Unless you’re willing to do research on standard hours worked and what if any overtime schemes exist for every union and non-union state and then compare compensation per hour this doesn’t really mean anything.
I’ve now provided essentially definitive proof to support my original claim:
“It isn’t universally true that non-union labor makes less than union labor for the same work.”
I’ve gone now a step further and showed specific States that are union-versus-non-union where the non-union teacher makes more money and I even provided some CPI data so people can’t cry foul about differing costs of living.
Note I’ve never claimed that on average union teachers don’t make more than non-union teachers, I’ve only claimed that in general non-union doesn’t immediately mean less pay. I only need to find a few examples to substantiate my claim (since it was not a broad claim), I have now done that beyond what is reasonable.
Where are you getting those numbers for average pay? The site to which you linked does not offer that information, or at I can’t find it.
With respect to your “firing rate,” the site lists the national rate for private schools at 9.8%. What does that tell us?
As a data point, I’ve worked in four school districts. In three it was completely optional to join the union (I did and as a Pubbie no less) and the fourth was a closed shop meaning you didn’t have to join the union but you still had to pay the dues so technically that one was optional as well.
Regardless of the legitimacy of the unions, what the teachers failed to realize is that most of the voting public are private sector employees who’ve been coping with stagnant wages and higher cost of living for years already. It’s their taxes that pay the teachers, and to see them insist on the status quo when the taxpayers themselves have had to tighten their belts didn’t sit well.
The fact that the teachers are unionized doesn’t have anything to do with it, despite the spin that right wingers are putting on it. Taxpayers haven’t cared all along that public employees are unionized, and I think they still don’t care. They just don’t want anyone, unionized or not, getting what they see as unequal treatment. That goes for greedy bankers as well as unionized workers.
The only difference is that they were given a say about the greedy union. Whether or not they can do anything about greedy bankers is still up in the air.
Were your dues reduced? I am lacking cite, but I have heard of situations where you pay dues to cover the direct costs of collective bargaining, but you paid less than full members so that your money did not support political donations, etc.
I’m not sure what the firing rate for private schools tells us, but we aren’t talking about private versus public, we’re talking about union versus non-union. It seems like to me non-union employees still have pretty nice pay and benefits.
I don’t know how Wisconsin’s laws were structured, so I don’t know if the governor overstepped his bounds, but I grant that the state should have the right to opt out of a union contract. I would add, “of course,” but many unionized workers would object to such an action, and they would have a point if the “opting out” was in violation of a contract’s terms and conditions.
It may well be that in the end all this was was a particularly nasty labor negotiation, where nobody was really wrong.
But there are people in this thread saying that any closed shop anywhere is “unAmerican.” Really? Because I’ve known quite a few closed shops, that worked for the USA federal government or vendors to its departments, and it seems plenty normal here. What a strange definition of “American” you have.
:ahem:
Dividing the proles against each other is what helps the holders of capital keep us all down. A bad labor market is a bad labor market; cutting another worker’s income may cut your business’s revenues. And Baumol’s cost disease tends to raise compensation in one sector when another sector gains productivity; we should be looking at why that wasn’t happening for the private sector, not siding with billionaire taxpayers against public employees.
Is an economist who wants higher GDP overall “greedy”? Should we deflate the economy to stop being “greedy”? How many of us should just be unemployed and without income in the name of stopping greed? There’s a deep pit down there.
You don’t think the laws they passed to weaken the union’s bargaining power makes people less likely to see any point in being a part of it?
For what its worth, I support teachers but only because I support education if the union gets in the way of education or puts teachers before my kids, then screw them. I don’t thinki this is the case. You can point to things like rubber rooms in NYC but overall, I think the union is good for teachers in a way that improves public education.
He votes republican because he understands the issues and he understands which side of the issue is in his personal best interest even if its horrible for our nation. As far as not being racist, Rand Rover equates pretending racism doesn’t exist to being not racist.
But we shouldn’t make the insurance so good that you can collect for setting your own house on fire. That is the impression some people have. That public unions make the already very good job security of a public employee (that is necessary to prevent politicization of the bureaucracy) a lifetime appointment.
Its not THEIR tax money. If they didn’t pay a fucking penny in taxes, I would still support educating their kids. We don’t educate our kids because its good for them, we educate our kids because its good for US.
I have no problem with charter schools or with vouchers if it is properly regulated. I have seen too many cases of charter schools and voucher programs that are effectively a method of giving people money to homeschool their kids or to give people a discount on sending their kids to fancy private schools.
I would generally demand better performance from a charter school than a public school (otherwise, why would you undermine public schools to get the same results) and I would demand that they take all comers on a lottery basis (such lottery not to be overly burdensome to weed out parents that are not able to spend a lot of time or get very involved.
If a voucher was accepted as full payment of all tuition and fees for attending a private school, I would support that voucher program as well if the school could meet the same standards i would apply to a charter school.
I’m not that old but I don’t ever remember a time when they taught creationism instead of evolution. Maybe I lived in the wrong part of the country for that (I also don’t remember prayer time, although people were free to pray, noone ever did IIRC).
No. It was a closed shop. Since it is illegal to require anybody to join a union for a job (which many on this board don’t seem to realize) they charged the same amount for everyone and made it optional to join.
This would be pre-1965, roughly. And I might have been exaggerating about teaching creationism, but Bible readings wouldn’t be unheard of. From wikipedia:
You asked for a nonunion school that pays more and takes all students; I gave you a whole system that does so. Some people look at that as a win-win; the kids get more staff attention, the teachers who freely choose to work in that school get more money (and a lot more freedom).
The fact that what you really want is a a school that pays more *without raising productivity standards * … well I think that tells us rather a lot about the priorities you want schools to have.
Oh, KIPP…long hours. Long, long hours. And funny you mention unions. I have two friends who teach at KIPP school and both have said they wish there was a union. But KIPP will never allow that.
In case anyone was wondering (and I’m sure you’re not), I’ll be making 3-6k less than the neighboring union teacher next year. (Some get bonuses for working in hard to serve schools, hence the disparity.)
I know that my son, who goes to a private school, is served by teachers with pretty pitiful salaries. Some are under $30k/yr. wince
So many conflicting interest groups staked a claim in this vote that I can understand how you got confused about who I sided with, but it was really just taxpayers voting on how government spends their money.
The vote wasn’t about labour vs. management, or public vs. private, or Republican vs. Democrat, or rich vs. poor. It was about public union contracts and benefits getting to the point where they’re consuming too much of the budget. It’s already starting to cause bankruptcies in other local governments. There’ve been warnings about this for years, but the shit is just starting to hit the fan now.
As I mentioned above, I belong to an union. And in a country who has, as much as it might surprise some, one of the lowest (if not the lowest) rate of union membership in the EU.
So, believe me, I’m acutely aware of the free rider effect. I’m certainly yet to see an union basher who has refused a collective raise obtained by unions. And contrarily to what an union leader who posted previously said he does, I’m also yet to see an union refusing to help a non-member who runs into some individual issue (and I’m fine with that and as much as I would like to tell them to go fuck themselves, I’d probably do the same).
However, I would mention too that I’ve a personal experience of an instance where the existence of only one union with mandatory membership would have been a losing situation for me. That would be when I had a serious individual issue at work and when two people who were a significant part of the issue were also active members of my union on friendly terms with the union leadership. There’s no way I would have been supported effectively by the union because me having my way would have been a losing proposition for these two people (the reasons why I didn’t leave the union are beyond the point).
Even though, I will admit, it’s an uncommon situation, it’s a possibility that you have to take into account when considering the value of a system with mandatory membership in an union. What when the union leadership is uninterested in actually helping you (it might be merely because your particular issue is very low on their priority list), or worse, is going to actually undermine your position (for instance like in my case because it’s in the best individual interest of some people in the union leadership)? Does it still seem that attractive to be obligated to hand the union money in this case.
Of course, other objections raised are equally valid. What if the union leadership is corrup, incompetent, actually in cahoot with the employer (the latter not being that unusual. It’s not unknown over here for a small company to make sure to have an handy union that will just say “how high?” when asked by the employer to jump)? What, indeed if the union is heavily involved in politics, on a side you don’t support (One of France’s main union used to be essentially an extension of the French Communist Party, for instance)?
Still, my main opposition with this system doesn’t come from those very real issues, but is a matter of principle : it’s unnacceptable to force me to join an organization (and to fund it) to get a job. No doubt that this weakens the union. So what? I might have no interest in strenghtening it, and it might be a reasonned choice rather than merely an egoistic and foolish attempt at saving some euros with no regard for the collective (or long term individual) best interests. And even if this decision is a result of idiotic individualism and/or ignorance of how things work (and again, I’m well aware of it most often being the case), it’s still wrong to force someone to belong to an union (or any other organization) especially again when the other option is being unemployed or picking another line of work, something that you can’t expect the majority of people to be realistically able to do.
Absolutely not. A company typically only hires people who are able to fit the job description (like in your example neurosurgeons). What we have here is the addition of another requirement (belonging to another organization and funding it) that is entirely unrelated with the ability to do the job.
Again, what if the employer had freely entered a contract with the Republican party (or the local soccer team, or the local mafia, or the Libertarian First Church of Ayn Rand or whatever else) and on that basis mandated membership for all its employees? Should the ability of the company to freely enter a contract with these organizations still prevail over the freedom of association of the workers?
But still, having the choice between paying up and not joining and paying up and joining is a difference without much substance, so it doesn’t change my opinion.
Part-time faculty in colleges and universities are paid hourly–only for the hours spent in the classroom.
Some get “virtual office hour” pay (there is rarely enough office space on campus for them) if it has been negotiated.
On the upside, the educational achievement level of our nation’s baristas and bicycle messengers is skyrocketing! We are on track to the best educated service sector labor force in history! USA! Fucked, yeah!
