Moshe Z. Marvit, a labor lawyer who has written several articles for The New Republic on unions, here analyzes the Harris v. Quinn decision and maintains that it sets an impossible standard for unions to meet. He believes that it is a preliminary to reversing decades of Supreme Court precedent and completely crippling unions.
Marvit was co-author of “Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right.”
He wrote an earlier article with Richard Kahlenberg in “The New Republic” about the attacks on collective bargaining in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What we are witnessing, inexorably it seems, is the complete takeover – in education, in labor, of information, in political and judicial power (they already own the economy) by the 1% oligarchy. The diminution of civil rights is brought about by the concentration of political and economic power into a tiny minority, and with it comes a society that increasingly is fine with the abandonment of children, of the poor, of the aging, and of the sick. While Obama may be doing his best to hold the tide and has some victories to speak of, for the most part, the administration of the most liberal great black hope has been unable to stem the tide. These are dark times in America. That most people, even in a semifunctioning democracy, cannot even be marshaled to fight the good fight for the rights of all, for a fairer economic system, for a caring economic and political structure – shows we as a society are in deep trouble – we have essentially thrown the towel. That there is no effective resistance should scare us all.
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What on earth makes you think Obama has tried to “stem the tide” when everything he’s done since taking office was in service of opening the floodgates?
His cabinet was made up of neoliberal and neoconservative technocrats from day one and remains the same today.
He consults regularly with Wall Street “titans” and billionaires and ignores the needs of the people.
He refused to even consider holding Wall Street and the banks accountable for tanking the world economy and homeowners, workers, the poor, and people of color suffered.
He said and did nothing as Wisconsin tested the waters for destruction of public sector unions despite promising on the campaign trail to “put on his walking shoes” to join union workers when they protest.
He followed the economic policies of the rightwing conservatives who preceded him and gave up huge concessions that favored the people over and over again without winning anything back.
He had a democratic majority in congress his first two years and achieved next to nothing for the people because of his pointless bipartisanship fetish that made him a victim and a fool.
Sorry, Obama is not our advocate or our friend.
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“While Obama may be doing his best to hold the tide and has some victories to speak of, for the most part, the administration of the most liberal great black hope has been unable to stem the tide.”
I think GM must have been writing that tongue in cheek as what you say “Sorry, Obama is not our advocate or our friend” is quite correct.
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Chris in Florida,
When Governor Scott Walker was destroying public sector unions in Wisconsin, Jonathan Pelto mailed a sturdy pair of walking shoes to President Obama so he might use them to help the embattled teachers and other workers for the state. President Obama did nothing.
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I give them points for creativity. They managed to take a public policy that was intended to allow disabled people to stay in the homes and save the state money on Medicaid and turn it into yet another club to bash labor unions.
Didn’t see that one coming.
Kudos to all the lawyers on the big win. Race to the bottom wages and fewer workplace protections for some of the hardest working women (and 90% are women) on the planet is a real noble goal.
Anyone who thinks this decision isn’t going to be extended with further litigation is delusional. There is no rational reason to believe that, just as there was no rational reason to believe the California tenure decision would be 1. limited to tenure and 2. limited to California. There’s a certain element of whistling in the dark going on in this country that is fascinating. People seem to rush to deny and minimize what is happening right in front of them.
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I found this graph at Crooks and Liars. It explains the war on unions and what happens when the anti-union rhetoric succeed in decimating union membership. As union membership declines, the top 10% keep more and more money to themselves. When union membership was highest, profits were shared more equitably with the workers.
It’s pretty simple. And sad. The Koch brothers, the Walton family, and the “Right to Work” astroturf organizations have succeeded in convincing Americans to oppose unions to their own detriment.
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The plutocrats must be slightly worried. Walmart has put out a disgusting ad proclaiming their support for the down home efforts of real Americans to rebuild our factories. They end it with telling how much Walmart is investing in home grown products.
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The preceding comments by Gabriel, Chris and Chiara sum up this moment in history.
Democracy is fragile. A sledge hammer swung by the Waltons, ALEC, Eli Broad, Bill and Melinda Gates, John Arnold, Pete Peterson, Reed Hastings, Foster Freiss, Charles and David Koch, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Scalia and economists and media, in the employ of the 1%, smashed it. A complacent public pondered why and wrung their hands, rejecting solutions, citing their imperfection.
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We may well be back to square one, back to the time when unions were first organized and people paid with their lives for the rights of the worker. Recent Supreme Court decisions seem to have us headed in that direction. I hope not but it does not look promising at this point where people with the most money have the most free speech.
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In the 1950s, the unionization rate was about 34% and the top marginal tax rate was 91%. Now the unionization rate is about 11.3% and the top marginal tax rate is 39.6%. The economic royalists and their stooges in the media are working overtime to destroy unions and to increase their wealth.
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Nina Totenberg on NPR said it very well in this ruling, ” “The court has set up the legal goal posts and invited those opposed to public employee unions to kick the ball through.” It is just a matter of time before Alito and his gang of five are writing an opinion striking down “fair share” payments to all public employee unions. It is time for all educators to stick together in a concerted unified effort at resistance.
I posted my take on the ruling here:
http://russonreading.blogspot.com/2014/07/scotus-sticks-it-to-union.html
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This decision is similar to telling the Police that in order to get paid they have to prove that we would not be as safe without them!
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The Obama Administration supports labor. Rhetorically. In June, July and August of election years.
“Collective bargaining is a fundamental right that helped build America’s middle class. I’ve seen firsthand as Education Secretary that collaborating with unions and their state and local affiliates helps improve outcomes for students. The President and I remain committed to defending collective bargaining rights.”
I can’t think of a single substantive thing they’ve done to “defend” labor rights other than occasionally mouthing vague platitudes, but if someone is willing to point me to one I’d be happy to consider it.
I don’t even think they’ve been real good on enforcing existing law regarding non-unionized worker rights.
The problem is there’s two things going on, at the same time. As labor unions are systematically and deliberately dismantled we ALSO have the state side either weakening ordinary (statutory) worker protections or not enforcing them.
People have never needed an entity OUTSIDE government (like labor unions) more and government actors are busy weakening labor unions.
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From today’s READERS REACT in the Los Angeles Times, both entries:
[start quotes]
To the editor: I have been teaching for 23 years. This is what the Vergara case, which threw out California’s teacher protection laws, means to me.
I will no longer be advocating for your kids. When any administrator comes up with an idea that negatively impacts students, I will no longer be pointing out the shortcomings of these policies. I am not going to risk my job for a society that does not support me.
Don’t be surprised when education does not magically improve if this ruling is upheld. You will get rid of ineffective teachers, but you will also have silenced many teachers who want to make their schools better.
Julie Meneghini, Huntington Beach
The animosity toward teachers today, which really should be directed at a tiny minority of misfit teachers, demonstrates the ignorance the voting public has about the profession of education. The majority of teachers are highly effective, and if they are not, they usually leave on their own because of the heavy workload, misbehavior by students and harassment from administrators.
Teachers with seniority are usually more effective than novices because of their experience. Would you go to an inexperienced doctor or a more experienced one for your medical issues?
Katherine Tripodes, San Marino
[end quotes]
Link: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-le-0702-wednesday-teacher-tenure-20140702-story.html
These are features, not bugs, of the Vergara decision.
With the proviso that this is just for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN [the vast majority]. When it comes to the BBBBC [BusyBody Billionaire Boys Club] and their educrat enablers and edubully enforcers and the rest of the education status quo—
THEIR OWN CHILDREN will continue to go to Lakeside School [Bill Gates] and Sidwell Friends [President and Mrs. Obama] and Delbarton School [NJ Governor Chris Christie] and U of Chicago Lab Schools [Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel] and Harpeth Hall [Michelle Rhee] and the beat goes on…
But aren’t they mandating for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN something very different from what they are ensuring for THEIR OWN CHILDREN? Why the very idea is preposterous…
[start quote]
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who strongly supports school reform that centers on standardized test-based accountability for students, schools and teachers, has decided to send his children to a private school that doesn’t obsess on standardized tests.
Emanuel, who served in the White House as President Obama’s chief of staff for a few years, and his wife have chosen, according to a local radio station CBS News 2 in Chicago, to send their three children to the prestigious University of Chicago Laboratory Schools in Hyde Park.
It’s the same school that President Obama’s daughters attended when they lived in Chicago. Sasha and Malia Obama now attend the private Sidwell Friends School.
The decision where to send your children to school is certainly a personal one, even for public officials. But it is worth publicly noting what public officials who support test-based school reform — including Obama’s main education initiative, Race to the Top — choose to do with their own children when given the chance.
Obama and now Emanuel opted for schools that do not require teachers to spend hours a week drilling kids to pass standardized tests, and they don’t evaluate teachers by how well their students do on those assessments. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and his wife send their children to Arlington public schools in Virginia.
Neither the Arlington Public School system, nor Sidwell, nor The Lab Schools, assess teachers by student standardized test grades, which is a bad idea sweeping the country, encouraged by the Obama administration.
When a veteran teacher asked Sidwell whether its ties teacher pay to test scores, he received this response from a faculty member on April 1, 2011: “We don’t tie teacher pay to test scores because we don’t believe them to be a reliable indicator of teacher effectiveness.”
Sidwell knows better. The Lab Schools know better. The Arlington Public School District knows better.
In fact, the Chicago Lab Schools began cutting some Advanced Placement academic courses — which have an end-of-course exam that can earn a student credit at some colleges with a high score — after a junior in AP U.S. history wrote a column published in the Los Angeles Times in which he declared himself an AP dropout. Why? He wrote: “We don’t have time to really learn U.S. history because we’re preparing for the exam”
The school has replaced AP offerings in the art, history and science departments with courses created by faculty members called Advanced Topics, which, according to a back to school letter to parents last year from high school Principal Matthew Horvat, “will allow for pursuing topics in far greater depth than they’ve been able to in the past.”
At a forum with high school students earlier this year, Emanuel said he wants schools to put less focus on standardized tests, a welcome sentiment. In fact, Obama himself suggested earlier this year that kids take too many standardized tests.
But any policy that makes teacher evaluation and pay contingent on how well their students do on test scores inherently raises the importance of that test, wouldn’t you think? What these public officials say and what they do regarding policy are two different things.
Meanwhile, Emanuel was none too happy about being asked about the choice of school for his children, as shown when he stormed out of an interview with Mary Ann Ahern of NCB Chicago.
You can read her account of the moment, but here’s one part of it, a retelling of the conversation she had when she called him back after hours after he left the interview in a huff. Wrote Ahern:
“My children are private and you will not do this,” he said into the receiver.
“He said other children of public figures – Chelsea Clinton and the Obama girls – have been kept out of the public eye, despite media attention on the admission to the Sidwell Friends Academy in Washington D.C. I tried to explain he had a point, but their parents too had to answer the question of what school they would attend. No one is trying to have lunch with the first children.
I also let him know that I felt wronged and bullied during his earlier tirade. “You are wrong and a bully,” Emanuel fired back. “I care deeply for my family. I don’t care about you.” With that, he hung up the phone.
Quite the temper tantrum.
As I said earlier, where to send a child to school is a personal family choice.
My two daughters went to a private school, too, Georgetown Day School in Washington D.C., a city with a public school system that has long had what I consider an unhealthy obsession with standardized tests. (Of course, I’m not trying to shove high-stakes testing policies down anyone’s throat.)
The problem is not testing itself. What is corrupting public education is the high stakes that are put on the results of standardized tests. In Chicago, Emanuel’s commitment to this will only make things worse in the public schools. But not for his kids.
[end quote]
*There are numerous links in the article [indicated by the underlining of certain words] that are well worth following up.*
Such impertinent musing: “What is it with YOU people?!?!?!?” [Chris Christie]
Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/chicago-mayor-rahm-emanuel-chooses-private-school-for-kids/2011/07/21/gIQAzES7RI_blog.html
For all you CCSS folks out there: closet reading, anyone? Hint: I will provide the batteries for the flashlights if someone closes the door on us and the lights go out.
😎
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