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Tenacious D
From the Slope of Hope: Many of you probably heard the news yesterday that teachers unions received a nasty (and well-deserved) blow from the Los Angeles Superior Court. I grew up in a fiercely anti-union household, and as a child, if I did a poor job making my bed, my mother would scowl and angrily say, "Union Worker!" I knew at that point I damned well better do the bed properly. Mercifully, as a businessman, I never had to deal with any union issues. I did, however, at one point have to grapple with a salaried employee who, years into her employment, decided to get cute and threaten a state case to retrieve overtime wages based on the idea her job should have been an hourly one. She did not prevail. But it deepened my dislike for any prospective interference of the state into such matters. Back to the topic of school, however, I spent all twelve years of my pre-college education in public schools. For elementary schools, exactly three of the teachers were excellent, and three sucked beyond belief. To this day, I question how much better a thinker I would be if all six of those years were good ones. Subsequent years were also hit-and-miss (and let me be clear, all twelve of these years were in good, solid, middle-class schools; not the utterly crappy schools that so many millions have to attend). Even as a youngster, it galled me that the shitty teachers were paid exactly as much as the excellent ones. Even though my own children attend (very, very expensive) private schools, I help fund local schools with my five-figure property tax bill every year, and as a matter of fairness, it has continued to bother me that tenure in any form exists at ALL. So when I was listening to the radio yesterday, and the reporter was saying that California teachers My view differs somewhat from that of the AFL and NEA. I think that at any point, for any reason, a teacher (or any employee, for that matter) should be able to be dismissed without cause. Period. There's a relationship between employer and employee. The employee is there at the will of the employer. If the employer doesn't like the employees work............or voice.........or hair color........or anything else about them - bang - there's the door. I believe any interference on the government's part on any private matter is offensive. Public schools are a bit blurry, I suppose, since they aren't private enterprises - - - but to my way of thinking, there is still a business relationship going on between the employer (the school district) and the employee (the teacher). The notion that this particular profession is blessed with a special right of some kind is vile to me. Of course, the teachers union headmistress Randy Weingarten (who looks every bit as grotesque as a person in this role should look) puked up her own disgust at the court's ruling, claiming "student achievement" was the focus on her union's strongarm tactics. Teacher's unions are about ONE thing and ONE thing only - - ensuring the most money for their members as possible, irrespective of performance, and, in turn, ensuring high salaries for the union leadership - such as the presumably female Ms. Weingarten. End of story. Their purported concern about students is a cover story that is in reality complete bluster. I am pleased at the court's ruling, and I hope it is just one more nail in the coffin of unions in this country, whose membership has been withering away for decades now. Indeed, it's getting to the point that unions are virtually non-existent in the private sector. They are almost entirely in the realm of the public sector, which is why I can look at the obese bus drivers here in town, driving their almost totally-empty double-length buses, and take comfort that these uneducated, unskilled laborers are each pulling down a six-figure salary (and, no, I'm not kidding). Some folks have already stated the 9th Circuit will overturn this ruling. I guess they might, particularly considering their famous loyalty to the left wing. But if I can cling on to hope that equity markets may function normally again some day, it's easy for me to figure that this ruling has a chance of surviving.
are granted "tenure at eighteen...." I naively assumed the next word was going to be "years." Nope. It was "months." After just eighteen months, these people get what is effectively guaranteed lifetime employment. Even, as in the court's case, the teacher just sleeps at their desk or browses the web.
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and that would be their right. In addition what claim do you have that that would make their life worse. They would likely turn out better than any of the students coming out of ps_whatever or a Chicago high school. They certainly would score better on tests since some of them end up in colleges before they're 16.
If you can read between the lines, you would know I was criticizing your blanket generalizations, which you then laughingly repeated.
Agree with home-schooling making a huge comeback...!
Home schooling allows religious fanatics and cultists to keep their children isolated from normal children and adults. The kids never have a conversation with anybody that does not share the twisted ideologies of their parents.
So let's go to school with you?
Like her refusal to 'put out' for the boss?
I don't know Tim or anything about him. But his attitude here is very similar to many (poor) managers I know: Fail to plan, expect a bailout, then blame the worker/voter/taxpayer for not saving said incompetent ass.
Unions may have their problems, but if management treated people like human beings instead of save-my-ass servants, then unions would have never gotten a political foothold in the first place.
Truly great leaders don't have to worry about desertion, rebellion, or unions.
Unions filled a gap that labor laws have completely replaced. Unions were there to protect workers when there were none or very few labor laws.
We have laws now. Today unions just siphon capital out of the productive economy and create an imbalance in the employer-worker relationship.
Name one thing that a union protects workers from that is not already covered under law.
Gee, did this story involve refusal to "put out for the boss"? I must have missed that. I thought the facts involved refusal to do the job for which pay was being given. Nice strawman work.
Once again NoTTD, the "put out for the boss" was a response to a chain referring to a comment regarding firing for anything, including hair style. The article only starts the discussion, the commenters go off on their own tangents. If you want to respond to the original article, you need to move up the chain, otherwise you are not making sense.
Making unions illegal, or restricting the terms of their Contract in this case, is like trying to stop evolution. What you end up with cannot survive. Unions are a "evolutionary" response to bad management. The only practical way to get rid of tenure is from now forward. The existing teachers all signed on under the tenure rules, to change them would violate their Contract. What you end up with is a two-tier system. New teachers have no tenure, old teachers do.
I am a 'leader'.
We are a non-union, privately owned corporation that has interests in mining, cement, steel and steel fabrication. We currently employ about 200 people. I am a voluntarily (I don't want to drive 200 miles a day to triple my salary), underpaid Corporate Controller.
My employees come and say they are going to their kids, or grandkids graduation...no notice, they already know that their family is more important than anything we have to offer. I built that culture into this company founded in 1955. I haven't had to replace an employee since 2008 when a very young girl got married to another girl and I accidently became the 'maid of honor' at the beachside wedding.
When my AP Supervisor's grand-daughter died in a terrible accident, my wife did a yard sale with contributions from all over So Calif, (I helped) and raised over a thousand dollars in one day that was given to the family with no strings. Then we went to the funeral for that little girl because my employees are friends, not adversaries. They know what my purpose is and what they have to achieve to allow me to accomplish my purpose. If asked, bluntly, what their main goal is each month, they'll tell you it's to allow me to produce financial statements within ten days of month end. How to do that is left to each of them on their own. They haven't let me down, in any month, for ten years.
Unions got their foothold a long time ago when our nation had no regard for workers. There was a legitimate period where they were needed. Our own government killed striking workers back then. Fuck, Pershing machined-gunned veterans in DC looking to get help. (Pershing Square in DC...what a fucking insult) But the actual need for Unions died in the 90's as private Employers realized that they had actual value in their workers that became increasingly expensive to replace.
Public, and Mega-Corps, organized around the Government model, however had the opposite view of private employers. Government increasingly saw people as valueless, merely consumers, Mega-Corps adopted the view in the 80's. Mega-corps shifted jobs out, and government continued to devalue people, and empowered the government employee unions as a result.
Private outifts experimented for about ten years then decided that they actually needed people that wanted to work for them even if there were tough times. (And we've been on tough times since 2007 when I cut their hours to 35 a week. Sales dropped from $65 million in 2006 to $30 million in 2013. But everyone, except that girl who was replaced, still has a job.)
Today, Unions are generally a goverment phenomenon. Yes, there are union companies, but the majority of the union workers today work for the government. And they're still treated as valueless nothings by the government.
Bear in mind, I consider ALL civilian government workers as valueless parasites. But why should a union goverment worker make 2/3's more than my employee for the same function? I, and my employee, are paying that asshole. That to me it the ultimate insult to tax payers.
Nicely said,
Big corp.s can afford to abuse workers because they have the resouces to instantly replace someone.
Small businesses don't have that luxury. It pays to have workers who are properly compensated for their tasks and feel like members of a team working to create business stability if growth is not realistic in a down economy. This preserves jobs and helps a company come out the other side.
Small businesses HAVE to work as a symbiotic system with a two way benefit outlook or everyone including the owner will be out of a job.
The only employees I ever wanted to fire was my daughter and her cousin who I mistakenly took on part time after high school classes. They couldn't seem to understand that this wasn't extended playtime and others were being held up if their tasks weren't completed.
I finally managed to separate them completely and things were fine. Together, they were a nightmare.
When I was young I worked for a large Corp. once. For a month. I hated it and everthing about it. Constant backstabbing and one-upmanship, even sabotage to get a rung up.
I left. Life is too short. Why do it if you hate it?
Take your hammer and your fucking sickle and drive em both right up your ass! Fuck you POS!
This comment is an example of why I keep coming back to this site.
Feeling energetic today, are we?
Keep in mind that this is California law that's been overturned. The unions bought from Sacto freebies policies which had previously been bargaining points. It allows the union to bargain for even more extreme giveaways in the contract. If they could, they'd say you wouldn't just be tenured in 18 months, you'd be eligible for retirement on a full pension in 18 months.
"Public service" unions should be illegal because the relationship is non-adversarial and leads to gouging the taxpayer.
Quote from liberal New Deal champion FDR:
All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters.
Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable. It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government."
Knight should diss the police and firefighters unions. Maybe the AMA and ABA also.
I call subterfuge and bullshit - divide and conquer.
edit: perhaps I should have added the /s/ tag (except on the sub and bs part).
Fuck, I'll jump in and dis the Malevolent and Murderous Fraternal Order of Police.
There is no more need for sarc tags since the NSA has adopted sarcasm-detecting software. /sarc/
Unnecessary.
We understand that your probably a public union member feeding at the trough.
Apparently, you all never worked in mines in the 1800s. Suggest you read your history before being so disparaging of unions. However, as with all things, such as the Fed and the idea that all disability claims should be rewarded with perpetual benefits, there is a such a thing as taking a good idea too far.
Just saying.
Well, you got me there! Shit, I've never even lived in the 1800s!
And neither have you. Under you're analysis, we need to revert to he telegraph and no votes for women. Just sayin'.
Nice strawman work.
Nope. Never worked in the mines in the 1800's. Nor did I work in Upton Sinclair's Jungle.
Nor, am I retired with a 90% "spiked" pension for life at age 47 like my retired police officer neighbor......
No one worked in Sinclair's jungle, it was a work of fiction.
I don't understand how anyone living through the 'oughts' could view Main Street as a work of fiction.
Once again, the "middle path" for the MFW!
Well Ned, most of the modern crowd grew up in the suburbs, and a lot of their parents had good corporate jobs with no union, or they were lawyers or doctors or .gov workers without a union.
Sure, Union power has been abused by organized crime and political groups. They do, however, perform a function for the working class. Lawyers have a union (ABA), Doctors have a union (AMA), CONgress has a union (CONgress), the Corporations and Insurers have a union (CONgress), the Banks have a union (the FED), etc.
So...I understand the union bashing as it comes from the independent self-sufficient Libertarian spirit; yet however noble that sentiment the reality is that the working class gets bent over if they can't organize to extract decent pay from the Political/Legal/Medical/Banking class.
Do you want someone making $8.25/hour doing the wiring in your house, or the plumbing, or fixing the brakes on your car? Trade unions and guilds have a long important history.
Separate the wheat from the chaff here kids, and please don't hammer any screw in sight labeled "Union".
"Do you want someone making $8.25/hour doing the wiring in your house, or the plumbing, or fixing the brakes on your car?"
As a matter of fact, yes. Yes, I do. And I am willing to accept a lower recompense personally in order to achieve that.
Do we really want everyone in America reporting Adjusted Gross Income of [highest tax bracket], so half of everyone's labor is skimmed by .GOV?
Thanks for the history lesson gramps.
Now for today's unions:
cash flow to liberal democrats, from the public purse as most are government employees, and oh yeah....keeping shitty workers on the job, to the detriment of everyone else.
Oh...and bankrupting every city and state they have bribed their democratic handlers with votes for contracts.
Fixed it for ya.
I was going to reply with something like, "This isn't Matewan or anything like that, you know." (Accompanied by derisive eyerolling.)
But then I thought ... Hm. A public school in, oh, say, Compton.
May be worse than Matewan.
In any representative democracy, the primary objective of the encumbant is to remain the encumbant.
So you start off with a coal mine where a dozen people die every month. The workers form a union and force the management to make the mine safer. So, each election cycle, the union heads promise to make the mine safer. mortality rate drops the first cycle, second cycle, by the third cycle no one is dying for months at a time.
Then they go on to reducing hours, or reforming the company store system so the employees are not selling themselves into perpetual servitude just buying groceries to feed their families.
All well and good. Now a couple decades go by, the mine is safe, people are working 40 hour weeks and actually saving 10% of their income instead of working 90 hour weeks and spending 150% of income.
What does the union do to continue to justify its existence? How do the union people, who have grown older and become quite accustomed to sitting at a desk rather than digging in a mine, do, now that the mine is safe and reasonable and the workers are no longer being exploited? They have to promise more and deliver more, or they are no longer needed.
Perfect said.
I love commenters on ZH. Your comment is the best that I can organize into coherent thought (but the thought is yours).
That was pretty good, wasn't it?
Completely devoid of the histrionic hyperbole that we've come to love at ZH.
Perhaps the reason for the union in this case is to maintain the gains they fought so hard to get. The other side (corporations) are always fighting to reduce costs, even to the point of risking safety.
The other side in this case are the taxpayers of the state of CA. There is no "corporation" involved. Tenure protects the safety of the "workers"?
Jesus, wake up.
Incorrect. The start of the chain was coal mining. I am awake.
The bigger question is what are we educating our kids for; burger flipping, waiting tables, selling insurance, paper pushing?
No point in having "good education" if there is nothing productive to do with it after graduation.
But don't worry, they'll soon form burger unions and we'll have to pay $150 for a hamburger and the guy caught spitting in it will sit in paid time out for the union approved amount of time until they convice us that spit is good for us.
Cannonfodder!
How about the ability to think and solve problems using the scientific method? Then, figuring out what to "do" with your education should pose no dilemma. You certainly won't need to rely on others for your employment or productivity.
behind the grumbling and grunting of this article is a solid foundation of fanatics: leo strauss, ludwig von mises, ayn rand, and milton friedman.
if you wanna fix the system, forget about the unions and take a look at the "four horsepeople of the economic apocalypse" first.
Sure there is: Go into massive debt because of the "shortage" of STEM workers--and then train your H-1B replacement. One must have a purpose, after all.
Id rather be unionized than work for the state. All in all i really dont understand the hatred towards unions. In some instances it works and in others it doesnt.
Btw fuck public schools and all the pta moms that think their little shit kids can never do any harm. Teachers need some sort of defense against those out for blood. Teaching is a tough sport. I support teachers unions
Complete bullshit.
I taught in the public shool system and, believe me, it's the softest job ever: 6 hour days, 8 month working "year", two weeks at Christmans, a week at Easter, every conceivable holiday, etc. It was incredibly boring and the quality of personnel barely achieved mediocre. Believe me, the individual in this story is not an outlier.
As to this "gee, they don't make any money so they deserve all the extras" nonsense, my daughter was offered a $45k per year to start teacher two years ago on her graduation, in a supposedly poor district, plus all insurance, tenure, pension, etc. She declined to waste her life there and now has a good career in the private sector. For less money.
So, you were a teacher? School, not "shool". Christmas not "Christmans". The phrase "personnel barely achieved mediocre" is meaningless as "mediocre" is an adjective and there is no noun, ie "mediocre" what? "To start teacher" you probably meant either "To start teachING" or "to start AS A teacher".
I guess you did indeed consider teaching "boring".
I didn't teach typing, asshole.
Did I type that last one right?
LMAO. A big Green arrow for you sir.
Could be a Russian shill. Could be into the third martini - it is afternoon.