The problem is, it was this exact situation that did the lion’s share of damage to the Detroit automakers. When those big giant SUVs stopped selling so well, the Big Three did not have a backup plan and they sank.
On a side note, I find it funny that there’s so much ire about Unions fighting for their self-interest, but the CEOs who exited the company with millions and who enriched their salaries while getting a bailout, aren’t subjected to this scrutiny.
Unions getting paid 85% of salary when a factory line shuts down vs upper management getting paid 185% when the company goes down. Hmmmmmmm. Ah yes, lemme guess, because they’re privileged, right?
How does the job bank interfere with the retooling of plants to make better mileage vehicles? I just replaced my Highlander Hybrid with a Chevy Equinox, which has better gas mileage and it’s not even a hybrid. GM had the ability to make these vehicles all along. They rolled this high-MPG vehicle out not ten SECONDS after the bailout. The UAW is still there. So you’re telling me that as soon as the Unions got taken back a notch or two, suddenly out of nowhere GM was able to produce high-MPG SUVs like the new Equinox?
Yes but GM’s vehicles were cheaper. There is something wrong here with the math you’re presenting to me.
Okay, so how much did they save on those crappy Mexican parts (and yes, they were quite crappy) versus what they paid in Union wages? The math on this sounds highly suspect. The way it looks, the UAW could have been replaced by machines and it wouldn’t have mattered.
If the corporate management had offered to renegotiate their million dollar wages then I’d sympathize with you about the UAW.
When Fenty offered to give teachers the highest teacher’s salaries in the country with bonuses that will let front line teachers earn in excess of 100K/year in exchange for the right to fire administrators and teachers (for being redundant or ineffective). He was shot down.
When Fenty started shutting down schools so he could use those resources more efficiently, the union had a fit because this meant they needed fewer teachers.
I’m not saying the union is the only problem but it was part of the problem, not the solution.
I thought we left Nipponiphilia back in the 90’s. If you want to criticize the UAW, go right ahead, I’m not going to defend them bu7t if you are trying to blame the situation SOLELY on them then you’re mad. You can’t exonerate the management by saying “well the UAW was bad” The management was selling gas guzzling behemoths and that they were immune from competition because they wre so badass. The UAW wasn’t the only folks that got stuck in the early 1900’s.
The proposal would have instituted “performance-based” compensation that could have topped out at 140k IIRC. Do you really think that is sustainable long term? If not, when the money did finally run out, do you think they would ever get their tenure back?
Tenure is part of their compensation. The union correctly saw the writing on the wall in that they knew it was a possible short-term gain for a long-term sacrifice. Giving up that due process means that you can be fired not only for being ineffective, but also for earning too much money. How long do you think it will be before “fat-cat” teachers making 140k are fired and replaced by someone willing to work for less?
I’m not so sure the union was against this plan any more that some parents and students were. Regardless, the union, is so far down the list of responsible parties that I cannot see getting too riled up about their opinions.
One thing DC public schools have not lacked is money. We spend more money per students than all but two other school districts and we get less than average results. We spend a smaller percentage of our budget on classroom teachers than almost any other system in the country. The current comensation scheme is entirely sustainable if we reduce the teacher::administrator/support staff ratio to national averages and reduce the cost of maintaining facilities that are underutilized (yeah, that means closing more schools where half the neighborhood is going to a charter school).
If they eliminated the incentive pay structure, why wouldn’t they reinstitute tenure? You think this is some scheme to eliminate tenure and then a couple of years later, eliminate pay as well?
Are you kidding me? I would want to keep every last one of those 140k teachers. Because so much of that 140K was bonus, every 140K teacher was probably well worth the money, I woulddn’t pay them 140K otherwise, after all, I don’t HAVE to pay ANYONE 140K unless I want to.
I don’t think its fair to compare public schools with private schools for a whole host of reasons but i think its fair to compare DC public schools with the other public school systems in teh country. And DC is the third most expensive system in the country and achieves less than mediocre results.
I don’t think that teacher’s unions are the root of ALL the problems in the DC public school system but they more or less owned the DC public school system for decades and they ran it into the ground. Now that someone is coming along to clean up their mess, they take issue with the fact that it is being cleaned up at the expense of the job security of the worse amongst them. The union doesn’t care about the kids so i don’t care about them.
Not all unions are equal. While the UAW didn’t help the situation, the UAW didn’t have much say in what GM management did, the Teacher’s Union in DC basically OWNED the school board. There is a difference in the culpability for failure between the two.
Yet still true. Probably has something to do with the limit that employees are allowed to contribute. Also union PAC are allowed to take a portion of the union dues and call them PAC contributions, even if the employee wanted to contibrute to the PAC or not. Yep, union PACs definitely dwarf corporate PACs.
There is no evidence that it is sustainable considering it is currently, in most places that have tried something similar, subsidized by private parties. More specifically, 100k+ teacher salaries would never be tolerated by tax payers.
I don’t necessarily think it’s a scheme with only that end goal, but I think that would be the likely result, and that the pols won’t lose any sleep over it. Usually, you can’t get back what you’ve given up. Consider the relationship the rich have with taxes. Reagan tax rates would be unthinkable today, even though they were lower that they’d been in the immediate years prior. Barring a revolt, the power balance only seems to shift in one direction with things like this.
You ignore that fact that teaching is not scalable, and thus, limits the value of an individual to the number of students they can reasonable teach. No matter how good the teacher is, they can only teach X number of students. The variance in their performance, from that of a teacher closer to average, is likely not enough to justify a huge performance bonus. Particularly if they are earning more that twice the average teacher salary. This is not only politically untenable, but also financially imprudent.
There is a reason teachers are paid what they are now. Society generally does not want to bare the costs of paying them like investment bankers or doctors even if it would result in a better product. as much as I commend your willingness to pay for a great product, the majority of people have decided it’s not worth it to them.
Were DC schools ever good? BTW, I am honestly asking if you know of when they were considered good. While you talk about the union running the system into the ground, you ignore that during that time, DC was one of the most violent cities in the country, and that we had a dwindling tax base for several decades. By most accounts, the schools seemed to mirror the general decay the city as a whole experienced.
Well, precisely. And by agreeing to work at a closed shop, you consent. If you don’t like it, provide your labor to a non-unionized shop, and let the free market send the unionized shop out of business.
In non-unionized shops, labor totally lacks a voice that matters at the table. That’s not the parallel to giving labor a voice: that’s the parallel to a shop where the owners lack a voice that matters at the table.
No, as I mentioned, unions totally lack a voice that matters in non-unionized shops. It is not the same thing.
ETA: Allowing management to say “You cannot work here if you join a union” = unacceptable coercion.
Allowing unions to say “You cannot work here unless you join a union” = unacceptable coercion.
Unions do not protect the bad employees. they protect all of them. Management can be wrong ,unfair and arbitrary. Does it happen that poor employees get protection. yep, because they need it . But they eventually lose their jobs because unions are not going to waste time and money on them forever.
As unions are fading, benefits are waning. It will continue. Workers are losing their power. Owners can do whatever they want . Wages at auto plants and supplies have dropped well over 50 percent. They have lost much of their vacation time and have to pay more for worse health coverage. This trend will continue as long as workers are willing to tolerate it. Then union movements will star again. They are starting in China nowadays.
What voice does labor have, that matters, in a non-unionized shop?
Is allowing management to say, “You cannot work here unless you follow our rules” acceptable coercion? If so, why isn’t it acceptable for unions to say the same thing?
Ah, so now you’ve moved your goalposts, I see. Back on page 2, you made this claim:
I note that you have failed to back up your assertion that this happens at all in the US, and have now moved the goalposts from the state requiring you to join a union to a union requiring you to join a union. Could we get a cite for that happening? Can you back up something you say with a cite, please, or will you continue to make groundless statements as if they were fact?
I don’t want to miss my own edit window, but this point needs addressing, I think, mostly because it’s wrong.
“Labor” is a collective term. Under your scenario of no unions, there would be no voice for “labor”. There would be individual voices of laborers, which the employer could deal with or not, as was his wont, with little to no repercussions.
That, after all, is why unions were formed in the first place: to give Labor a voice, not just laborers.