The well-funded but debilitating barnacle on public schools

The well-funded but debilitating barnacle on public schools

An excerpt from The Politics of Education K-12

by Lonnie Palmer

Soon after becoming a teacher in 1970, I remember reading that Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the famous Democrat and depression era and WWII president, did not believe in public union negotiations for salary and benefits.[i]

This confused me. Weren’t the Democrats supporters of unions? Didn’t FDR help to establish the National Labor Relations Board and support private unions? Why this stance on public unions?

FDR apparently concluded that city, county and village legislators, state legislatures or Congress should set wages and benefits for public employees and that, while the public sector employees should be free to join unions, their involvement in negotiations with their government employers made no sense.

To make these negotiations less lopsided, school districts, towns, villages and cities try to arm themselves with the best slingshots available (expensive labor attorneys)[vi] . Those labor attorneys have developed an extremely well-funded cottage industry that grows into a more expensive and debilitating barnacle on the public school district ship every year.

After 40-plus years working with public unions, I’ve concluded that FDR was mostly right. The typical teacher and public employee negotiations distract us from the critical task of making our public institutions more responsive and effective, while wasting enormous amounts of precious leadership time and public tax dollars on local negotiations.

Frequently, these negotiations in the strong public union states pit David, played by the local public employer, against Goliath, played by the local public union and its state or national partner. And it’s not just the teachers union, it’s the bus drivers union, the administrators union, the support staff union.

As a result of laws and court decisions, public union employees are guaranteed annual raises based on seniority steps, continuing high-cost health insurance with little employee contributions and high employer contributions to state-controlled pension plans.

Guarantees produced by laws and supporting court decisions apply to state, local government and school district employees in strong public union states.[ii] Public unions in these states also have an unfair advantage because they provide campaign contributions and endorsements to members of both Democratic and Republican parties.[iii] [iv]

The public unions received paybacks in the form of legislation giving them the upper hand in contract negotiations over the decades of the 1960s through the 1990s. In New York State, Democrats received much of the contributions, but the Republicans got their share as well. The teachers unions contributed millions to their campaigns and continue to contribute to this day.[v]

To make these negotiations less lopsided, school districts, towns, villages and cities try to arm themselves with the best slingshots available (expensive labor attorneys)[vi] . Those labor attorneys have developed an extremely well-funded cottage industry that grows into a more expensive and debilitating barnacle on the public school district ship every year.

While private worker union influence has shrunk over the past five decades due to the impact of globalization and technology,[vii] public unions have become even more pernicious, particularly in states that made strategic errors by passing laws that tilted negotiations toward unions.

Public employee unions gained negotiating power primarily in blue states like New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Illinois and California. States like Ohio and Wisconsin, where Republicans only recently took control, tried to create a more equitable balance.[viii] The U.S. Supreme Court in 2016, short one member due to the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, tied 4-4 on a crucial case that would have had negative impacts on public union finances, but the status quo won.[ix] Since then the Supreme Court partially reversed itself but we will need to see how this new ruling plays out particularly in the strong public union states.


[i] David Umhoefer, “Did FDR oppose collective bargaining for government workers?,” Politifact, August 13, 2013, https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2013/aug/13/scott-walker/Did-FDR-oppose-collective-bargaining-for-governmen/

?

[ii] Daniel Desalvo, “The Trouble with Public Sector Unions,” National Affairs, Fall 2010, https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trouble-with-public-sector-unions

?

[iii] Thomas B. Edsall, “Republicans Sure Love to Hate Unions,” The New York Times, November 18, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/opinion/republicans-sure-love-to-hate-unions.html

?

[iv] Thomas McGinty and Brody Mullins, “Political Spending by Unions Far Exceeds Direct Donations,” Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2012, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304782404577488584031850026

?

[v] Chris Bragg, “The Labor Loophole,” Albany Times-Union, June 13, 2015, https://www.timesunion.com/tuplus-local/article/The-labor-loophole-6325922.php

?

[vi] E. J. McMahon, “Taylor Made: The Cost and Consequences of New York’s Public-Sector Labor Laws,” Empire Center, NY Torch Blog, October 17, 2014, https://www.empirecenter.org/publications/taylor-made-the-cost-and-consequences-of-new-yorks-public-sector-labor-laws/

?

[vii] Associated Press, “As organized labor shrinks, unions representing government workers grow,” MPR News, July 5, 2014, https://www.mprnews.org/story/2014/07/05/union-members-have-ties-to-government

?

[viii] Neil King Jr., Thomas M. Burton and Kris Maher, “Political Fight Over Unions Escalates,” Wall Street Journal, February 22, 2011, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703800204576158851079665840

?

[ix] Steven Greenhouse, “The Friedrichs case: A time bomb for unions,” The Washington Post, January 15, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-friedrichs-case-a-time-bomb-for-unions/2016/01/15/f4ff39da-bac3-11e5-829c-26ffb874a18d_story.html?postshare=1261452913720370&tid=ss_mail

?

要查看或添加评论,请登录

Lonnie Palmer的更多文章

社区洞察

其他会员也浏览了