by Rees Lloyd The Portland School District has given parents of students notice that labor negotiations with the teachers are at impasse.
Teachers. Impasse. In a recession styled as the worst economic crisis since the Depression. After the teachers’ union, along with other public sector unions, e.g., SEIU, AFSCME, just spent millions, apparently more than $6-million, to get passed tax increases in ballot measures 66 and 67 which were supposed to be to benefit the “kids,” not the teachers.
Are these oppressed, exploited, “workers,” so underpaid and enduring working conditions so onerous that they must take negotiations with the taxpaying public to “impasse”?
Remember the fight for an 8-hour-day? Well, Portland teachers have a contract that forbids kids’ school days being longer than 6.5 hours. Tax increases in 66 &67 were tearfully touted as being “for the kids” in a “crisis” of funding. All Oregonians were urged to sacrifice “for the children.” It is now clear they meant all should sacrifice, except for the teachers: They are being guaranteed a raise of 3% in the offer which is at impasse, no matter what happens to the economy.
It has to be remembered that, among other things, teachers’ annual salary is really a salary for a 9-month work year. They have two weeks off every Christmas, Spring Break, multiple 3-day and 4-day weekends, never a risk of having to work on Thanksgiving, Christmas, other holidays. They have sick time, personal time, prep time and other benefits that are the envy of private sector; and extremely generous pensions that people who work 8-hour days, 40-hour weeks, 12-months a year, with a two-week vacation if they are lucky, in the wealth-producing private sector, can only dream about.
That teachers, who have been whining and crying about a “crisis” in school funding to impose further tax burdens on the public, would now take negotiations to impasse when they are guaranteed a 3% raise while most in the private sector worry about whether they will have a job at all, evidences that the contemporary teachers and the union they do not repudiate are a disgrace to their profession, and their interest is manifestly their self-interest, not the kids’ interest, as they posture and proclaim with teary-eyes.
They are evidencing that they and their union, which poured millions into the 66 and 67 tax increase campaigns, are no better than the tax consuming so-called “public servants” of the contemporary SEIU, whose posturing Alinsky-ite leader, Andy Stern, former pantywaist “social worker” who postures now as a “tough talking labor leader,” openly states that “workers of the world unite is no longer a slogan;but the way we do business” (against whom, if not taxpayers?), and that SEIU will “use the power of persuasion, but, if that doesn’t work, we will use the persuasion of power.” Against whom, if not the public, the taxpayers who make possible the higher pay, perks, and pensions that the public sector employees enjoy?
Now the teachers’ union pushes negotiations to the point of impasse in what the teachers claim is a “crisis” in funding “for the kids”? Hypocrites –Let them strike. Let them walk off the job. Let them strike – and then let them go. Bye-Bye. Replace them. There will be scores of teachers, eager to teach, not to get rich teaching, seeking every striker’s job. Let them strike.
These are not industrial workers of an earlier age fighting exploiting employers who impose ionerous conditions and employing thugs to beat them down if they protest. These are pampered public sector employees with enviable working conditions, and a 12-month salary for an actual work year of eight months or less. The most dangerous thing in their workplace isn’t falling steel, or a machine taking an arm or leg, or fire, or explosion, it’s an errant paper clip, flying spitball, or obnoxious kid.
Yet they posture as aggrieved “workers” through the dated rhetoric of public sector union leaders pimping them, and the public, for profit, wimps mouthing tough-guy threats like social-worker Andy Stern of SEIU, the most frequent invitee to Barack Obama’s White House according to records, threatening to use the “persuasion of power” against the public.
Its time for the public to stand up and fight back. Oregon in general and Portland in particular are at a crossroads: Those choosing careers in the public sector as public servants are in fact becoming the public’s masters, buying politicians by their union’s political contributions and seeking greater and greater tax burdens in their interests and not the public’s interest.
Its very simple: If anyone choosing a career in the public sector, including teachers, wants to get rich, then they should leave the wealth-consuming public sector and take the risks re getting rich in wealth creating private sector. If teaching is a profession, a “calling,” as is pretended, then do not seek to achieve an affluent life-style. Seek riches in the private sector, where there is risk, not in the wealth consuming the education bureaucracy. Leave the security of the teaching position, and take the risk in the private sector. Make all the money you wish, and create some wealth as you do, instead of consuming the wealth others produce in the private sector which you apparently covet. If you want to be credited and honored with participating in a noble profession, i.e., sacrificing wealth in order to teach new generations of children, then don’t expect to be rich, and don’t believe you are entitled to consume wealth you don’t produce.
Most importantly: Do not continue to bite the hand that feeds you. Do not use the statutorily created right to unionize in order to gouge the taxpaying public who have provided you with better pay, perks, and pensions than most of them can get in the private sector, and without the security you enjoy.
Negotiations with the teachers’ union are at impasse? I say again: Let them strike. Let them go. And replace them. Get people who are truly dedicated to teaching our children and advancing the children’s interest, not their own financial interest through their politician-buying union.
[Rees Lloyd, is a career-long civil rights and workers rights, attorney whose work defending those rights has resulted in the receipt of numerous awards ,and been profiled by such varied media as the Los Angeles Times, ABC’s “Nightline” and “20/20,” Hannity and Colmes, and other media.]
Tell ’em where you saw it. Http://www.victoriataft.com
