LaborPains.org

Base is an interesting word. Lots of definitions. It can refer to the ground level, the bottommost part of a structure. It can be used to refer to where an organ attaches to the body. You round the bases after hitting a home run; you work on a base when you’re in the military.

Base can also mean “morally low; without estimable personal qualities; dishonorable; meanspirited; selfish; cowardly.” When New York Times Magazine author Steven Brill referred to teacher’s unions as “the base of the base” of the Democratic party in his story on “Race to the Top” and teachers unions, you can probably guess which definition I was thinking of.

Brill’s story is simultaneously heartening and infuriating. Heartening because it is apparent that after decades in the pocket of teachers unions some Democrats are truly committed to change. Infuriating because even more are still in the pockets of their union paymasters. Consider what men like Bill Perkins, a NYC councilman who has fought tooth and nail against expanding charters, consigns students to. The following is a Tale of Two Schools. Housed within the same building, one is a charter and the other a regular public school:

On the charter side, the children are quiet, dressed in uniforms, hard at work — and typically performing at or above grade level. Their progress in a variety of areas is tracked every six weeks, and teachers are held accountable for it. They are paid about 5 to 10 percent more than union teachers with their levels of experience. The teachers work longer than those represented by the union: school starts at 7:45 a.m., ends at 4:30 to 5:30 and begins in August. The teachers have three periods for lesson preparation, and they must be available by cellphone (supplied by the school) for parent consultations, as must the principal. They are reimbursed for taking a car service home if they stay late into the evening to work with students. There are special instruction sessions on Saturday mornings. The assumption that every child will succeed is so ingrained that (in a flourish borrowed from the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, a national charter network) each classroom is labeled with the college name of its teacher and the year these children are expected to graduate (as in “Yale 2026” for one kindergarten class I recently visited). The charter side of the building spends $18,378 per student per year. This includes actual cash outlays for everything from salaries to the car service, plus what the city says (and the charter disputes) are the value of services that the city contributes to the charter for utilities, building maintenance and even “debt service” for its share of the building.

 

On the other side of the fire door, I encounter about a hundred children at 9:00 a.m. watching a video in an auditorium, having begun their school day at about 8:30. Others wander the halls. Instead of the matching pension contributions paid to the charter teachers that cost the school $193 per student on the public-school side, the union contract provides a pension plan that is now costing the city $2,605 per year per pupil. All fringe benefits, including pensions and health insurance, cost $1,341 per student on the charter side, but $5,316 on this side. For the public-school teachers to attend a group meeting after hours with the principal (as happens at least once a week on the charter side) would cost $41.98 extra per hour for each attendee, and attendance would still be voluntary. Teachers are not obligated to receive phone calls from students or parents at home. Although the city’s records on spending per student generally and in any particular school are difficult to pin down because of all of the accounting intricacies, the best estimate is that it costs at least $19,358 per year to educate each student on the public side of the building, or $980 more than on the charter side.

But while the public side spends more, it produces less. P.S. 149 is rated by the city as doing comparatively well in terms of student achievement and has improved since Mayor Michael Bloomberg took over the city’s schools in 2002 and appointed Joel Klein as chancellor. Nonetheless, its students are performing significantly behind the charter kids on the other side of the wall. To take one representative example, 51 percent of the third-grade students in the public school last year were reading at grade level, 49 percent were reading below grade level and none were reading above. In the charter, 72 percent were at grade level, 5 percent were reading below level and 23 percent were reading above level. In math, the charter third graders tied for top performing school in the state, surpassing such high-end public school districts as Scarsdale.

You should read the whole story. It’s a fascinating piece of work. The only way to defeat the “base of the base” is to fight against their protectors in the establishment. As long as they’re manning the ship it’s full steam ahead toward the iceberg.

Photo via Doug Blane

So you may have heard about the anti-Wall Street protests…or is it anti-K Street protests?…. that happened around Washington, DC, not New York City, today. Made up of a hodgepodge of unions, they stormed down a bank, closed a road or two (K and 14th NW), pissed off some pigeons in a park, and got generally wet in the rain. This is after they protested in front of the home of a Bank of America executive yesterday.

I decided to brave the weather–without a union branded poncho, of course– and take a few shots. There were a plethora of union colors, a giants cutout of a K Street “corporate” type which reminded me of another protest puppet, posters calling for the Consumer Financial Protection Agency to “protect small businesses”. Riiight.

You know it’s not going to be nice article when the headline is “Andrew Stern departs the SEIU now weakened by infighting and expenses.” You know its going to be uncomfortable when the article is the Washington Post.

Worth your time, the article by Alec MacGillis offers a refreshing realistic to the legacy of Andy Stern, the man no longer the king in the Purple Palace. From the Washington Post:

“In celebrating her election last weekend to the head of the Service Employees International Union — the fastest-growing and most politically active union — Mary Kay Henry vowed to “build on the success” of Andrew L. Stern, the charismatic and ambitious labor leader who is taking his influence to new arenas, such as President Obama’s deficit commission. But the state of the union Stern is leaving behind is more mixed than Henry let on.”

“Even as Stern turns his attention to the nation’s spending problem, his own union’s spending — notably the multimillion-dollar tab from internal battles he has waged — is drawing sharp criticism from within the labor movement. Stern has expanded his union, but his decisions have left it, and the labor movement as a whole, financially strapped, according to disclosure reports that have received little scrutiny.”

Read more at washingtonpost.com.

Today an article entitled “Illinoid Department of Transportation to hire 170 new workers” in the Herald-Review gave me cause for pause. Aside from coining my new favorite word “illinoid,” which while I am sure was a Freudian slip by the person who posted it, it lays out the next chapter in the strange saga that is Teamsters in Illinois:

“The state may be broke, but that isn’t stopping officials from putting out a “Help Wanted” sign. Under an arrangement between the Illinois Department of Transportation and the Teamsters union, the state is gearing up to hire at least 170 new highway maintainers over the next six weeks.“

“Once in place, the workers will mow interstate right-of-ways, pick up dead animals and operate snow plows. But, given the state’s massive budget woes, some lawmakers find the mass hiring puzzling. “Seems a little strange,” state Rep. Mike Bost, R-Murphysboro, said Tuesday.”

“DOT spokeswoman Marissa Kollias said the agreement inked with the Teamsters last year gives the state a $3 million financial incentive to boost the number of new maintainers from last year’s level of 1,737 workers to more than 1,900 by July 1. Base pay for a highway maintainer is about $47,700 annually….”

If my state—well, my city, considering that I live in the District of Columbia—were broke but struck a deal with the Teamsters to spend more tax payer dollars even with “financial incentives,” I’d be “illinoid” too.

For your amusement, here are the correct uses of the word “illinoid”:

“I am so illinoid because labor is stalling the new Walmart in Chicago.”

Or…

“I just get so illinoid everytime I see Rod Blagojavich, or someone with his hair.”

The governor of Nevada is acting like the governor of California. He’s calling the public sector unions’ bluff. Faced with an impending budgetary crisis, he’s doing one of the only things he can do.

From Business Week:

“Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons launched an initiative petition Monday that would force union negotiations with state or local governments to be conducted in public. “Taxpayers have a right to know how tax money is being spent and why,” Gibbons said during a news conference in Carson City. The “Open Government Initiative Petition” removes exemptions, such as collective bargaining, from the state’s Open Meeting Law. Existing law requires only that final approval of a bargaining pact be conducted in open meeting.”

You might imagine that the SEIU would be….what’s a nice word for it?…..very, very upset.  BusinessWeek continues:

“Amber Lopez Lasater, spokeswoman for the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 18,000 public sector employees in Nevada, called the governor’s proposal a “cheap shot.” “Clearly, throughout this economic crisis, Gov. Gibbons has expressed nothing but disdain for public employees,” she said. “A few months ago he wanted to do away with collective bargaining all together. “We have nothing to hide,” she said. “But having negotiations become a public spectacle isn’t a solution.”

Barry Smith, executive director of the Nevada Press Association, called the proposal a “good idea.” “This is a lot of taxpayers’ money that’s being discussed and I think it ought to be done in front of the people paying the bills,” he said.

The Center for Union Facts seeks an energetic and enterprising researcher to join the group’s growing public outreach and education program.

The Center for Union Facts (CUF) is a leading union watchdog organization dedicated to educating Americans about the labor union movement. We work to expose labor leaders’ abuse of their members’ trust. We are committed to preserving union transparency, democracy, and union members’ right to work. We are also a leading voice against union’s attempts to pass “card check” legislation and the Employee Free Choice Act.

The Center for Union Facts also maintains the largest web-accessible database of information about labor unions, including union finances, union leader compensation, lobbying, hard and soft money political contributions, strikes, unfair labor practices, union elections, and much more. We work extensively with reporters, union members, labor experts, academics, businesses and anyone else who seeks information about labor unions. 

A successful candidate will work with the Managing Director and Executive Director to provide in depth research and writing on the labor movement. A researcher’s duties may include assisting in the Center’s public relations campaigns, writing detailed reports, creating compelling print, television, and online advertisements, and producing web and video content.

Other daily duties are likely to include: news updates and press clips, drafting newsletters, writing blog posts, letters to the editor, press releases, and OpEds, working with whistleblowers, updating our growing social media presence, updating website databases, filing FOIA requests, and assisting in message testing and advertisement development.

Candidates should have a college degree and at least two to five years of work experience in a job that has demonstrated an ability to think on your feet. Candidates should also have a track record of strong writing and research skills. Knowledge of the organized labor movement is a plus. Salary is commensurate with experience.

Please send a cover letter, resume, and brief writing sample demonstrating your research skills to wilson@unionfacts.com

Image courtesy of Thewmatt.

You remember high school, right? Awkward relationships, spirited sporting events, the occasional field trip. And, of course, the reason that you were there: classes, papers, and, a couple of times a year, an exam.

Testing remains an integral portion of every student’s life. One has to know the material in order to advance in their studies. What is an exam but a form of accountability for our nation’s children?

If we are going to hold our kids accountable for learning, it’s only fair that we do the same for their educators. This makes intuitive sense to anyone with a job in the real world: We all have evaluations, and we all know someone who has been let go for failing one.

Just because something makes sense doesn’t mean it won’t have enemies, however.

Consider the recent proposal by New Jersey to hold teachers accountable for their teaching. It’s pretty basic stuff: In order to qualify for a boatload of federal cash, NJ officials have suggested creating a bonus pool that would award teachers based on the quality of the education they provide. This isn’t a plan to fire teachers or eliminate tenure; instead, it would reward excellence. As the New York Times writes,

In addition, the state would offer financial incentives to teachers willing to work with large numbers of struggling students, and designate the most effective educators as “master teachers” and “master principals.” It would also create a new breed of in-district charter schools known as Achievement Academies, which would be authorized by local school boards and led by teachers.

This commonsense measure to reward those who perform is meeting all of the usual opposition from recalcitrant teachers unions. This comes from the New Jersey Education Association:

“Anyone concerned about the existing over-reliance on standardized testing that plagues public education should be alarmed at this proposal,” said NJEA President Barbara Keshishian. “This proposal will call for more and more testing, in all subject areas, in all grades, and teachers’ very careers will be riding on the scores.”

Some may be tempted to ask “What over-reliance? Teachers are held almost entirely unaccountable for the success or failure of their students.” And we would agree! But it’s useful to get a glimpse into the mindset of those who are attempting to stifle efforts at helping our nation’s schoolchildren and stand in constant opposition to rewarding teachers who actually perform well.

Photo via ccarlstead

Maryland’s largest teachers union is speaking out against that state’s bid for a quarter billion in federal funding:

The Maryland State Education Association sent a letter to state school Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick on Thursday detailing its objections to the proposal, which would make student growth half of teacher evaluations, among other changes. The union questions whether that is within the bounds of the education reform law that Gov.Martin O’Malley (D) signed earlier this week.

When they argue against teacher accountability, unions make it clear that they consider schools to be little more than public jobs programs. In no other industry could an employee expect as little oversight as teachers seem to think they deserve.

Photo courtesy of bowbrick.