Posted on 02/27/2011 11:36:07 AM PST by Thumper1960
As a public school teacher, I watch the events of Wisconsin closely. Gov. Scott Walker is pushing a bill through his legislature that would cripple the bargaining power of public sector unions. Because public worker unions represent a large portion of a dwindling labor movement in America, this bill poses a real threat to the very existence of collective bargaining in our country.
Many commentators call this a pivotal moment in American politics — for unions, for democracy, for the tea party. If that is so, it is worth looking afresh at this juncture where labor, politics,and big money intersect. A curious strand of the public debate is an animosity from middle-class voters toward middle-class teachers and working-class unions. Where did it come from?
(Excerpt) Read more at articles.lancasteronline.com ...
I’m always amused by the Statists that insist on determining how much somebody earns or how much somebody else should have.
These people are dangerous.
No place of work should ever allow workers who don’t do a good job to continue to work...
Which explains why no matter how much money is put into the education system that there is still a problem...
Take the union’s out...and clean out the bad teachers...
I cringe when a federal/state worker claims to be part of the labor pool. To be part of any labor pool one must fall under the same rules as everyone else. Try firing a Federal/State worker some time for lets say doing poor work. Good Luck. This is the main sticking point in this whole Governor vs Union battle. They don’t want to lose collective bargaining rights over benefits and disipline, work rules...ect They protest because they don’t want to come under the authority of their bosses.
Today there was an article in Dallas about the school district offering up to $10,000 for school employees to quit. One of the teachers who was quitting said she wanted to “get out of the way of those who really want to teach”.
I can imagine what it was like in her classroom for those kids. Geez freaking amazing!
I’m a private school teacher and she can KMA!
“And as the strength of unions has declined since the ‘70s, working wages stagnated, which economists attribute to a decline in collective bargaining.”
The author is getting her cause and effect mixed up. It was the big labor unions in the 70’s that caused the decline of the manufacturing industries that paid they preyed upon.
The reason for the decline of industries like auto and steel in the 70’s is well known. Small numbers of big unionized companies had monopolistic control of the US market. Unions could get whatever wages and benefits they wanted from management. With no real competition, management could just pass the increased costs along to consumers. This couldn’t last forever, and before they knew it, they were folding under the competition from the Japanese.
Detroit went down for the count during the past decade when union workers who were young in the 70’s retiring and collecting on the fabulous benefits packages negotiated by big labor in the 70’s. The same thing happened in the airline industry, which has gone through a series of bankruptcies due to these legacy costs. Be ready for a replay in coming decades as todays’ school teachers retire in large numbers.
At some point, I can get past unions putting their own interests first, even though it means they're screwing the rest of us over. But spending $400m to put Obama & Cronies in power - that I'll never forgive.
Public workers appear to make more because they are generally more educated. Fifty-four percent of public employees have college degrees, compared with only 30 percent of private sector workers. When you compare apples to apples, college-educated public workers come up short, earning 28 percent less in wages than their college-educated private counterparts.Teachers nowadays are 100% college-educated. But there are private school teachers, also college educated, to use as the control group.Are
publicgovernment school teachers better paid than private school workers? You bet - the disparity between private and government school compensation is such that a teaching gig in a suburban private school is a political plum.
meaning inversion alert!
On a much more aggregate level this was just one area in which federal managers don't manage. They don't in this case because it is a losing battle because they earn the enmity of those above them. In general what I witnessed was that managers don't manage and many have no idea how to manage. A very large amount of time is completely wasted in endless meetings with the layers of management above them discussing how to implement some new management system , (This is not a joke. In the Army agency I last worked for enormous amount's of time were consumed in figuring out how to implement CSA GEN Shinseki’s ‘management matrix’ model for productivity tracking. Then once the proposed matrix model was approved after many changes by the Command Group nearly as much effort was devoted to gathering the data and putting it into a system that simply did not in any way match wholesale logistics operations) . After enough time passes most persons in the system stop thinking about what they are supposed to be doing and how to do it and just deal with the endless absurdity interspersed with real panic when some event (such as 9-11) breaks.
Agreed, and after 20 years in the Army I can say that trying to fire a civilian for insubordination, is a lost cause. Also abusing sick time, forget it. I had a civilian ask for a day off and it was imposible to grant that request. She then stated she would be sick that day, called in sick that day (and the next for good measure) and was suspended. That suspension lasted until she wrote me up and I was forced to accept her back and formally say I was out of line.
Managers don’t manage in cililian life either. I worked with a person who was gay and got away with the most incredible things out of fear he would sue based on I guess Gay discrimination. Took one bold move by a manager after 10 years of his crap, and he never filed a thing.
Sick leave abuse is another area where steps can be taken. In your case the error I think you made was not to immediately notify the employee in writing and have the notification served to her with witnesses present that a doctors written explanation would be required. Normally, a so called medical note is not required for less than three days absence for sick leave, however, any manager can require all sick time verified by a medical note. These are aggravating things to do but and only but with higher management support such nonsense behavior can be curbed.
The exception to this legalism was the Navy or at least the NAVAIR civilians. The approach was that Personnel worked for management and did what it wanted and fast. One manager at Patuxent River once spelled it out to me; “It doesn't matter if the individual gets reinstated we still win. He will have spent tens of thousands of dollars in lawyers fees, lost his home, frequently lost his marriage and family and be in debt for a decade or more paying his lawyers. So even if he gets reinstated, and more than half the time he doesn't win, we still win. You always want to be able to hang someone every now and then to encourage the others, irrespective of the bona fides of the case.”
Cynical but probably effective management theory in an administrative culture.
More class envy clap trap, spouting a bunch of stuff as fact without one iota of actual data.
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