Unions under Attack...

[chancellor]

Is this really the only option? I know that if my pension is taken away or seriously changed I don't know that I would have found teaching a viable option for me financially. The job pays a reasonable wage and again I am ok with my wage, but for 16 years my salary will increase a total of $20K. If you want good teachers to be attracted to the profession there needs to be a carrot. Right now that carrot is good health benefits and a pension. Without that you have don't have a lot of incentive to get into teaching.

OK, let's get this straight. Governor Walker is NOT taking away pensions nor is he eliminating good health benefits. He has proposed that state workers pay more into their pensions and health care. Health care contributions will still be half the mean for the private sector for health care plans. Moreover, the Wisconsin state plans are very close to the "Cadillac" plans discussed during the ObamaCare debate. Contributions for pensions will now be at the mean nation wide for public service workers.

Oh, and to clarify another point - I'm all for great demonstrations and cool signs, even those with targets on them. Just don't whine about incivility on the right if you're going to do as bad and worse when it's your turn to protest.

[B-Fly]

The status quo in government employee pensions and benefits isn't sustainable. The unions have their job to do, but at some point, if they don't come to the table ready to give up something on the pension/benefits side of the equation, governors and state legislatures will have to essentially vitiate their benefits by legislative fiat and see if it holds up in the courts. Ultimately, government employee salaries, with some notable and even condemnable exceptions, are too low while benefits and pensions are too generous. Unions and governments need to sit down and figure out a way to trade one off for the other to protect everyone in the longer term. Maybe you need to keep a pension-based system for police and fire, given the safety risks, but every other government employee should essentially have private-sector style health insurance options and 401(k)s. At the very least, these changes need to be initiated in short order for new hires, where there's no issue about promises/reliances.

[B-Fly]

1. How do you weed out bad teachers? I teach in a building with I don't know 100 plus staff members. 1 principal and 2 assistant principals. There is a 4th administrator, head of guidance. These 4 are supposed to do the observing. I see the assistant principal assigned to me once or maybe twice a year. That leaves testing. If testing becomes the standard all the tenured teachers will for fear of losing their jobs take the assignments of teaching honors and AP kids. That leaves the least experienced teachers to deal with the toughest classes. So how do we judge them fairly?

By effectively factoring the "degree of difficulty" into the evaluation, like in diving or figure skating. You're absolutely right that if the only thing you look at is the test scores of a teacher's students in a given year in a vacuum, all you're doing is rewarding or punishing teachers for the demographic luck of their draw. You have to engage in serious data analysis about what factors about the students have the strongest statistical correlation with testing success (of course, for previously-tested students the biggest correlation of all is past testing success) and then adjust your test-based performance measures accordingly. Then you do need to combine those test-based performance measures with qualitative reviews by principals and supervisors, and possibly, thoughtful input from peers, parents and even students. Moreover, unions should allow school districts to offer salary incentives to teachers willing to take on the most at-risk kids in the most at-risk schools, and bonuses for teachers who produce great results with the toughest kids and the toughest schools.

[nots]

The status quo in government employee pensions and benefits isn't sustainable. The unions have their job to do, but at some point, if they don't come to the table ready to give up something on the pension/benefits side of the equation, governors and state legislatures will have to essentially vitiate their benefits by legislative fiat and see if it holds up in the courts. Ultimately, government employee salaries, with some notable and even condemnable exceptions, are too low while benefits and pensions are too generous. Unions and governments need to sit down and figure out a way to trade one off for the other to protect everyone in the longer term. Maybe you need to keep a pension-based system for police and fire, given the safety risks, but every other government employee should essentially have private-sector style health insurance options and 401(k)s. At the very least, these changes need to be initiated in short order for new hires, where there's no issue about promises/reliances.

Great points, Fly. The long term financial implications of all new hires needs to be studied very closely.
My question to the room is this: is the situation with the concessions the UAW had to give germane to this discussion or is the distinction between private and public unions a mitigating factor?

[Moonlight J]

Oh, and to clarify another point - I'm all for great demonstrations and cool signs, even those with targets on them. Just don't whine about incivility on the right if you're going to do as bad and worse when it's your turn to protest.

Yea, they've been embarrassing themselves with some of that crap. Very disappointing

[B-Fly]

Great points, Fly. The long term financial implications of all new hires needs to be studied very closely.
My question to the room is this: is the situation with the concessions the UAW had to give germane to this discussion or is the distinction between private and public unions a mitigating factor?

I guess the biggest difference is that private companies that have given away the store to their workers' union always have the "option" to simply go belly up if and when they can't possibly meet their contractual obligations any longer. While some of my friends to the right may differ, government cannot simply board up police, fire, education, sanitation, etc., upon the realization that they can't meet their contractual obligations. So they have to find a fix. Too often, that fix has been excessive borrowing, but as we all know, that only exacerbates the problem as you can then add astronomical debt service costs to all of the pension and benefit costs in the budget mess. So ultimately, if they can't get the fix at the bargaining table, they'll have to work out the fix in the Governor's mansions, the State legislatures, the City Halls and the courts.

[schlesinj]

I would be curious to see what percentage of private companies have Pensions vs 401K/No retirement plan. Compare that to the public sector. Do the same thing for health care pay in as well.

I agree that was the carrot to get the better worker to work for municipalities, but I think the amount of post retirement/health care has significantly changed recently and that can not be the reasoning for unions anymore.

[Kevin Seitzer]

Finally, why aren't people protesting in NYC where Bloomberg just unveiled a plan that will eliminate 6,000 teaching jobs?

I'm just sick to my stomach here in Austin where they are talking about eliminating 1,000 jobs from the school system--teachers, librarians, etc. That's just an awful thing to do. How are you ever going to get that talent back into education when you need it down the line? But when the money coming into the school district is $100 million less than last year, I don't know what else they can do. It's no-win solution with awful alternatives on every side. I do wish that the legislature was more willing to tap into the state's rainy day fund to support education through this recession, but even that wouldn't completely bridge the gap.

[Moonlight J]

In some states, it seems like a deliberate move to put a chokehold on public education and push people to the private school solutions. Here in FL, they've gone as far as creating the Alternative Certification Program so they can take anyone, from any field, and throw them into the classroom if they want the work.

[senorsheep]

Our liberal Democratic governer (read: not a union buster) just tweaked our state empoyee retirement plans so that our contributions increase another 2.5%, but lifted the salary freeze so that top performers can recover some of that via merit-based pay increases. I thought that was a pretty fair compromise, assuming that state supervisors don't get abusive with raises.

Education took the biggest budget hit here.

[B-Fly]

Finally, why aren't people protesting in NYC where Bloomberg just unveiled a plan that will eliminate 6,000 teaching jobs?

Well, there are certainly some people protesting, but not a critical mass yet. I'm sure we'll see bigger crowds outside City Hall and Tweed next week when the schools are closed. That said, the union is predominantly controlled by and thus prioritizes the interests of its most senior members, first and foremost. That's why so long as last-in-first-out (LIFO) requirements are preserved, layoffs will result in far less screaming than any moves against pensions or benefits, let alone any efforts to facilitate merit-based layoffs or removals. I think people also recognize that Bloomberg's budget announcement yesterday is still at this point really just a preliminary negotiating position in a three-way dance with the State over funding and the UFT over concessions.

[Moonlight J]

Our liberal Democratic governer (read: not a union buster) just tweaked our state empoyee retirement plans so that our contributions increase another 2.5%, but lifted the salary freeze so that top performers can recover some of that via merit-based pay increases. I thought that was a pretty fair compromise, assuming that state supervisors don't get abusive with raises.

Education took the biggest budget hit here.

That's a fair move. We've been on salary freezes for four years. COL has gone up, insurance rates have gone up, and now he's throwing in teachers paying 5% of their piddly pensions here now. He's a piece of work.

[netboy47]

What the majority of people are missing (or just ignoring) is that this is not really about economics. Instead, this is an effort by the GOP to weaken or eliminate something they have hated for a long, long time...unions in which the membership is comprised principally of governmental employees. Why? It is simple. They tend to support Democratic candidates through contributions, campaigning and voting. And that just sticks in the craw of the GOP.

Winner winner, chicken dinner!

[frae]

The incentive to go into teaching is the fact that you will be responsible for educating children and laying a foundation for those kids to use to go on to become successful individuals. Teaching is truly a noble profession and if that isn't incentive enough then maybe one shouldn't teach.

Well when I was 18 and had to decide on my major I took 2 things I liked, Video and English and created a major that would allow me to be certified to teach both. I had enjoyed coaching kids as a teenager so I thought I would enjoy teaching. While I do enjoy it this is like saying athletes should play for free because they are playing a game. I like being around kids, but it is still my job and the first priority in my life is taking care of my own family. If they are going to start making drastic changes to the amount of money I need to put into for a pension and raise the costs of health benefits it will be the equivalent of a significant pay cut. I for one am not in the position to take that kind of cut as my family has made plans around the system I signed into.

Now obviously the current system is not going to work in the long term, but I still have a problem with changing the system for those in it. This is where the elected officials need to negotiate for the future. New people coming into the system may well have a different structure in terms of pension pay. As El D pointed out though the WI Gov is doing all this coming off a $200 Million Dollar tax cut.

If the quotes I have read in some articles are to be believed the teachers union have requested to sit down 17 times with the governor and been denied every time. This is mainly about health and pension, but this change in WI would wipe out the unions ability to negotiate anything but salary. That means things like prep time in a day, amount of classes taught, amount of working hours, in service days, etc. would no longer be part of bargaining. This is an attempt to balance their budget, but also to basically bust the teachers unions. The unions would be powerless.

[chancellor]

I have a couple questions.

Does the language in the bill really potentially threaten the existence of all public employee unions in the state, as has been claimed?

No. It does limit what can be collectively bargained for, and it does eliminate the "closed shop" rule in Wisconsin for public employee unions. As a personal aside, were I in Gov. Walker's shoes, I'd probably be willing to compromise on some of the collective bargaining positions.

Also, why is Walker refusing to meet with union representatives?

I have not seen any official quotes as to why, but I suspect he figures it's simply a waste of time.

Finally, why aren't people protesting in NYC where Bloomberg just unveiled a plan that will eliminate 6,000 teaching jobs?

Gov. Walker's other alternative was to engage in significant layoffs.