Ohio’s SB5, changing collective-bargaining for public employees, is difficult, no doubt about it. While I have only been the member of a union for a few months in my years of working, it’s understandable why people unionize.
Let’s be honest. While all employees are not saints, neither is all management. Just as unions have at times gone too far in their demands, management has done the same.
Still, it’s hard to believe that without substantial change, whether of collective bargaining, government programs, or outright elimination of some duties that government has undertaken over the years, we will not get our fiscal house in order.
While there seems to be some doubt whether government employees are at or above their private-sector counterparts in pay, there seems to be little confusion in the area of benefits – both how much is to be received and the percentage of contributions. Government employees look to have better benefits even as they contribute less toward those benefits.
And job security is generally greater. They accepted somewhat lower pay, at least in earlier days, in exchange for that security, we’ve been told.
Now, there have been many illustrations of unions agreeing to wage/benefit cuts/freezes in order to help difficult budget situations. They should be commended for doing so. However, that this is seen as such a great contribution underscores their impact on public budgets.
Civil service laws are ignored, too, when unions make their case that only they protect their members. Besides, should SB5 pass, any efforts by administrators that are seen as making life more dangerous or onerous for public employees will be front-page news. While enough voters might give SB5 the benefit of the doubt, they will surely recoil if it is used punitively.
But, ultimately, it seems SB5 is about who is in charge. Is it the elected officials and administrators, who are to be agents of the “owners” of the government, the citizens and taxpayers? Or is it the public employees — more specifically in this case, the public-employee unions?
While all of “Stretching the School Dollar” is a fascinating read, the following is especially germane:
“The influence of teachers and teacher unions in local school politics has important consequences for educational productivity and for efforts to improve it in response to fiscal pressures. In the majority of school districts nationwide which engage in formal contract negotiations with unionized employees, the collective bargaining process provides teachers unions with a unique venue through which to shape district policy.
“Topics typically covered in teacher collective bargaining agreements range from the bread-and-butter issues of salaries and benefits to procedures for teacher evaluation, allowances for preparation time, limitations on student contact time and class size, and a host of other work rules that structure everyday practices in the district’s schools.
“Indeed, the 199 contracts on file at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in January 2005 spanned, on average, 105 pages. Their sheer scope ensures that virtually any attempt to change an established policy or practice will conflict with the contract in some way and therefore require union approval. Accordingly, even researchers who downplay the role of teacher unions as a proactive force shaping district policy generally acknowledge that they have the ability to veto major policy changes.”
And this comes after a section explaining the political power that teachers and unions have in elections. Following it is a section that describes what happened in New York City when coffers were flush. The then-chancellor negotiated, over several years, contract changes that included “shorter summers, a six-period work day, streamlined grievance procedures, and a reinstatement of a policy under which teachers patrolled school lunchrooms.”
See, collective bargaining works. (Though one wonders how teachers ever got out of patrolling lunchrooms.) Or does it?
“Yet he was only able to convince United Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten to go along with these changes by agreeing to increase teacher salaries by more than 40 percent….
“In a subsequent negotiation, [the superintendent] won union approval for a modest merit pay program for schools serving low-income students only by agreeing to modify pension policies such that a twenty-five-year veteran could retire at age fifty-five, rather than sixty-two, with 50 percent of her salary guaranteed for life.”
SB5 might not be the best approach. But unless changes are quite substantial, we will continue down the path of ever increasing, i.e. unsustainable, costs. At some point, that path will end. As many see it today, it already has.
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A very fair and impartial look at the situation today. I commend you. I wish all those whose damning words against SB5 would have only read the bill and understood what is trying to be done. Perhaps only when pockets are completely emptied and jobs are totally gone will they understand.