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Government Workers Threaten Strikes, Demand More Pay
Public teachers striking? Someone has to say it: Who do these public servants, these government employees, think they are to make demands of the public and our elected representatives? The way politicians fawn over this set of government employees is topped only by British MPs prostrating themselves before the temple of the National Health Service.
Let’s be clear. Teachers are not nobler than nurses or nurses’ aides. Teachers do not matter more than plumbers or mechanics. Teachers matter less to our civilization then sewer workers and police. And educrats, hiding behind classroom teachers, are leaders in social decay and loss of real learning. While police have job protection similar to teachers, none of the other professions or trades cited do, and none of the others are able to demand wage increases without fear of job loss.
If government workers want new contracts, it is time to demand pay be tied to results — for the children!
One problem is that civil servants don’t realize that they are the government.
They think of themselves as mere servants of the government, and therefore that they are heroically fighting “the man” when they go on strike.
It’s not true. Civil servants are “the man”. It’s the elected officials who are actually trying to fight “the man” when they try to limit the privileges, entitlements, and power of civil servants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmOvEwtDycs&t=52s
Teachers are now the bottom quintile of college students. We need to go back to free teachers’ colleges. I see them demonstrating on street corners in Tucson and want to tell them a few things.
Here is a link to the article in the essay.
This might be tough sell for teachers in Arizona. Voters have a tendency to get even at the ballot box. Counties will have a very difficult time getting future bond measures passed in the normal election cycle. Arizona, unlike Oregon is not a City-State. Oregon is controlled by the Portland Metro area. The entire State of Arizona is not controlled by Phoenix, or Tucson.
Tucson, in Pima County is what I would call Blue. In the election cycle before the Presidential election there were 7 ballot measures for increased funding through property taxes. All 7 were defeated.
I’m glad to see the idea in print that everyone that does an honest day’s work are good people and deserve respect. We just had an awful ice storm in MI, lost power, and crews were out in the mess and we were back up in a couple hours. You can miss a day of school, hard to miss a day of power in the cold.
I profess you cannot pay people to care, and it is a fallacy that those in the caring professions care about people more than those employed in other sectors.
In Washington, teachers are forbidden by law to strike. They do so nearly every year, and I have never seen any teacher or teacher union officer go to jail or suffer any other kind of punishment for breaking the law. Maybe because the state is ruled by Democrats, who would be in deep doo-doo without the funding provided by the teachers union.
They’re behind the telephone sanitizers on my list.
Thanks. I fixed the link. I’ve been having trouble with the link editing pop up box on my Android not always so smart phone.
That is because they are Democrats. A Democrat, in a Democrat ran state, in a Democrat ran county, in a Democrat ran city, with a Democrat ran police and a Democrat ran school board, all of which has been in Democrat control for decades is constant at war with Republicans. / the man because they are being oppressed and mistreated by the racist, tyrannical system.
Except that these teacher union actions are targeting Republican state houses. Which suggests a “blue wave” DNC campaign underpinning.
Government employees should not have the right to strike, and probably should not be able to form unions to negotiate terms and conditions of employment.
Government employees are (usually) doing something for which the customers have few or no alternatives, and therefore have an unfair advantage in pushing their demands by using a strike. When employees of a business strike, customers can go to a competing business. That (generally) tends to keep union demands on private business reasonable. If employees strike for unreasonable demands, their employer goes out of business.
But, government can’t go out of business, and customers usually can’t go elsewhere (where else can you get your driver’s license or your building permit, or have the burglar arrested, or put out the fire in the house next door).
Teachers present an interesting opportunity because a system of competing businesses is possible. Many argue that even if the government funds schools, the government doesn’t have to run the schools. Trade a full voucher system for the right to strike?
The town I lived in Pennsylvania.all but one of the School Board were retired teachers. Been that way forever.
How would reducing the cost of a teaching certificate improve the quality of teachers?
Picture’s worth a thousand words:
In addition, they hold other powers over the public. If parents don’t publicly and actively support the teachers, the teachers can hurt their children. If people don’t publicly and actively support the fire department, the fire department can let their house burn down. The police can harass you.
We talk about unequal power relationships as being the source and strength of abuse. Well, if ever there were an uneven power relationship, it is between the government and the taxpayers. Think IRS.
That’s why it should be illegal for government employees to strike.
I think the most important right we have–and it’s not one in our Constitution; rather, it is protected at the state level–is the secret ballot.
My area of Tucson voted for Trump. There is a guy who runs a local blog and had the election results posted. Across Ina it was all Hillary.
Free teachers’ colleges were a tradition many years ago. I don’t know that it would improve quality but student loans are probably a factor in the constant agitation for more money.
Perhaps instead of increased pay, the state could handle some of the student debt.
I thought they used to for public service jobs, such as teaching. Has that debt forgiveness after so many years gone by the wayside?
I not know. I only know of it as a military thing – they do it for a lot of their docs.
If it hasn’t, I wonder how many teachers include that when considering their income.
Imagine the benefits of a state teaching teachers to teach what the state believed should be taught, how the state would be supporting them as they taught, and what kind of nonsense the state would not tolerate in a teacher.
I suppose this could get a little totalitarian over time. It would also be a vast improvement.
Do to them what Reagan did to PATCO.
This portrays the cost of the rise of the educrats. Else, the enormous percentage increase in paid staff, with much smaller percentage changes in students, should have yielded significant improvement in math, reading, and science scores.
Sun rises in East….
Amen – testify, brother, testify!
As a current public school teacher, I’d take that trade in a heartbeat!
States need to pass laws to prevent cities and school districts from entering into contracts that commit future taxpayers to pay for current services. This would force teachers, cops, and public employees to have a fair negotiation with representatives of the public. Without it, there is too much incentive for public employees and politicians to sign back-loaded contracts. Politicians get low current taxes and employees get commitment for high compensation, but the person paying (future taxpayers) is not represented at the negotiation table.
I would be in favor of a simple ban on defined-benefit pension programs for public employees. That would end most of the back-loading.
Not that I have any great love for the teachers’ unions, but I’d just point out that the chart doesn’t account for the effort put in on education by the students themselves, which I suspect may have diminished as so many demands on their time impinge on their education. It’s not like education is a meal that the teachers are expected to simply spoon feed to the students; the students have to actually put some effort into learning.
Been like that for quite a while. Take a look at some of Fred Reed’s early columns about teachers, educrats, etc. (Note: Language will not be CoC compliant.) He raised this point in the early-mid 1990s. He even wrote a column for a magazine in the ’80s about the quality of teachers and the apparent uselessness of some of the licensing exams.