Antagonism toward public unions is exploding.
—Barry Bluestone
Organized labor hasn’t had many victories these days. The recall of Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker was, at best, a draw. At worst, it was another lost battle wasting precious resources in a war in which labor is financially and organizationally outgunned.
In addition to business interests pushing agendas that are at the very least indifferent to workers, there is a well-heeled anti-union network ranging from the Koch Brothers and Walmart to anti-union fronts, like National Right to Work and the Center for Union Facts. This network actively oppose workers’ rights and unions’ political power. As much as conservatives like to complain about union bosses funneling money to politicians and political causes, the influence of organized labor is waning, due in large part to role of money in American politics.
Once upon a time, unions could counteract business’ money advantage by supplying people to work on political campaigns. Business might have had money, but back then, people mattered almost as much as advertising. American politics runs on money, however you slice it,
Whatever slice you look at, business interests dominate, with an overall advantage over organized labor of about 15-to-1.
Even among PACs – the favored means of delivering funds by labor unions – business has a more than 3-to-1 fundraising advantage. In soft money, the ratio is nearly 17-to-1.
It is this monetary advantage, not to mention the low esteem with which the public regards union labor, that explains the Massachusetts Teachers Association’s deal with the odious Stand for Children, an anti-union organization masquerading as an education policy group: unions. We’ve got a weak hand and there aren’t many cards to play left in the deck. don’t have a lot of cards to play these days.
Last year, Stand for Children brought its show to Massachusetts with a complicated ballot initiative that would all but eliminate the use of seniority in layoffs, and it is here that their next victory–through the ballot initiative or legislation–is imminent. Faced with the prospect of a difficult campaign against the ballot initiative that would be difficult to explain even to people who oppose it, the Massachusetts Teachers Association leadership negotiated with Stand and developed legislation to replace the ballot initiative. If enough legislators agree to back the bill, Stand will drop its ballot initiative.
The biggest differences between the legislative alternative and the ballot initiative are the number of moving parts, the locus of control, and the preservation of collective bargaining rights. As MTA President Paul Toner has said,
the ballot initiative would greatly reduce collective bargaining rights, would weaken due process rights for teachers with Professional Teacher Status and would eviscerate those rights for part-time teachers. It would greatly diminish the voice of teachers, which is essential to the success of our public education system.
In both the initiative and the legislation, seniority would no longer be the only criterion for layoffs; it wouldn’t even be the primary criterion. Layoffs would be based primarily on teachers’ performance as reflected in evaluations and other job performance factors. This is a major concession on the part of the MTA. Seniority, a bedrock issue when it comes to employee rights, could only be a secondary factor or tie-breaker.
The American Federation of Teachers, Massachusetts’ other teachers union, opposes the MTA compromise, and it’s hard to criticize them for their opposition. Stand for Children, a recent arrival in Massachusetts, has come here and effectively purchased a educational policy change. That alone is galling enough. It’s even worse considering the fact that Stand for Children was a member of the task force that revamped teacher evaluation, could have contributed to the process, chose not to, and proceeded to hire signature gatherers to bring a ballot initiative forward. Stand is here to impose their agenda. Massachusetts voters may or not support that agenda, but one thing for sure is that Stand for Children doesn’t care about voters. One hundred percent of its power is financed by .10% of the population (see below),
From a policy perspective, the effect of seniority on student learning is minimal. Ideologically, it sounds sensible: getting rid of “bad” teachers will improve teaching. But those bad teachers have to be replaced. And in communities where educational needs are most dire–cities like Springfield and Boston–there are not enough “good” teachers to replace the “bad” ones. Particularly in our neediest communities, teacher turnover is, by far, a more significant issue, and one unlikely to be positively effected this legislation.
As hard as it is to stomach the MTA’s compromise, it was the right thing to do. Stand for Children’s action in Illinois is instructive. Prior to a state-imposed cap on campaign spending, Stand raised $1 million ($2.8 million) as the next richest lobbying group ($1.8 million). And the funding sources,
Members of the famed billionaire Pritzker family kicked in a total of $250,000 on Dec. 29, two days before the end of the old campaign finance system, which allowed for unlimited contributions to groups like Stand for Children’s PAC.
Ken Griffin, the CEO of the Citadel Group, contributed $500,000 on Dec. 15. Griffin gave hundreds of thousands of dollars last year to Illinois House Republicans and GOP gubernatorial nominee Bill Brady’s campaign. Sam Zell, the owner of Tribune Co., contributed $100,000 on Dec. 20. Members of the Henry Crown family kicked in $400,000. And Paul Finnegan, the co-CEO of Madison Dearborn Partners LLC, contributed $500,00
Prior to this, Stand for Children bought out the top lobbyists in Illinois and bankrolled enough candidates to push through its “grassroots” legislation virtually eliminating the right of Illinois teachers to strike. We know this for a fact. Stand founder Jonah Edelman bragged about it at the Aspen Institute.
The MTA leadership could have chosen to “fight” Stand for Children. But it would have been like the charge of the light brigade. We can’t match their money, and it would have been an uphill battle to convince the public, which tends not to care if doesn’t affect them, to care about seniority not counting when it comes to layoffs. Approval for public-sector unions is pretty low, and union concerns are easily demagogued. In a time when many workers across the Commonwealth are unemployed or taking pay cuts, it’s hard to make them care about whether seniority is used as a factor in firing teachers. Barry Bluestone, former, sees hope in the MTA’s compromise, hope that it can start to “counter the antiunion animus spreading from state to state”:
In this age of enormous income equality and the unparalleled power of big business, we desperately need organized labor to preserve its strength to stand up for the 99 percent – not just the unions’ own members. Prevailing against the proposed legislation will undermine the much bigger fight on our hands. Building coalitions with parents, students and other community organizations will help restore the alliance of progressive forces in the Commonwealth and help reconstitute popular support for public unions. Without such coalitions, we all face much darker days ahead.
Bluestone would seem to be supported by the words of Rep. Barney Frank: “In seeking to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, the public-sector unions and their allies on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party made a big mistake. My side picked a fight they shouldn’t have picked. People need to be more strategic about the fights they pick.”
If Bluestone and Frank are correct, and I think they are, then Paul Toner and the MTA leadership are headed in the right direction. We don’t have to like their compromise. They probably don’t like having to make it.
(School’s out, baby!)
Massachusetts isn’t Wisconsin. It would have been a gamble, but I think the odds would have been in our favor.
Based on the bash-the-unions health care bill fiasco from last year, I think the public made it very clear that it doesn’t like bash-the-union bills here in Mass, particularly when it comes to our teachers.
Public sentiment, IMO, was the biggest factor in pushing the ‘compromise’ that went through in that situation, too.
The thing with bullies — and “Stand for Children” is absolutely a bully — is that if you give them your lunch money, they tend to come back for it the next day, too.
So, there’s this compromise now. What happens the next time Stand threatens a ballot initiative?
I don’t recall any fiasco. I don’t recall a public outcry either. Maybe your experience was different.
Cities and towns were forced to put employees into the GIC or on equivalent health insurance plans. That was something Governor Patrick spoke in favor of. The Mass. Municipal Association pushed for it. The MTA asked for, and got, some local negotiations on the move.
Retirees are now joining Medicare when they are 65. I was talking to some yesterday at a retirement party. They said they it would probably cost $200 more a month. I don’t remember any non-union people making a big deal about that.
All Stand for Children has to say is, teachers unions protect incompetent teachers who harm our kids’ future. Game over. Or why should union workers get benefits that private sector workers don’t get?
Stand for Children will be sated for now. Jonah Edelman and his toadies will be off raising more money with their latest victory. I hate these S.O.B.’s as much as anyone, but compromising is better than fighting them and losing. They’d brag about the fight. Now, as Bluestone suggests, we can rightfully claim that we are willing to work with people.
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in defense of your “fiasco” claim.
There was outrage around what was happening, especially since it smacked of what was going on in Wisconsin. Perhaps you missed the many diaries that appeared on BMG, or emails sent out, or stories in the paper?
A lot of that anger was what (IMO) pushed the Governor to get involved and get a compromise through that at least gave the teachers a little dignity in the process.
the Massachusetts Municipal Association. I did a couple of diaries on their role myself. Outrage on BMG is one thing. I didn’t witness it elsewhere. And it didn’t make a media splash in the newspapers out here.
I worked on the issue with the MTA. We were lucky to get what we got out of the situation. Here’s what we’d have had to defend:
My copays were:
Office visit-$10
Emergency Room: $50
Mental Health: $10
Prescriptions: $10
How many members of the public were going to stand up for me getting those benefits?
This isn’t an assembly line. It is my kids.
Any organization that advocates for seniority as a factor, much less THE factor, in selecting promotion or layoff is not an organization that can be said to be advocating for the children in the classroom.
I live in a nearly-dire, and have been through two separate rounds of budget cuts over the last four years in which the lump that has been not-teaching is left to not-teach my children while his colleague, a teacher, is left job-hunting, just because the lump has been not-teaching for longer than the teacher has been teaching. We will move to a charter or parochial school before we face the problem a third time.
I am glad that the MTA reached this compromise, even if it something their members are leery of, and I hope to see it enacted.
Springfield’s worst high schools. When it was found to need corrective action, he said they unloaded a bunch of lousy teachers. I have no doubt that they were truly bad. They ended up there because the district faces a chronic shortage with high teacher turnover and has to put warm bodies in front of students. This situation plays itself out in urban schools across the Commonwealth.
Many, if not all, teachers feel the same way about crappy teachers as parents do. They don’t want them around either. I can’t completely disagree with you.
There are costs and benefits to the system. The reason seniority became part of education was to prevent politics from entering into hiring and firing decisions. Teachers, particularly good teachers, shouldn’t be fired because they are too expensive, they oppose the administration (for good reason), or they are related to some politically influential person. But they once were. Stand for Children’s initiative would have created the potential for that happening again. The compromise is better.
The other thing that the general public doesn’t understand: the percentage of untalented, unskilled, and just plain bad administrators is huge. Teachers would appreciate useful feedback in evaluations. But there are so many bad administrators out there. In Springfield, anyone with a pulse and teaching experience can become an administrator with a district-run program.
I’m sorry to hear about your children’s educational situation. Unfortunately, charter schools are the only option for people who want their kids to attend safe, productive schools. My kids’ school system–not the one I teach at–had to cut $750,000 from its school budget. It’s a small system–about 1000 students–with about a $10 million. So far, so good, but reductions in state aid are killing us.
It was the best teachers that had the most friction with the administration. Some of the administrators in my school district growing up were nice people, some not so much, but I don’t think there were any great geniuses among them.
So the problem of how to evaluate teacher performance goes on. I wonder if bringing accountability to the teachers will result somehow in adding more accountability to the administrators. IOW, if it’s an adminstrator’s *job* to evaluate teaching in a significant way, the ability to do that job well becomes a more important job, and then we get fewer meatheads in administration.
Or maybe there’s a way to have administrators and teachers hold hands and jump at the same time.
evaluation regimen that was negotiated into school systems across the state. It was developed by a task force and included participation from the MTA. (Stand for Children was on the force, but decided not to contribute). It starts in the fall.
It would have been nice to grow into that system before this crap, but that’s life. The public, and the business-oriented people who drive education policy, think that teachers have to be afraid of losing their job if they are going to do well. Most employees do their best because they care about doing a good job. Like everything these days, we’re getting screwed by 21st century capitalism.
This stuff is driven by a dog-eat-dog ideology that is failing all around us. It is the mythological dogma of 19th century capitalism. It failed once, in the first half of the twentieth century. Sadly, we have largely forgotten the lessons of that first failure — we seem hell-bent on going through all that turmoil again.
about society’s ideology than education. Except for a very brief time episodes, that ideology has been whatever business thought.
This issue has really been bothering me. As furious as I am with Stand, and as much as I can’t deny Ryan’s argument that MTA just gave into a bully so what’s next, I also can’t get away from the fact that the bad guys were probably going to win.
For the MTA to have diverted $3-5 million to a campaign that would have been very difficult to win, and losing that would have been so much worse than the agreement we’re left with, it’s just hard to argue with the decision. It’s easy for AFL-CIO to argue when it wasn’t their members at risk.
All that said, here’s what I want to know.
That teacher who’s excellent, 20 years in is still top quality, working hard, cares about the kids, and getting good results… when her salary is getting on the upper end of the scale, what protects her against an administrator deciding she’s too expensive and her pension is looming so we’re going to move her out? We claim this is about the children. In truth it’s about the taxpayers.
MTA may dodge a bullet. It’s hard to argue that they were forced to make this awful stand. But this is ugly, and quality veteran teachers are going to be much harder to find down the road. Who’s going to risk staying in a profession that could jettison them when they are no longer cheap enough?
get rid of such a teacher because s/he will have years of good evaluations to back his or her performance up. The Stand initiative would have created a mechanical process with very little opportunity for appeal. Still, it opens things up for administrative mischief.
We just put a good evaluation system into place state-wide. It would have been worth doing that before this, but money rules, democracy drools.
The teaching profession is rapidly becoming less enjoyable, particularly in communities where schools face state sanctions. The ultimate problem is that the state has to feel like it is managing the education of children. This trickles down through administrative bureaucracy and ill-advised requirements that prevent people from taking joy in their work.
Search Stand for Children and you’ll find plenty of posts at BMG, not just by me, but by Tracy Novick. Here’s two of mine:
http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/wp-admin/post.php?post=35349&action=edit
http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/2012/01/a-constitutional-question-stand-for-childrens-ballot-initiative
http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/2011/12/charitable-takeover-the-rise-of-philanthrocapitalists
…that seniority should take precedence over competence. In fact, I have to keep being reminded why a competence measure is not the common sense that it feels like it is. In most environments employees are evaluated by their supervisors and let go by them if appropriate. Why is there an objection to that method when it comes to teachers?
employee evaluations are crap. Bad people are promoted over good people all the time. People are promoted or paid more because they are friends with the boss.
The idea that people are let go because they are incompetent, while not completely false, is mostly ideological. I’m sure everyone can think of someone who was let go because they weren’t good enough–even in the land of senority, I can think of two teachers in my school who were let go before they received tenure–I don’t think it’s all that common. The stories my friends from the private sector tell me are hilarious.
There is an objection when it comes to teachers because education is DIFFERENT from “business”. Students are required by law to attend school. Companies that fail because of incompetent management go out of business. Schools that fail because of incompetent management continue anyway. The notion that management techniques and philosophies that work (or appear to work) in business are therefore appropriate for education is rooted in ideology and dogma rather than experience.
When, through incompetent management, a company blows its business, managers and employees lose their jobs. The company folds, is acquired, or absorbs cash until it gets back on its feet. What is the counterpart for a failing school system?
which is why charter schools bug me. If there’s a problem with the public education system, fix it. Do not ask me to pay for the regular public schools plus a parallel school system that gets to siphon money and resources out — my money — without giving me any say over how it’s spent.
against charter schools. People with bad school systems deserve a decent place to send their kids. There are also some charter schools that do things that public schools do not do. Performing arts, immersion in the Chinese language, expeditionary learning.
The idea that charter schools are superior to public schools, and that through innovation or competition, will lead to improvement in the latter, well, that’s disgusting.