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To me, the whole problem is that it seems both sides really want an all or nothing regime. My problem with any govt. employee union is that they are not negotiating with a for-profit institution, i.e., private money. They are in fact negotiating against the taxpayers.

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I do believe we need a federal standard for regulating govt. employee unions and because the parties are not negotiating the division of private wealth and funded benefits.

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I spent most of my adult life in the no. Va. area about 10 miles west of DC. The whole area is dominated by federal govt. employment. Federal employees have received something like 45 raises in 50 years and all you have to do to get them...is show up. There is no way on hell private industry provides such riches. Unions and congressmen...kiss their asses for votes.

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I am telling you that by comparison, not only do most white collar fed. govt. employees make more than their private industry counterpart

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DC area...3rd highest cost-of-living area in the country for that last 40-50 years. Gee, I wonder why.

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I don't think its wise for the tax payer to pay the union to make the taxpayer pay more - do you?

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Funny how your definition of "the system working" said nothing about the students.

In 1997 the graduation rate was just 53%. Kids reading to grade level were 34.9%. Riots happened in Mays, Edison, Northwestern.. the list goes on. 17% of teachers had their children enrolled in public schools.

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The reason FCATs & no child left behind passed was because of the abject failure of public schools. No child left behind estanblished standards in some fields and increased teacher accountability. Miami Dade public schools once in the bottom quartile are now in the top 8.

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And charter schools exceed public schools on standardized tests at EVERY grade level.

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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Funny how your definition of "the system working" said nothing about the students.

Here's what I said, since your reading comprehension skills suffer.

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In 1997 the graduation rate was just 53%

I also said since FCATs, No child left behind etc passed, which increased teacher ans school accountability MDCC are now top 8 in the US.
Which just goes to show you that fixing student achievement scores are pretty easy, once you get the teachers unions out of the picture.

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And charter schools exceed public schools on standardized tests at EVERY grade level.

Charter schools have more autonomy than traditional public schools and determine their own budgets, class and school sizes, staffing levels, curriculum choices, and the length
of the school day and year.

they are schools of choice, which means that parents must choose to enroll their children.

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ORIGINAL: TallClevDom

If charter schools don't outperform public schools it's because of their incompetence. Charter schools have the authority to remove, or not admit, any child that may be considered a "problem child".

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ORIGINAL: TallClevDom

If charter schools don't outperform public schools it's because of their incompetence. Charter schools have the authority to remove, or not admit, any child that may be considered a "problem child".

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Or you could take the far more reasonable interpretation and understand that parents are abandoning union based schools because they value paying democrat unions more than educating children.

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And yet somehow you continue to defend our inefficient, inept, politically correct public schools.

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Do you not see why charter schools are succeeding wildly? Because if you're not paying for uion administrators, overhead and janitors costing 65K - you have a lot of money left over to actually devote to education.

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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To me, the whole problem is that it seems both sides really want an all or nothing regime. My problem with any govt. employee union is that they are not negotiating with a for-profit institution, i.e., private money. They are in fact negotiating against the taxpayers.

You clearly ignore the fact that when unions successfully negotiate a pay raise for employees of a for profit corporation it is because the corporation has been successful and has the funds to distribute to its employees. Nobody is holding a gun to the head of the corporation in contrast to the way governments hired police or Pinkertons to fire on union members in the past. You ignore that the taxpayer as consumer is absorbing the cost of the raise in an increased price of the product. You also ignore that even public employee bargaining is governed by the rules of the Labor Relations Board. Open and honest bargaining between the two sides has maintained peaceful labor-employer relations for decades. Employees are forced to strike when bargaining is not conducted in good faith. You also gloss over the fact that public employees are themselves tax-payers; they are not a separate indentured class of labor. Lincoln freed the slaves, MrRodgers. Furthermore, the U.S. Constitution gives persons the right to assemble peacefully and seek redress of grievances. Teachers have the Constitutional RIGHT to bargain for pay and working conditions.

Negotiation to share in private wealth, consumers, and the marketplace of the exchange of private wealth and prices are irrelevant to my point of public unions and indentured service or chattel slavery is a stark non-sequitur.

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I do believe we need a federal standard for regulating govt. employee unions and because the parties are not negotiating the division of private wealth and funded benefits.

We have standards in the Labor Relations Board. And actually, public employees are indeed negotiating the division of private wealth and funded benefits for the services they perform through the agency of government to the taxpayers who forfeit part of their private wealth. You cannot have it both ways, MrRodgers. It is or is not a government for the people by the people (taxpayers) unless you can think of a better system.

The National Labor Relations Act has the following statement of policy: Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act ("NLRA") in 1935 to protect the rights of employees and employers, to encourage collective bargaining, and to curtail certain [b]private sector labor and management practices, which can harm the general welfare of workers, businesses and the U.S. economy.

.....and Section 2: (2) The term "employer" includes any person acting as an agent of an employer, directly or indirectly, but shall not include the United States or any wholly owned Government corporation, or any Federal Reserve Bank, or any State or political subdivision thereof, or any person subject to the Railway Labor Act [45 U.S.C. § 151 et seq.], as amended from time to time, or any labor organization (other than when acting as an employer), or anyone acting in the capacity of officer or agent of such labor organization.

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I spent most of my adult life in the no. Va. area about 10 miles west of DC. The whole area is dominated by federal govt. employment. Federal employees have received something like 45 raises in 50 years and all you have to do to get them...is show up. There is no way on hell private industry provides such riches. Unions and congressmen...kiss their asses for votes.

They receive wage increases yearly because cost of living is factored in their bargaining and because they have bargained a GS pay scale, which increases remuneration by increased responsibility.

I know how the federal govt. contracts read and all about the GS schedule and it is far and away much more generous than any private sector contracts and specifically because the resources are not coming from private wealth put public taxes and directly as a result, benefits both parties outside the marketplace limitations of private wealth.

And BTW, the GS schedule was reformed by LBJ in 1964 and in doing so, had the govt. survey private industry for wage and benefits. The govt. then used the top 7% of wages and benefits for GS schedule compensation. Since that enactment, ALL federal employees who showed up for work (not superior employees, ALL employees) were to then receive the same wages and benefits as the top 7% of private employees and then ALL employees received a COL increase, unlike any private employees, every year. (it may be more than 45 out of 50 years as at one time it was 39 out of 40 so it may be different now)

Then after 20 years employment (not part of soc. sec.) received 50% of their salary and after 30 years...2/3 of their salary in retirement. Many 1000's of federal retirees are now receiving more in retirement then they made when they worked. ALL BTW with and directly as a result of...raises every year and the taxpayer NOT private wealth funding it. Locality pay has been added on top as if they were really making less, meaning more unearned raises and unearned bonuses.

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I am telling you that by comparison, not only do most white collar fed. govt. employees make more than their private industry counterpart

Without citations that is bullshit.

My customers when I was at IBM, one of the best paying private entities, with less service, had my counterparts in every single case, making more than me. My father was an IBM Project engineer for 20 years at (FSD) Federal Systems Div. on defense contracts and the federal govt. inspectors he dealt with...ALL made more then he did some of which, didn't know shit. I worked at a co. called Scope Elec. and then also at Westinghouse, again the federal counterparts...all made more money. 100% of the time and in my examples, is more than enough citation, for me.

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DC area...3rd highest cost-of-living area in the country for that last 40-50 years. Gee, I wonder why.

You don't suppose it has anything to do with the influx of lobbyist money greasing the palms of Congressmen and the natural influx of foreign embassies and private corporations establishing residency in the area near the seat of power and driving up the cost of land and housing in that miserable swamp land? Trickle down economics, MrRodgers, except of course for the people of color who don't have work. I doubt you will find many public employees below GS 5 or 6 living in Georgetown or Foggy Bottom.

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ORIGINAL: thompsonx


ORIGINAL: servantforuse

And they educate kids with less money per student. Teachers and their unions hate these alternative schools though.

Cite please

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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Or you could take the far more reasonable interpretation and understand that parents are abandoning union based schools because they value paying democrat unions more than educating children.

I may have said this before but it is worth repeating for emphasis: you are either totally ignorant about union delegate compensation or you are deliberately propagating a stupid lie; or both.

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And yet somehow you continue to defend our inefficient, inept, politically correct public schools.

Nope, haven't been doing that. Was just explaining the reality of teacher unions and dues as per the OP.

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Do you not see why charter schools are succeeding wildly? Because if you're not paying for uion administrators, overhead and janitors costing 65K - you have a lot of money left over to actually devote to education.

Succeeding wildly, my ass! These are state subsidized for-profit private schools by another name who garner money by underpaying staff and renting storefront space in depressed strip malls. You have yet to provide a citation to support your claims that charter schools are performing better.

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The United Federation of Teachers shelled out $169 million last year, splurging on everything from six-figure salaries, posh hotels and pricey catering to backing groups against charter schools and funding ads attacking Gov. Cuomo over teacher evaluations, records show.

“The purpose isn’t about educating the children. It’s about the teachers, the adults,” charged former Bronx Assemblyman Michael Benjamin. “It’s a political operation. They’re highly effective at protecting teachers’ jobs . . . but when you look at the performance of students, the results are mixed.”

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The fundamental political conflict in America today is, as it has been for a century, individualism vs. collectivism. Does the individual’s life belong to him—or does it belong to the group, the community, society, or the state? With government expanding ever more rapidly—seizing and spending more and more of our money on “entitlement” programs and corporate bailouts, and intruding on our businesses and lives in increasingly onerous ways—the need for clarity on this issue has never been greater. Let us begin by defining the terms at hand.

Individualism is the idea that the individual’s life belongs to him and that he has an inalienable right to live it as he sees fit, to act on his own judgment, to keep and use the product of his effort, and to pursue the values of his choosing. It’s the idea that the individual is sovereign, an end in himself, and the fundamental unit of moral concern. This is the ideal that the American Founders set forth and sought to establish when they drafted the Declaration and the Constitution and created a country in which the individual’s rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness were to be recognized and protected.

Collectivism is the idea that the individual’s life belongs not to him but to the group or society of which he is merely a part, that he has no rights, and that he must sacrifice his values and goals for the group’s “greater good.” According to collectivism, the group or society is the basic unit of moral concern, and the individual is of value only insofar as he serves the group. As one advocate of this idea puts it: “Man has no rights except those which society permits him to enjoy. From the day of his birth until the day of his death society allows him to enjoy certain so-called rights and deprives him of others; not . . . because society desires especially to favor or oppress the individual, but because its own preservation, welfare, and happiness are the prime considerations.”1

Individualism or collectivism—which of these ideas is correct? Which has the facts [though that’s not a word I would use here] on its side?

Individualism does, and we can see this at every level of philosophic inquiry: from metaphysics, the branch of philosophy concerned with the fundamental nature of reality; to epistemology, the branch concerned with the nature and means of knowledge; to ethics, the branch concerned with the nature of value and proper human action; to politics, the branch concerned with a proper social system.

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ORIGINAL: bounty44

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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to put that in perspective--the taxpayers are paying union leaders to bargain & lobby, hold meetings, do union training, etc, all the while not doing their ACTUAL jobs while they are engaged in those activities.

Absolutely horrendous bullshit. Union people were paid by the union, not the district, and worked at their union jobs full time. At no time was class time used. Fucking, ignorant lies.

I don't know if this is the same case/state/ phydeaux had referenced or not, but here it is.

http://capitalresearch.org/2013/02/official-time-taxpayers-paying-for-union-work-is-officially-a-scam/

its called "release time" and yeah, you were not only wrong as others have pointed out (and that you should have understood from the very first post on it since it was a court case) but you were also abusively so and need to apologize.