙂 hee hee. I agree with Dienne, as usual.
The “market” is the new ploy to get the middle class to accept being poor. It is about as valid an argument as trickle down economics.
The teachers Unions sold teachers down the river years ago. Which in essence means teachers have been without a Union for a very long time already.
You make an interesting point.
Why is this the case?
If you have to join a union by law, then the union has no need to protect you as an individual. As a class? Certainly. But as an individual, the moment you are gone, the next hire taking your place is automatically paying dues. Compulsory union dues do not ensure that the union will do your bidding as an individual. It most likely ensures that they will not work hard to protect the individual.
I can tell you this based on first hand experience.
At the national level, true. But unions at the grass roots level are still very relevant. Most union reps are just classroom teachers, not high priced lobbyists or wealthy donors. At that level, unions deal with the more tactical issues of pay, goofy school rules, proper staffing and classroom safety.
There’s a residual effect most Americans no longer appreciate with unions. The workplace is eroding because unions are eroding. Weekends off for family, vacation, safe environments, decent pay, health care – all a result of union activism of the past but are disappearing. It is also hard to ignore the strong correlation between the decline of unions and the stagnation or inflation adjusted decline of working American compensation.
It becomes a Thermopylaen stand, when the 1%ers succeed in destroying the last unions, we all will feel the effects.
Yes Mathvale…well stated. Thanks.
Nice answer, Math Vale, but I am not quite on board. I am only interested in what you wrote in your first paragraph since I do not believe in abolishing unions, nor do I fail to appreciate their importance in protecting the teacher (from less than competent, and spineless, bureaucrats).
Those things you mention in your first paragraph ARE the point where the rubber meets the road for the teacher. They are the essential substance of the matter. But if you must bypass site reps, who are not always up to the task or who are not fully impartial representatives, then one must speak with the top dog, or even a regional representative.
Nothing can guarantee that they will fear losing your loyalty, and dues, as long as they don’t have to work for either. What I write here is also what others have observed about union personnel (no longer teaching) and those who might need their full support and efforts. I see this as a problem inherent in mandatory dues, and a form of reverse free riding. If we do not have mandatory dues, some teachers might free ride as well, but they won’t be protected legally when and if they need protection from arbitrary and capricious personnel decisions.
It is possible that what I am fleshing out here might make a better union in the long run. Strength begins at the grass roots level and is seeded through loyalty.
Veritas: I have been saying what you stated in your post for over 10 years. If Unions automatically have your money in their pockets no matter what without having to produce anything tangible then teachers should expect to get screwed over and over again.
Paul
I thought you might like this blog by Diane Ravitch. I know it’s preaching to the choir – you – but she writes very forcefully on the need for unions. She also identified the culprits in her area of concern – education.
John More Sent from my iPhone
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Unions in any sector are a necessary balance to the carnivorous free market juggernaut we are seeing today. It is the responsibility of every union member to stay active and keep their union leadership honest and focused.
As a teacher, my union and I have been able to deal with misguided administrators who want to impose “change” that is not beneficial to students. Too much of what we are seeing now is simply change for the sake of change. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic comes to mind.
Our union negotiated contract benefits both union and non-union members in our district. Membership and dues are voluntary, As a building representative, I recommend membership, but I am ready to help any teacher whether they have joined or not. That is what being professional is all about.
You are unique, KrisKross, first in accepting the role of a union member/activist, and second, belonging to a union which supports members activism. In California, the larger districts are ruled by the principals and administrators who are mainly Broad Academy grads. Really liked your statement about being ready to help other teachers who may not be union members. You are correct that this collegial attitude is what professional do…or should do.
I’ve worked in the labor movement all my life, including for a major state education union. The fact is that teachers’ unions spend as much or more time working to improve public education as they do advocating for their own members. Having worked for several unions, that was an eye opener for me when I went to work for the teachers; other unions spend most of their time on issues that only affect the rights or the pay and benefits of their own members. The teachers’ union I worked for is at the forefront in the fight for better school funding, enhanced special ed opportunities, expanded early education, increased teaching resources and reducing class size. They’ve fought against teacher layoffs that increase class size, they’ve opposed the elimination of programs like music, art and other things the politicians say “we can’t afford anymore.” They offer union-sponsored professional development classes for hundreds of teachers each year and they encourage community engagement and class room innovation. And, the union I worked for has been advocating for public education like this since BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR. So, teachers’ unions should never be put on the defensive by so-called ed reformers who are primarily looking for ways to monetize public education for private profit. Without the teachers’ unions, public education in this country would have stagnated or disappeared decades ago.
Your experience with unions has been the same as mine. My local funds a scholarship for a high school students planning to teach, collects food donations at Thanksgiving, and some of our members along with high school students sponsor midnight food runs to homeless New Yorkers one week-end a month.
And what union is it?
The NTA, AFT local #2888.
When unions were stronger in this country. the middle class was in a better place than now. Americans used to be able to live on one salary. Today many families are struggling with two paychecks. I just read that the cashier at the capitol building coffee shop has a second job at Kentucky Fried Chicken because she cannot pay her bills from her income at the privatized coffee shop.
Privatization in education is forcing former middle class teachers into poverty wages because in the free market world the people at the top get paid very well, and those at the bottom are paid subsistence wages. Many of these former middle class teachers may qualify for subsidies for healthcare and food stamps in order to survive. Privatization is contributing to more income inequality as these former middle class may become dependent on more government services. It would be better for the economy if these teachers were paid a living wage, could spend their wages on goods and services and contribute to the economy. All privatization does is provide tax credit and loopholes for people that are already wealthy while making ordinary citizens pay for the economic shift through their taxes. This is more corporate welfare!
True, if you look at businesses today, they all seem to be thriving and making more money than ever. We are continually being gouged in California on gas, electricity, housing, health care and I could go on. But what about the people, professional or blue collR, who aren’t doing well, whose earning power has eroded to feed these corporate hogs. Unions have to be our way to fight against the erosion of our standard of living a And if you have a union that is not fighting for you, it’s membership, get rid of those leaders and find ones thT do what they are supposed to do. Not all unions have been co opted. Maybe an end to closed shops and voluntary participation will make unions more accountable
I mean the end of closed shops and the increase of voluntRy participation.
As I read:
“unions should be able to collect dues from people who don’t want to belong to the union but enjoy the benefits that the union negotiates for them”
it reminded me of those who oppose vaccinating their children and yet benefit from the herd immunity provided by those who have been vaccinated.
Unfortunately in both cases, the herd immunity does not protect the individual from all cases of disease, whether that disease is of the medical or workplace-related types.
Herd immunity does not give a high level of individual protection, and so it is not a good alternative to getting vaccinated. So it is with unions: the benefits derived by those individuals who do not join unions for whatever reasons are those are those derived from the efforts of their colleagues who have.
And if none of the population are vaccinated, i.e. don’t belong to unions through choice or that the union no longer exists, there is no protection for any individual.
Without a union representing my father when I was a child growing up, we lived in poverty. My parents both started working at age 14 and would live in poverty into their 30s struggling to survive. My older brother and sister grew up with this unstable lifestyle.
Then my father, with help from my godfather, got a union job where he worked, and we left the poverty behind. With that union came a retirement plan that supported my parents for twenty years until my father died at ae79. It wasn’t much. about 14,800 a month plus $500 from Social Security. My mother lived to 89 and she lived off that Social Security because when my dad died, the retirement went with him. I was about seven when my family escaped the clutches of poverty thanks to a labor union representing workers. That union also saved my life because a medical plan came with the job. About age 7 when my dad got that job a virus attacked me and would have killed me if it hadn’t been for that medical coverage.
Without a union representing me when I was teaching for thirty years, even though I was a teacher who won awards for my students—a lot of awards—and according to the district, my students demonstrated dramatic annual gains for decades when compared to all the other English teachers (I was told by two VP’s that even the kids who earned failing grades in my classes demonstrated gains on the state’s annual standardized tests) in the district, that district would have fired me in a moment if I had no job protection with a union standing behind me because I protested top down policies even when I was a substitute teacher and had no job protection.
I curse the Hoover Institute. I curse Paul Peterson. I curse Patrick Wolf. I curse Martin West. May they rot in the underworld for eternity!
Oh, I also went through a paid, full-time, yearlong teacher urban residency program in a master teacher’s 5th grade classroom in an area where more than 80% of the children lived in poverty and violent street gangs pretty much ruled the streets and that was the area where I taught for thirty years. I don’t remember any of the parents of those children I taught having unions representing them and they weren’t even farm workers.
Lloyd,
Did you make a typo in the amount of the pension.
Diane,
I don’t mean to digress,but I LOVE what you said about unions having flaws, but that we are still better off with them and their power than without them, You hit the nail on the head!!!!!!
Unions created the middle class and prevented us for decades from reverting back to Edwardian England type of society.
If anything, we need to grow and fortify unions in private and public sectors. We must have unions sit on the boards and have disclosed to them every molecule of money an organization generates so that they can realistically bargain at the table and also prevent the CEO fat cats and their executives from gorging upon and hoarding the money that no longer trickles down.
POWER to UNIONS!!!!!!
MORE POWER to unions that choose not be be corrupt to their constituents.
POWER to the concept, reality, and pragmatism, of unions!
Lloyd…as Diane points out, your figure for the amount of your father’s pension is listed as “$14,800 a month” but I assume you meant that amount was for a year.
Thanks for pointing our my mistake. My father’s pension was about $1,800 a month. I should have taken more time to proof my comment. My fault. I was in a hurry to get to Home Depot before the heat arrived and buy concrete for my stairway project at one end of the house.
My parents both grew up during the Great Depression and were very frugal. By the time my father retired, their home was paid for and they had no loans or credit card debt.
Yes I did. My dad said he made about $1,800 a month. My fault. Sorry.
The current unionization rate is about 11.2%, it was in the 30% range in the 1950s. Unionization rates for other countries: Finland – 75%, the other Scandinavian countries – in the 50% range, Canada 28% -30% and Germany about 18%. Though Germany’s unionization rate may not be that impressive it does have works councils and the right to unionize is in their constitution; there are many more governmental protections for workers and unions in Germany than in the US.
In Finland, all teachers belong to the union. And society views and equates teachers as professionals on a level with doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
But which political party supports them anymore? That’s where I’m confused.
Neither one does; no more confusion. Both parties have been bought and paid for by the corporate masters.
Pro-publica did a series on temporary workers in the US who are being crushed by the free market ‘job creators’. Without institutionalized employee protections, such as strong unions, these people have no counterbalance to the money & power of the corporate – state alliance. I can’t help but think that is the vision of some school reformers or the teaching profession. Cheap, temp teacher labor, by TFAers for poor, minority & kids with disabilities in the public sector charter chains (you know, the “takers” according to free market dogma) Private schools for the 1% subsidized by the rest of us.
http://www.propublica.org/article/the-expendables-how-the-temps-who-power-corporate-giants-are-getting-crushe
Interestingly one of the latest mantra’s of hedge funders re: education reform is “volunteerism”. That idea was floated by a Wall St or Hedge Fund mansplaining how volunteers are the answer to education reform. (I read this in one of the business magazines last year but can’t find the link) The Washington Post helpfully laundered that meme & published this puff piece without any of the persistent downsides to running a system on volunteers. I left this comment: The problem with volunteers is you can never count on them being consistent. If they have a family problem or decide they don’t have time, they don’t come back. It’s a constant struggle managing volunteers because they come & go.
How about we increase public service jobs and hire MORE skilled reading teachers & reading support personnel? The economy wins and the children win.
Paying low wages to temps isn’t enough- now they want FREE workers in public schools.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/can-volunteers-help-kids-read-more-proficiently-new-research-says-yes/2015/03/28/7141c57c-c4ec-11e4-ad5c-3b8ce89f1b89_story.html
one more thing- Does Paul Peterson have tenure? How would he feel if his belief in free market fundamentalism was the rational for him losing his job?
of course he has tenure. if push came to shove and he lost his endowed chair, his position, he would accept the justice of the free market. as to how he would feel, silly to speculate. perhaps, he has an honest emotional state he can access.
Note to Peterson:
What is good for thee is not good for me or we . . . . .
I love my union. Unions are important and can be a powerful resource for members. I have been a dues paying union member for many years. However…
If the union leadership wasn’t so corrupt and hadn’t already sold us down the river so many times recently, (acceptance of Common Core, teacher evaluations tied to cockamamie test scores, invasive data collection on students and teachers, endorsements for political leaders who do not have teachers’ best interests on their agenda) unions would not have to fear even if the method of paying dues were to change from an opt out to an opt in system because of the impending legal case in the Supreme Court.
If there were some recent examples of fantastic fights for teachers who are under siege right now highlighting what unions are supposed to do for its dues paying members, all of the young new teachers would be more than willing to jump on board and pay their dues. However, watching the leadership cavort with the 1% and accept money from the 1% while they sell their members out is bad advertizing.
If the union leadership is so concerned that they will be out of a job soon, I suggest that they start with some internal reflection. And this should not result in spending more of our dues on a pro-union ad campaign. Make some actual headlines in the news: Union goes to bat for teachers unfairly fired. Union goes to bat for veteran teachers who are now ATRs in NYC, etc.
“If there were some recent examples of fantastic fights for teachers who are under siege right now highlighting what unions are supposed to do for its dues paying members….”
Chicago Teachers Union since Karen Lewis and CORE (Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators) took over.
Dienne…yes, you give the best example of how a union leader should behave. Karen Lewis is outstanding…wish she could be cloned. Wish she could run for President of the US, or another political office.
After WW2, it was the strong union movement, particularly the UAW, that gave the US the largest middle class in history. Manufacturing jobs paid a fair wage and offered health care and pensions.
It is telling that the oligarchs could destroy this functioning Middle Class and its’ buying power (by off-shoring jobs and lobbying for tax laws to benefit only them), in favor of running corporations only to show quarterly dividends increases for investors. Profit sharing fell by the wayside and workers rights fell apart.
Yes, we need a strong union movement to build back a fair society.
This (unfree and manipulated) corporate free market gambit is what brought America’s unions and workers to their knees…and what broke the rising income for all, to instead direct redistribution of all wealth only upward. Redistribution has been used world wide for centuries to mitigate the wealth fairly. This is no longer the case…as witness a Dow Jones showing stock trading at over 18,000. Add to this the machinations of the FED which prints fiat money so rapidly that it assures eventual inflation and a major depression in time. This period of stagflation will end in disaster as it did in Japan. It is insane and dangerous.
This inequality cannot last without blow back from the masses who are suffering. Reiterate…. that strong unions are a boon to the Middle Class, should it ever rise again.
Dawn,
May I add the following idea:
“Union goes to bat for PARENTS and TAXPAYERS of public school children by demanding removal of VAM and test-based evaluations, buy demanding more funding from federal tax dollars, and by insisting on active teacher participation in a re-write of the Common Core.”
Excellent ideas Robert, except for the re-write of Common Core, which is flawed because of its very nature–outcome based education. It cannot be rewritten. It must be wholly ejected from our schools lock stock and barrel. Every data dashboard must be eliminated, and every computer wiped of personally identifiable information on students and teachers.
I am pessimistic for our future. Public goods are being privatized with schools being one example. Recall governor Cuomo referring to public schools as a monopoly. Prisons are being privatized and those that aren’t privatized are using for-profit systems for such things as phone calls, video conferences, cash transfers, etc., and charging outrageous rates for those services. Worse still the prison owners lobby for longer sentences to maximize their profits! Highways have been privatized (Indiana) with guarantees to the highway “owners” of revenues in case new public roads were built that could result in a loss of revenues for the private roads. Incredible! Even parking meter systems have been privatized in Chicago with predictable results….higher fees. It seems we are losing our sense of society. It appears that those in power appeal to the worst instincts of people to be increasingly about our personal well being and a greater disregard for the welfare of others and society at large.
“It seems we are losing our sense of society.”
“There is no society.”
–Margaret Thatcher
Can’t say we weren’t warned.
Thatcher was Reagan in a skirt.
Robert…even hatchet faced Reaganites are sometimes correct. Her Reagan partner started to destroy American society and our unions by firing the air traffic controllers and shutting down their union. He drove more personal bankruptcies, as with farm families, than at any other period in our history. He started the Grover Norquist drive to drown Government in the bathtub, and here we are today, with 14 or so Repub presidential candidates all echoing these same ideas.
And oligarchic ‘Billary’ Clinton, in her real life, is more on their side than on ours, despite her contrived and new populist words.
Doesn’t seem like any of these who yearn for ultimate power have a better nature.
Which is why, Ellen, one should support Bernie, IMHO . . .
Agree Robert…with Bernie for the long haul, but a caveat, that is unless Jerry Brown decides to run. Then might have to stick with my Governor.
Look up tollmageddon. The privatization of roads has happened in Florida on an immense scale. It costs me close to ten bucks per day to drive to school using roads that were paid for eons ago.
I reviewed Wolf and Stewart’s 2014 book, The School Choice Journey, in Americans for Religious Liberty’s journal, Voice of Reason, No. 130, accessible at arlinc.org. Here’s my concluding paragraph: “Why a reputable publisher like Palgrave Macmillan would out its name on this hodgepodge of microcephalic rubbish is a mystery. It should withdraw and avoid further embarrsssment.” — Edd Doerr
This is version of an earlier post. There is a fairly new scheme by corporations to insert their policies into local government, with killing unions priority one.
Without much fanfare, the American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC—the source of corporate-friendly and “free-market” state legislation—has spawned ready-to-use model legislation and ordinances for local governments.
ALEC’s progeny is called the American City-Council Exchange (ACCE). Set up in 2014, it is designed to promote “America’s only free-market forum for village, town, city, and county policy makers.”
In addition to proposing model ordinances and legislation at this smaller scale of governance, ACCE is also intended to diminish the influence of the National Conference of State Legislatures as a go-to-source for policy ideas and status reports on legislation. For example, the National Conference has a searchable data-base on pending or passed legislation of great use for legislators and their staff. This data base and search engine means YOU can track 50 issues in education with state-by-state reports–summaries of legislation and the text of bills. Because the National Conference is not a 100% shill for market-based policies framed by corporations, ALEC and ACCE claim it is “too liberal” as a source for ideas about legislation.
Here is how the ACCE works. Elected officials in villages, towns, cities, and counties pay $100 for a two-year membership. They are identified as members of “the Public Sector.” Here is the ACCE pitch members of the public sector.
“ACCE members receive academic research and analysis from ALEC/ACCE policy experts who work with issues, processes and problem-solving strategies upon which municipal officials vote. Provided with important policy education, lawmakers become more informed and better equipped to serve the needs of their communities.” So corporations are the sources of policy expertise and the proper way to “educate” public officials. No need for local expertise, public debate, and so on. Local elected officials can now become shills for ALEC/ACCE.
Corporations pay $10,000 to be a member of an ACCE Committee, or they pay $25,000 to become members of the Founder’s Committee with more influence on priorities.
Here is the pitch for members in “the Private Sector.”
ACCE Committee members “provide industry insights during policy creation.” “ACCE Council Committees closely imitate the city government legislative process: resolutions are introduced, meetings are conducted, experts present facts and opinion for discussion, after which lawmakers take a vote.”
The ACCE is basically a pay-to-play scheme for peddling corporate views to public officials at the local level, with a very low threshold of expense for local and policy makers to be open to ready-to-use corporate friendly ordinances and legislation. The scheme comes with the bonus of a tax deduction because ACCE is a 501(c)(3) non-profit.
ACCE first two initiatives are already in circulation, thanks to regional chapters and the nurture by ALEC of this strategy to control local governance. Some elected officials who are Democrats are trying to blow the whistle.
One of the first ACCE initiatives is a model ”Right to Work” ordinance, a local version of ALEC’s anti-union model legislation.
A second is designed to limit local government oversight of the process of contracting for municipal water and wastewater piping. Apparently the municipal and wastewater industry wants to secure total autonomy for project engineers to set performance criteria for the piping in these huge public works projects. This may also be a scheme to by-pass EPA’s 2011 “green infrastructure” practices for administering the “Clean Water Act.” For both model ordinances go to http://www.alec.org/legislation-tags/acce/
In addition to these initiatives, I think we will see more of ACCE’s influence, working in tandem with other efforts to get rid of locally elected local school boards, to have all education funding follow the child, and set up “virtual” and/or multi-location districts to process funds, meet any remnants of public accountability, all with appointed CEOs. The Center for American Progress and venture capitalists like Global Silicon Valley Advisors want to accelerate popular acceptance of such schemes as “essential” to get more bang for the buck, to allow for more choice, and so on. Getting rid of local school boards s also a strategy for killing unions.
If your community still permits unions and suddenly decides to scrap those with something that looks like a ready-made ordinance, it could be from ACCE. It might come with claims that it will not only save money on salaries, but reduce pension obligations, permit fires and hires based on performance, and also be good for business, especially for those corporations who have paid for access to your elected officials. BEWARE.
Corporations do not want employees to have due-process rights. Many also have NO respect for authentic democratic governance and the electoral process—witness the current efforts of billionaires with corporate fortunes to buy the next President of the United States and also to make it difficult to vote.
This just in from Schools Matter….re Hillary and her corporate donors who are all pro charters and privatizing ed. The sports info is compounded by many such thefts from the taxpayers to fund the interests of corporate America. Same in happening right now in LA with two new sports stadiums to be built with public cash for private returns.
Oprah lovers, please take note of her support for charters and her collusion/cooperation with the Waltons and Wall Street hedge funders to support them..
Be sure to read the final paragraph.
Ellen
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Schools Matter
Hillary’s Hedge Fund Fundraiser Was Chelsea’s Boss
Posted: 22 Jul 2015 08:07 AM PDT
By Doug Martin at Hoosier School Heist
This morning, the Associated Press reports that Hillary Clinton is busy gobbling up donations from hedge fund managers, a group highly involved in school privatization (as I detail in my book Hoosier School Heist) and one she says she will target if elected America’s new president.
According to AP, one New York City hedge fund manager who has raised at least $100,000 to Hillary’s campaign is Marc Lasry, a new owner of the Milwaukee Bucks.
In a statement to Bloomberg News a while back, Lasrysaid “we have a moral responsibility” to Milwaukee. Morality, for Hillary’s hedge fund manager friend, means a taxpayer bailout.
Even though Lasry’s basketball team is set to bring in $89 million annually, Wisconsin governor and presidential candidate Scott Walker is seekinga $220 million taxpayer bond deal for the Bucks’ new sports arena, about the same amountto be cut from Wisconsin universities soon. Lasry is also a team player in supporting school privatization.
In 2012, Lasry spoke at the Invest for Kids Conference in Chicago, an event which raised $180,000 for the LEARN Charter School Network. The Invest for Kids Conference was led by Goldman Sachs’ managing director Ron Levin.
Hillary’s son-in-law, a few years earlier, worked for Goldman Sachs before starting his own hedge fund. Funded by Oprah and Walmart’s Walton family, the LEARN Charter School Network is run by past venture capitalist Greg White. The network is well-known to pro-public school activists in Chicago for preying on poor minority communities, a “dismal track record of low performance, lots of unlicensed teachers, and a record of exclusion of English language learners and students with special needs.”
But Hillary’s connections to Marc Lasry are family-deep. Chelsea Clinton once was employed at Marc Lasry’s hedge fund, Avenue Capital Group, which currently manages around $12.5 billion.
Lasry’s Avenue Capital Group also manages Avenue Energy Opportunities Fund, in which the Texas Teacher Retirement System has just invested $150 million.
As Chris Hedges writes in his book Wages of Rebellion, “The citizen has become irrelevant.” Since the American Federation of Teachers’ leadership has publicly endorsed Hillary, teachers should know that they, too, have become irrelevant to the powers-that-be and nothing short of a real revolution is going to give any of us a chance.
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Hope Randi reads this. e.
The battle is (again) over Free Market versus Collective Good. Anybody observing the past decade or two can see the mythical Free Market has resulted in neither freedom nor markets. Americans are living in fear of losing their job and respond irrationally, voting against their own interests. There is no freedom living in fear. Markets are no longer developed, they are cannibalized. Like the cheap products from overseas, the economy looks nice on the outside but is really made of junk. American business is obsessed with cost and not quality. This reflects the Reformers approach to education.
Does Right to Work work?
In the office, we had a coffee fund. People were asked to chipped in a few bucks every week in order to buy coffee for the entire team, often much cheaper than we could buy individually. There were a few, namely one guy, who never chipped in, drank all the coffee, and never made a new pot when he finished one off. Then, this guy would complain about not having Starbucks. Soon others started wondering why they were supporting the freeloaders who received the same benefit, but never contributed. Eventually, the office coffee fund fell apart and no one had coffee at work. And who complained the loudest?
MathValue: Good analogy.
I too enjoyed your analogy. And yes, the Invisible Hand that is supposed to rule the Free Market has too many broken fingers. It only admires and works toward ever increasing benefits for shareholders by cutting costs of the cheapened product, and giving the middle finger to the workers.
I never understand how conservatives argue about Constitutional rights, yet have no hesitation eliminating the rights of teachers to assemble, petition, and speak. How they mouth choice but want to eliminate unions as a choice in the workplace. Why they claim to value personal responsibility but enable freeloaders. Is modern conservatism a sham?
This is a flawed example because in a right to work state Unions are obsolete so there is nothing being provided by your Union that “any” members are enjoying. Take my example, 13 years teaching only making $2,000 more than a new hire. Now if you think I am going to pay $800 union dues to a sorry excuse of an organization so that I can see my pension taxed unconstitutionally, watch my supplement pay decrease by $3,000, my job security erode from PSC to annual contract and to top it off go six straight years without a penny an a salary increase you are simply nuts. Who cosigned on all of these terrible things? The so called Union.
They do lobby, though, in right to work states. So that’s not entirely true. While there is no collective bargaining, the work that NCAE does on behalf of schools does make a difference.
Thanks for the shout out, Diane. There are a lot of reasons to criticize the way our unions work these days, but the concept of organized labor is a good one. We would do much better to increase unions than decrease them. I wrote more extensively on the essential need for unions in my piece “Forget Corporations… Unions Really Are People.” https://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2014/11/01/forget-corporations-unions-really-are-people/
I would argue that the worst thing Reagan did was re-establish diplomatic relations with the Vatican. And now, in September, we can expect an unprecedented visit from the Jesuit Pope Francis to address our congress, to speak with our president, and to address the United Nations. He will be playing at Madison Square Garden as well.
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 1984— The United States and the Vatican established full diplomatic relations today for the first time in 117 years.
President Reagan announced that he would nominate William A. Wilson, a California industrialist and real estate developer, to serve as the United States Ambassador to the Holy See. Mr. Wilson, a longtime friend of the President, has been serving as the President’s personal representative to the Vatican since 1981. http://www.nytimes.com/1984/01/11/world/us-and-vatican-restore-full-ties-after-117-years.html
Living my long life in California, and remembering my and so many other shock in 1968 when we learned the ham actor, Ronnie Reagan, was going to run for Governor, gives me a local perspective as weil as national and international, on his many failures.
He practically destroyed the University of California when between his draconian cuts, and HUAC and McCarthy fingering their brand of “commie” professors, we lost the cream of the crop. Strangely some of the most respected academics were happily gobbled up by U. of Texas. It has taken all these years for U of C at Berkeley and UCLA to be named the two top public universities in the nation.
He also shut down public mental health facilities like Atascadero, and dumped the patients primarily in Santa Monica where the still are roaming around in their personal demented hell. More of his callous draconian actions.
So Dawn, although I generally agree with you, this time I don’t. What he did to California and America was the forefunner of the misery of today.
addendum…I personally respect this Jesuit Pope who is also a humanist, as I respect my Jesuit Governor who I wish would run for Prez yet one final time against Born Again Hillary. Remember that the Pope is the figurehead for 1/3 of the world’s religious people who are Catholic. His views deserve to be aired at the UN where even Islamic mullahs and imams have spoken representing another third of the population of the Abrahamic religions.
Cannot say the same for the last Bavarian Pope in his red shoes who was head of the Office of Keeper of the Faith before becoming Pope. This office had a name change in 1965 from Office of the Inquisition.
Remember what happened to the Jews and the Moors at the hands of the Catholic inquisitors…leading to the diaspora and so much world upset. Spain, with its plethora of marranos, Jews in hiding as Catholics, only welcomed Jews back in the last decade.
And then there was Pope Pius who colluded with the Naziis.
Yes, I am glad this egalitarian Pope is coming to visit the US.
And this opinion comes from a lifelong atheist.
Jerry Brown is an under appreciated wizard of a governor. I think he is the victim of ageism.
Indeed he is, retired teacher. We in California never thought we would get out from under the ton of debt Arnie the Austrian weight lifter left us during his mismanaged term of office….but Jerry pulled us out of a huge recession and sky high unemployment, and diminished unemployment figures to 10 years past levels. He did many things right, and a few, not so right IMO.
You are right; this pope is pretty darn decent, and this is coming from an ex-Catholic.
I just wish he would speak out more on women’s rights and autonomy.
Many in the 99% who benefit from unions, yet chronically criticize them, will understand their strength and value when the Kochs, Waltons, ALEC and friends have destroyed them. Then it will be much too late.
One of the major reasons that “the public” has wavered in its support of unions is the negative portrayal of unions in the media. The narrative that unions and taxpayers are on opposite sides (as if union members do not pay taxes) has been widely promoted in newspapers and other sources.
Thanks for pointing this out, Andrea. The media is responsible not only for degrading teachers, but it pits teachers against unions purposefully, to create an adversarial view in the minds of the disgusted public (mainly the voters who pay some attention). This is the master plan, to degrade both teachers and their unions, so the oligarchs (who own the media, all else it would seem) can take it all over and imbue the whole system with the taint of their Free Market.
I agree with you 100%.
Without the unions the workplace will be dominated by management’s will and the workers will be slaves, and treated as such, because the common man(and woman) cannot afford to sue. The courts are too expensive for ordinary folks.
But, that said, I have the union contract on my desk. It outlines the grievance procedures that ensures my sixth amendment rights. I sat with the Manhattan Bureau chief at a meeting where a superintendent read a letter in which she found me guilty of a crime based on the allegations of a single child that I cursed at her…in front of the class.
At the time, I was the most celebrated educator in NYC.
Nothing mattered. I was removed from the classroom in the school I put on the map.
Six months I at there,
MY expensive attorney pointed out, that in NYS corporal punishment is a physical act, and that moreover, there wee 30 other students present. The head man of th euFT in Manhattan did not object. Did not point out that no charges had been filed. That I had never even hard the allegation, and that the students who were interviewed, A,B, C.D E & F had names which I was entitled to know. He did not challenge that 2 of this alphabet soup agreed with their 13 year old friend,but he others objected. None of the other 24 kids were interviewed, and I was never allowed to see anything…jsut bOOM, Guilty.
Back at the site, the UFT rep, a woman who desired to have the art position as a full-time job ( I taught art to the seventh grade with in my CA class) told students that I “had ruined th lives of 2 girls.”
Yes Diane. We need unions, but the tens of thousands of teachers who face the corruption of their union, as is seen now in LAUSD, know that the union must step up and protect its teachers.
There are 2 issues in this education conundrum. One pertains to the profession: how learning is enabled is not a matter of opinion. The National Standards was a third level research that proved what must be in place. I know I was the cohort.
The other issue is the crux of the process that is presently the topic of conversation at your site… the outrageous top-down mandates for anti-learning curriculum, and the VAM that have no meaning and are now used to send teaches out the door, so they do not have to be accused of crimes like Esquith…and ME!
If teachers were an ethnic group, the total eradication of their civil rights by andy and all school administrators would bring down the hammer on the heads of the lawless. Leona Stremcha was set up to be assaulted by the principal… she proved it in court… because she had to go to court to get justice.
It is time to recognize that we need unions who represent US.
Always well spoken, you are! Excellent points.