Who Benefits from Collective Bargaining in Education?

Union bosses do — at the expense of good teachers, children, their parents and taxpayers.  

In a tribute to Labor Day, the California Teachers Association has put up a slobbering web page as a paean to the labor movement. Its unintentionally humorous title is “Organized Labor – Proud and Free.”

Free?

Actually, it is very costly. Here in California, a non-right-to-work state, teachers must fork up over $1,000 a year in order to work in a public school. (They can pay a little less if they choose not to support the union’s political agenda.) And all teachers are forced to be a part of the collective bargaining (CB) unit.

Collective bargaining, a term first introduced into the lexicon by socialist Beatrice Webb in 1891, is a process of negotiations between employers and employees aimed at reaching agreements that regulate working conditions. The workers are commonly represented by a union, and the agreements reached by this arrangement set wage scales, working hours, teacher training, etc.

It sounds like a good deal for teachers, but is it?

“Exclusive representation” (more accurately, monopoly bargaining) privileges are the source of compulsory union power.

Handed to union officials by Congress in the National Labor Relations Act, monopoly bargaining gives union kingpins the leverage to herd workers into unions and then force them to pay union dues.

Under federal law, if union organizers win a representation election by even 50% plus one of those voting, they are empowered to negotiate contracts on behalf of all 100% of the workers. In fact, under some circumstances, union officials become monopoly “representatives” even when most workers are against them! And by law each and every worker loses his or her right to negotiate directly with the employer on his or her own behalf.

So problem #1 with CB is that teachers are forced to go along with the 50 percent plus one even if they would rather negotiate their own contacts.

Via: California Politcal Review

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CA Teachers Sue Union Over Political Use Of Dues

Monday marks the start of a new school year for Rebecca Friedrichs, a kindergarten teacher at Holder School in Buena Park, a Southern California city of 82,000.

The 25-year veteran of the Savannah School District is to be forgiven if she is wary of the reception she will receive from her public school colleagues.

Not just because she resigned her membership last year in the California Teachers Association, the union that represents most of the state’s public school teachers.

But also because she is the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit, Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Association, that challenges the state’s so-called “agency shop” arrangement, which  forces her to pay dues for the collective bargaining the teachers’ union performs not only behalf of members, but also non-members — whether they like it or not. It is being heard in the District Court of the Central District of California, Southern Division.

Freidrichs would prefer not to pay the CTA $1,000 or so a year for its representation. But what really galls the teacher is the $350 or so of her compulsory union dues that go to support the CTA’s political activities, with which she disagrees.

Indeed, the kindergarten teacher supports school vouchers, which the teachers’ union has used her compulsory dues (and the dues of political dissenters among its rank-and-file) to defeat.

Similarly, she opposes measures — like Proposition 30, the $7 billion tax-increase initiative — for which CTA spent millions in union dues last year to win passage – that confer higher salaries and more generous bemefits upon teachers at the expense of everyday taxpayers.

“I think that is wrong,” said Friedrichs.

Via: California Political Review

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Nearly 40% Of Chicago Public School Teachers Send Their Kids To Private Schools

The Chicago teachers’ strike is an awkward dinner conversation between President Barack Obama and his former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.   Many of the policy prescriptions in the new Chicago teachers’ contract designed to create more accountability are supported by the Obama administration.

As the Chicago teachers’ strike continues, we’ve learned that they make $71-76,000 a year and they turned down a 16% pay increase, which amounts to $11,360.  They work nine months out of the year, but say that this strike is benefits oriented.  However, given that ABC World News didn’t even air this story last Sunday and most of the media, with the exception of CBS, failing to mention the compensation statistics in their broadcast – suffice to say that the  media will probably ignore the fact that almost 40% of Chicago’s public school teachers send their kids to private schools.

I’m not against public education, but the fact that these teachers make enough to send their kids to private schools shows that Chicago’s public teachers are aware of the serial failure within the system.  Second, it shows that these teachers have zero confidence in their own respective school district.  Why are the teachers going on strike?  Aren’t the contentious measures they’re squabbling about aimed at enhancing accountability that will make their institutions of learning better for the students?  It appears this strike, like most union strikes, are defined by these three words: give. me. more.

However, given the state of public education and that of Chicago, it’s not alien for public school teachers to ship their kids to private institutions.  According to The Washington Times in September of 2004, they quoted the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which found that:

 More than 1 in 5 public school teachers said their children attend private schools.

In Washington (28 percent), Baltimore (35 percent) and 16 other major cities, the figure is more than 1 in 4. In some cities, nearly half of the children of public school teachers have abandoned public schools.

In Philadelphia, 44 percent of the teachers put their children in private schools; in Cincinnati, 41 percent; Chicago, 39 percent; Rochester, N.Y., 38 percent. The same trends showed up in the San Francisco-Oakland area, where 34 percent of public school teachers chose private schools for their children; 33 percent in New York City and New Jersey suburbs; and 29 percent in Milwaukee and New Orleans.

Via: Hot Air

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