How is that not a race to the bottom? No raise for ten years? That’s attractive.
You mean this part?
I think it’s pretty clear what he is saying-- he wants local control of public schools, not control by the feds or the states. When you have local control, you get to teach creationism in schools.
Damn good reason for state and federal oversight.
No, no, no! They want to teach the controversy! Let the students hear the facts on both sides of the issue, with equal attention paid to both sets of facts!
A race to the bottom would be a decrease, not an increase. I mentioned that earlier.
Regards,
Shodan
Not really. You can have a court decision without federal oversight. I’m happy to have local control over schools with the proviso that the constitution cannot be violated.
Question for the anti-union folks. Should I have to buy car insurance? Should my employer be allowed to force me to wear a uniform? Can they force me to get a drug-test? Why is union membership, as a condition of employment, any different?
The first things you mentioned are all Good Things. Unions are Bad Things. Your question has been answered, you have the right to remain silent.
I’m a leftist by European standards, and unionized to boot…and the very concept one could be obligated to belong to an union (and a specific one, no choice on the matter) to get a specific job or work for a specific company is all sort of wrongs :
-What about my freedom of association? Why not making mandatory to belong to a political party or a church to get the job while we’re at it?
- What if I want to belongs to an union, but doesn’t like the existing one? And several other teachers agree? How comes we can’t create another union besides the existing one? It’s for unions what a one party system is for elections, and equally acceptable.
-I understand paying taxes, but how can a private entity (my employer) take money out of my paycheck and hand it out to another private entity (the union) without my consent? In most situations, that’s called racket.
Mind you, even though I can’t comprehend how Americans, typically so worried about individual freedoms, ended up accepting such a system, I know that it’s how things work in the USA.
But…I still can’t let your statement go. I find your “in some abstract sense” just weird. There’s no nothing abstract about being forcefully enroled in an organization whether you like it or not when the other option is unemployment. And the fees your pay to the union aren’t abstract, either.
This is most definitely a very concrete freedom issue.
I’m not anti-union. Only anti-compulsion
No.
Yes.
Yes.
Because the union advocates for political causes. And, unlike the insurance analogy you tried to draw, I don’t have a choice of which union to join.
Should my employer be allowed to make me join a church as a condition of employment?
There’s an obvious problem with this argument in addition to the many that have already been mentioned. For most of American history, there have been no unions for public school teachers or any other public employees. Until about 40-50 years ago everyone including liberal Democrats and union leaders agreed that the idea of a union negotiating with the government was dangerous nonsense. Some states didn’t let public employees unionize until the 80’s. And yet this non-unionized public workforce did not have any of the dire consequences that you describe. Indeed, America’s public education system was the envy of the world for a long time until the 70’s and 80’s, which happens to be the exact moment when the teachers became unionized.
They advocate for political causes? Like, for instance, the right of unions to exist? But the guys who give oodles of money to try and weaken them, they are exempt? That’s some catch, that catch Local 22.
Boy, nothing like a level playing field, eh, Big Guy?
Of course you have a choice which union to join. You can work at a non-union shop.
It seems the Republicans are all about personal choice. So if you don’t like unions, don’t work at a place that has unions. Zomg!
Cite?
So your contention is without a union wages go in a downward spiral? Then why is it that in many cases non-union workers earn more than union workers to do the same job? How is that explained? Without the union to protect these workers, why aren’t the employers just saying “here are the terms of employment, take it or leave it?”
I’ll just go ahead an answer: it’s called the free market of labor. Labor for different tasks has a different value, employers that try to underpay will get poor results, have problems hiring, and problems with quality and productivity.
Again, cite for your claim that “many Republicans want to destroy all public education.”
Again, cite for your claim that teachers without unions will have lower wages.
No, it changes the model for education in general. Proponents of the voucher system believe that the current education system is broken and vouchers gives the market an opportunity to fix it. Not arguing whether or not it is feasible. But to just flatly state that “vouchers will harm public education” kind of misses the point.
The evidence that higher salaries for teachers leads to better outcomes for students is very poor. This study (PDF) looks at 188 studies of the effect of teacher salaries on student performance. 73% of the studies found no significant effect of teacher salaries on student performance, 20% found a positive effect and 7% found a negative effect.
To the extent unionization has an effect on student achievement it is likely to be negative. Unions have traditionally wanted pay for all teachers to be the same. The only way to get a raise as a teacher is more seniority or more education. There is no evidence that teachers with more degrees are better teachers and experience only seems to improve teaching in the first few years. This means that teachers make the similar salaries despite large disparities in effectiveness. Thus good teachers are underpaid and bad teachers are overpaid. There is no financial incentive for mediocre teachers to become good teachers or for bad teachers to improve. Since being a good teacher probably takes more time than being a bad teacher, good teachers earn less per hour than bad teachers. This perverse set of incentives saps morale and lessens student achievement since one of the consistent drivers of student achievements are good teachers.
I already did, didn’t I?
Did he get a lot of pushback from that?
Teachers with unions will have lower wages…since their unions will be gone and they can’t bargain with the same strength. Tell me, market guru, if most of the public-sector teaching workforce has low wages (since the unions can’t defend against budget cuts), why won’t that have an effect on the private sector teachers?
Do you think that private sector employers are going to raise wages in response to the public sector cutting them? Yarlp?
Can you provide an instance of a non-union school that pays better than a unionized school, serves the same demographic, and is required to accept all students?