Are Public Unions Necessary?

[a_new_machine]

Wisconsin is raising hell in its attempts to balance a budget that's heavily weighed down by union-bargained benefits for public employees. Of course, they're taking the "nuke it from orbit" approach and removing collective bargaining rights from public employees

Comments

[kitlizzy]

I work at a large university, and in my experiences with the union re: admin personnel, etc is that the union is needed not so much for the pay, as it to prevent bad supervisors/management/etc from abusing and/or firing staff for no good reason.

The unions don't only protect your pay, they protect you from power-tripping assholes. :P

[nevermind6794]

Nah.

[policraticus]

No, the "It's" up there is antecedent-ed by the public sector unions, specifically the police union. Local government, like all government, is about being reelected. They can spend like that, in a way no sane business person would dream of spending, because it isn't their money.

Incompetent? Perhaps as good stewards of the public trust. But then, if they were good stewards of the public trust they wouldn't have gotten elected. The public service unions would see to that.

[nevermind6794]

How did the public service unions affect the elections? I assume they are a relatively small part of the electorate.

I am curious whether your complaints will parallel liberal complaints about corporate influence on elections.

[policraticus]

Demagoguery, mostly. Look at what's happening in WI, right now. Look at what might happen in NJ and NY and CA. They don't need to be a large part if they are a well organized part and they don't need to work very hard if the electorate doesn't notice the ever increasing debt. How do politicians get elected? By promising more teachers and more police. Anyone who stands up and says, "Enough!" gets called either soft on crime, weak on education, or callous toward working families and unions.

[nevermind6794]

By the same token, those politicians get elected by promising not to raise taxes. Cutting pension obligations and public sector jobs is not the only way to balance the budget, but anyone who advocates higher taxes gets shouted down just the same.

The biggest problem, then, is voters who want the policy equivalent of calorie-free ice cream.

[policraticus]

This is absolutely the case. Which is why we have the problem. Everyone wants to drive a Mercedes, live in a mansion and drink Krug champagne... but no one, till recently, was willing to look at the VISA bill.

[nevermind6794]

What has been centralized more and more? States set guidelines, buy textbooks, do their own testing, etc. School boards and principals do the hiring and firing and run the actual operations.

And yes, how much is enough? People complain about education spending without putting forth any ideas about the most efficient way to run our system.

[nevermind6794]

NCLB is not that old, and the downward trend predates it by quite a bit.

Our system does include local accountability. School boards are in charge. The main problem is that local governments can't do anything right.

But anyway, our system isn't actually that bad, if you aren't poor.

"The most recent results (2006) showed the following: students in U.S. schools where the poverty rate was less than 10 percent ranked first in reading, first in science, and third in math. When the poverty rate was 10 percent to 25 percent, U.S. students still ranked first in reading and science. But as the poverty rate rose still higher, students ranked lower and lower. Twenty percent of all U.S. schools have poverty rates over 75 percent. The average ranking of American students reflects this. The problem is not public schools; it is poverty. And as dozens of studies have shown, the gap in cognitive, physical, and social development between children in poverty and middle-class children is set by age three."Reply

[nevermind6794]

No, that does not mean school boards are no longer in charge of education. Yeah, it might make their lives harder, but some of those standards are a good thing. And I thought you only had a problem with federal standards.

No, I'm not happy with the divergence in results - and the corresponding inequality of opportunity - but it's important to understand the problem. Even with those federal and state standards, those teachers' unions, those school boards, and all that jazz, most American schools finish at the top of the rankings. That means the problem is fundamentally different from what you are complaining about. Perhaps our education would eventually fix itself if we could address poverty.

[nevermind6794]

Income level affects nutrition, which is particularly important for kids and likely plays a large part in that cognitive gap by age 3 from my earlier quote. It also affects health - can't take your kids to a doctor if you can't pay, or take off work. And that also affects parental involvement.

And obviously this is a self-perpetuating cycle.

[farchivist]

I'm extremely in favor with keeping educational control on the local level.

Oh, then you want GA, where educational control is on the county level, ensconced with the County Board of Education. OK.