The theme song for this week’s Labor Blog Roundup is brought to you by BareNaked Ladies and Ezra Klein.

While Kevin Carey is blogging about Roger Clemens, let’s point to Ken Rosenthal on players’ union’s opposition to testing: “The union does not trust the owners to administer such programs honestly…” I think that’s a good answer to why unions oppose a lot of manager-centered reform. To underline the point, the owners are still busy punishing Marvin Miller and letting flunkies into the Hall of Fame. It’s easy to say “unions don’t want to change, and we should empower managers to do what’s right.”  But the answer is often in finding ways to change that acknowledge that management is at least as much a part of the problem as anyone.

Union Review has a nice piece on GOP presidential candidates answering a debate question on unions.  No one wanted to actually say “our goal is to make unions as few and as weak as possible.” But that’s what the head of the National Labor Relations Board basically said when he told Congress that “the pendulum has moved from the left to the right” in a recent hearing. “Left” here means the policy that people should have a union if they want, regardless of what the boss wants. Chris Bowers, writing for the AFL, has some awesome blogging on this referencing his work as an AFT organizer.  And AFL has links to video

In long strikes, people, ironically trained by t.v. writers to expect half hour conflict resolution, become impatient.  No matter how much they support the strikers, a “pox on both their houses” attitude develops, and management works this angle. The Writers Guild has done an awesome job in getting out their message, but we are heading for a crunch time. This is when real solidarity tells.  The Ben Franklin line about hanging together, lest you hang separately is right on here. For educators, the strike’s lesson is that if you become divided you are weaker and poorer for it, and your craft will suffer. 

As we head into the holiday season, adjunct faculty members at Pace University in NYC are still without a first contract.  Kids who were in their intro courses four years ago now have college degrees, and management still tries to delay.  It’s my fervent holiday wish for the ghost of Christmas present to pay the board a visit.  I suspect posting will be light around here until the new year, so for those of you not on the boards of organizations that are sticking it to the working people, I wanted to wish you a good holiday season and happy new year.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When school started this year, bus drivers in one of our local unions in Louisiana, the Caddo Federation of Teachers and Support Personnel, collected data on the temperatures in their buses. They found cases where the thermometer hit more than 110 degrees.  The union took this information to the school board in an effort to get some relief, for both the drivers and the children.

The district’s response to the union raising the issue was to ban the conducting of surveys or studies on school grounds without the permission of the administration.  Under this rule, the only facts allowed will be school board approved facts.  Don’t ask about student discipline, the condition of the physical plant, whether the textbooks are OK. Unless, of course, the school board wants you to know the answer.  Note to Caddo School board: First rule when you’re in a hole is to stop digging.  Or maybe it’s “don’t shoot the messenger.”

The Caddo Federation is running a campaign to call attention to this problem and to get it fixed. Their website is ungagoureducators.org.  Click on the picture of the billboard above to see a local news story from KTBS-3 about this fight that includes a sound bite from Caddo president Jackie Lansdale.  I’m a bit late to this, but Louisiana bloggers Jimmy Couvillion and Greg Aymond are covering it. I wouldn’t have called the ban “Gestapo-like” but Aymond makes a good point that this doesn’t jibe with at least the spirit of the state’s whistleblower laws.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

First up on this week’s labor blog roundup:  Becks’ is right to ask why, on Black Friday, we need to make retail workers get up before 4 AM?  No wonder H&M workers have decided to join UFCW. 

The Broadway stagehands have ended their strike. And the writers are staying strong.  So are most late night talk show hosts. David Letterman’s paying his writers through the end of the year, and Jay Leno has been on the picket line for the writers.  It turns out that Leno would cancel a personal appearance rather than be associated with the union busters at Jackson Lewis. (Do we know anyone who may lack this character? hmmm). The rest of these shows have stopped production, with one exception. Not only is Carson Daly a rat, he’s suborning his family to scab. Friend of the blog Elana Levin has some links to the best WGA videos for you to check out as well.

Nurses in Kansas City bucked a management “no” campaign to vote to join AFT’s Nurses United, and we’ve got more on charter school organizing in New York here.  In other news dealers at Foxwoods have voted to go union. And, for my friends in the building trades, there’s a better chance that charter schools in New York will at least be built at union wage rates.

Also, a couple of people asked me about my post with the giant inflatable rat. For the uninitiated, it’s a traditional prop used to demonstrate at non-union construction worksites (think “rat contractors”).  It also has a cult following.  The Late Show Writers' Blog has more. 

I want to leave you with a final thought from an op-ed in the Detroit News by David Hecker, president of AFT-Michigan: 

We hear it all the time: Organized labor is just a "special interest. They only care about themselves." Why single out unions in a negative way as a special interest?

It is an attempt to turn the union into a "third party," to undercut support. The intent is to make people think the union is something other than its members, and that the union looks out for "itself" and nothing else.

The truth, of course, is that a union is its members, and the members are the community.

Have a good weekend everyone

Posted by Ed at AFT at 02:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

 Jobs with Justice is accepting nominations for your favorite greedy Grinch who "does the most harm to working families."  Last year, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company nosed out Smithfield Tar Heel, a pork slaughterhouse in North Carolina, for the title, but my guess is that Smithfield may take the crown (or elf hat) this year. The Justice at Smithfield campaign has done a great job of drawing attention to their issues by going after the Food Channel's Paula Deen, a spokesperson for Smithfield.  Just this morning, Diane Rehm put Deen on the spot about Smithfield while Deen was trying to hawk her new cookbook.  dhfsfc at The Daily Kos covers the Rehm show interview here, Anna Burger at The Huffington Post last spring here.  I think The Reliable Source is right--Deen may be the next Kathy Lee Gifford. And, as a commenter at the Daily Kos notes, "You should boycott Paula Deen simply because her dishes equal heart disease on a plate."

Be sure to cast your vote before November 30th! (I voted for Deen.)

Posted by Michele at 02:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s early still, but I've seldom seen a strike being carried out as effectively as the one by our brothers and sisters in the Writer's Guild.   WGA is doing a great job of explaining their issues. They understand their struggle. They have organized themselves from top to bottom, with folks like Tina Fey, Julia Louis Dreyfus, Wanda Sykes, Zach Braff etc all on the line along with folks who wrote for Mr. Ed and are focusing just on keeping their health insurance.  They've been  media savvy and funny. They’ve built their coalitions well. Not only are the stars walking the picket line but Teamsters are turning their trucks around rather than cross.

It helps that the writers appear to be getting screwed. I hope that where we are as a country right now makes a lot of people more appreciative of the act of standing up for yourself and those around you than might have been the case a while ago. As for the Steve Carell reference, God bless him. Russo asks if  the strike is getting better coverage than teacher strikes because the media are writers too. It doesn’t hurt. As for why David Duchovny isn’t walking the line in Seneca Valley or Lehman? It’s a long commute and he’s never asked any teachers to take notes on how to punch up Mulder’s dialogue.  Really, it’s not his community, so it’s not fair to expect it to be his beat.

In other labor news, professional union baiter Richard Berman told a meeting of right wingers in Nevada that he’d secured funding from some sucker opponent of teacher unionism to run a lot of negative tv ads about teacher unions. Can’t wait. Berman’s gig is starting to remind me of this.  In happier news, Green Dot is in fact coming to NYC and the UFT is working with them. More on that to come.

Last month the National Labor Relations Board took another step to make it harder for workers in the private sector to have a union.  These are the same people who brought us this word from Steven Colbert.   On November 15, we’ll be rallying at the NLRB. You should be too.

Finally I want to link to a blog put together by Alan Lubin, who is one of the leaders of our New York State affiliate, NYSUT. Alan’s blog is about a trip with a labor delegation to the US-Mexico border in El Paso. One exerpt:

“One worker showed us his pay sheet for the day. He picked 73 baskets of chili peppers. He worked 7 hours today and was credited by his employer for 5 hours. He can't complain or go elsewhere because he would be blacklisted if he did.”

And that's in America. We'll have another labor blog round up in a week or so.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 02:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the big pieces of news in the world of labor this week is that Governor Bill Ritter of Colorado announced that he would sign an executive order to allow state employees in Colorado the right to a form of collective bargaining.  I thought this was very good news, but Dean Singleton, the owner of one of Colorado’s major newspapers, seems to have  disagreed.  The Denver Post had a frothing front page editorial that left readers feeling spittle flecked after they were done with it.  My favorite part: 

"When Coloradans elected Bill Ritter as governor, they thought they were getting a modern-day version of Roy Romer, a pro-business Democrat. Instead, they got Jimmy Hoffa."

And you didn’t think the Teamsters were going to try to represent state employees. Oops, that wasn’t what the Post meant.  Instead they were engaging in some good old fashioned union baiting. Because, you know, it hurts the bottom line when state employees have a voice at work.  The Post even called Governor Ritter a “bag man.”  I didn’t know that the man purse was such a controversial item in the Rockies.   Yes, I kid. Because this needs to be mocked.  

Jerome Armstrong has a nice bit of summing up with links to a number Colorado blogs.   Check out Jim Spencer  (“Who does he think he is, Hearst?”), Colorado Confidential has reaction from the governor’s office, and Square State looks at how the actual plan, as reported in the Post, is really not the criminal conspiracy that the editorial implies. 

Joe Williams once wrote that he didn’t realize there were so many union busters until he started reading this blog.  Well Joe, by now it won’t surprise you to find out that Dean Singleton is another.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With the world series upon us, we need some baseball labor blogging.  Over the summer I read the late Bill Veeck’s autobiography, Veeck as in Wreck. People remember him for sending Eddie Gaedel (pictured) up to bat when he owned the St. Louis Browns.  He actually hired Gaedel for a variety of promotions, but this is the one people remember.

What struck me, reading the book, was that Veeck was a man of the people, and he had a trade unionist’s heart. In the 1930s, while he was still an employee and not an owner, he organized a vendors union in Chicago so that the people selling crackerjack and beer “would be guaranteed a living wage and the clubs would be guaranteed a professional working force.”  He also tried to put together a couple of deals with unions to buy ball clubs, including a negotiation with Walter Reuther (and after that, with James Hoffa Sr.) over a partnership to buy the Detroit Tigers. I think the UAW strike fund could still afford to make that purchase. Veeck passed away in 1986, but his son Mike won an award for best promotion in a minor league ballpark this year.

Also, if you are interested in a book on the labor struggles within baseball, John Helyar’s Lords of the Realm is a great read.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I guess Mike Antonucci slept through the Cold War if he is surprised that a writer at The Nation would be critical of an Al Shanker biography.  That said, the Nation review is definitely worth a look, not because it gets it all right, but because in the back story is the ideological divide among the Left. (How many times can Sugrue imply that Shanker wasn't really a Socialist?)  I hope Leo Casey weighs in.  Recommended reading: If I Had Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left by Maurice Isserman. And, you really can find just about anything on YouTube.

Posted by Michele at 06:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not sure who is behind this AFSCME video, but it's pretty funny. And, while the message lacks, shall we say, panache, it's true that AFSCME members are a hard-working bunch. Ezra Klein highlighted the video while I was on maternity leave--check out the comments.

Posted by Michele at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's funny that Michele posted on the lead paint in toys from China situation today. We just had a blood test for my 9 month old daughter that will look at her lead levels. It's a routine thing, but I was still especially glad it was happening, given her propensity to put all plastic objects in her mouth, and the recent news.  The Steelworkers have started a campaign to better protect kids from imported toys with high lead levels. Check it out.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 10:48 AM | Permalink

Like most parents, I am alarmed by the multiple recall of toys made in China found to contain lead paint.  And, as most parents know, finding toys not made in China is no easy task. It's important to look for alternatives, though, not just because toys made in China can be hazerdous to your child's health.  As the American Educator documented back in 2002, the working conditions in China's toy factories are horrendous. Make yourself read the article--we all could use a reminder about the human cost of cheap toys.

Posted by Michele at 07:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

if the American labor movement isn't part of the curriculum.

Posted by John at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After reading this phrase over at the Rain's blog:

"Two pages later there's an article about the Seattle EA alliance with the AFL-CIO; again, not exactly New Unionism."

All I could think on behalf of my brothers and sisters in Washington was: "Hey Rain, I got your new unionism right here..."  Then I couldn't stop laughing.

Really, when the Seattle chapter of NEA joins the AFL-CIO it means that they'll be members of the same state organization as those knuckledragging IT contractors and other folks at Washtech, the engineers who make Boeing go, and of course, the AFT members on the faculty at several community colleges and campuses of the University of Washington.  As the economy and workforce changes, so does the union movement.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 09:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Advocates of outsourcing, in schools and in other public institutions, usually argue that it will brings lower costs and better services. That efficiency argument usually falls apart under scrutiny.  But one certain outcome of outsourcing is that it puts more distance between public officials and accountability.  They can always blame the private company if something goes wrong. 

Which is what happened in West Aurora, Illinois, where the district outsourced transportation of special education students.  The Chicago Tribune reports that a school bus aide stole $17 worth of food and left the scene via a school bus.  "A spokesperson said the West Aurora School District conducts criminal background checks on employees and expects contractors to do the same."

No one was hurt, the theft was petty, and the "getaway school bus" is funny.  So let's just enjoy the laugh and not think too much about the other kinds of criminals who can end up near children when school officials turn to outsourcing and vendors decide to save money by not doing background checks.

Posted by John at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some Stanford law students want reduced hours and reduced pay as law firm associates. A writer at CALI’s pre-law blog notes “I doubt this… will garner a lot of sympathy when the workers are already making $100,000+ a year.”  But it’s a good thing to want the right balance between work and home and a better thing to act to get it.

It’s labor history week in California, and newly elected CFT Secretary Treasurer Dennis Smith has a post on the California Progress Report about both the week and instructional materials on labor history. CFT has a tradition of great work on this subject.

Sherman Dorn rocks.  Not that he didn’t before he became an officer in his local.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s experiences with the teachings of Chicago community organizer Sol Alinsky have sparked renewed discussion of organizing generally.  Marshall Gans, Heather Booth, Zack Exley and Nathan Newman have at it over at TPM Café.

Martin Luther King was shot while helping sanitation workers in Memphis to stand up for themselves by forming a union. It happened 39 years and one day ago. That union, AFSCME’s local 1733, is still in Memphis.  In commemoration, AFL-CIO’s blog has a great post about Dr. King’s work and the need to keep going.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 04:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stephen King is alright with me.  If you’ve read the writer Joe Hill’s book The Heart Shaped Box, you might have thought it funny that he had the same name as Joe Hill aka Joseph Hillstrom – the turn of the century labor activist and song writer.  The original Hill wrote “There is Power in a Union” among other songs. It turns out that The Heart Shaped Box was written by Joseph Hillstrom King, the son of writers Stephen and Tabitha King, who named their child after the legendary labor activist.  The pseudonym “Joe Hill” came from the younger King’s desire not to trade on the family name.

The Blogging of the Employee Free Choice Act. In this week’s edition,  DR at the Bellman takes up the issue of EFCA opponents who, like the Washington Post, agree there is a problem with managers firing union-friendly employees but don’t like the remedy of majority recognition (aka “card check”).  DR appears to be offering Mickey Kaus the alternative of having every worksite in America conduct a secret ballot representation election every five years.

The Healthcare Hustle. Working for America – which is the community action affiliate of the AFL-CIO – has a new campaign on healthcare. They are looking to hear from people who have been the victims of our inability to provide healthcare for all. Most AFT members have pretty good healthcare benefits, but there are some – particularly lower wage school support workers – for whom this is still not the case. If you know someone who has had a tough time with our healthcare system, tell them about the site, called the Healthcare Hustle.  For more, see Daily Kos.

Speed Matters.  Do you know how slow your Internet connection really is? The Communications Workers of America wants you to know and they’ve set up a site that lets you test it out. My speed was pretty good for an American network, but not a Japanese one. CWA is hoping to use this site to promote the need for new investments to expand broadband.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Much has been written already about Apple Computers CEO Steve Jobs' attempt to reconcile the co-existence of evil (teacher unions) and God. I was asked to share the AFT's views on the Book of Job with Rick Hess at this week's Education Gadfly Show Podcast. Our take: Jobs should accept our   invitation to visit some public schools with AFT President Ed McElroy where the union and the district are collaborating to improve teaching and learning conditions.

I know what you're thinking--didn't she previously make fun of the Gadfly podcasts?  Yes, it's true.  The podcasts do remind me of watching folks let loose and try to party at the Republican National Convention. I will let you be the judge of whether my presence on the show is an improvement. 

P.S. If you want to skip past Rick Hess calling Britney Spears a skank, my interview starts at the 12 minute mark.

Posted by Michele at 01:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Update: The Boston Globe reports that the administration rescinded its proposal to raise class sizes, delaying a strike vote by the Boston Teachers Union, whose president, Richard Stutman told the Globe, "Our goal is not to disrupt.  Our goal is to settle this contract."

The issue of class size is playing out differently in the labor negotiations in two districts.  In Boston, where talks are down to the wire, one of the stumbling blocks is a proposal by the district to raise class sizes.  On the left coast, the LA school district and the union have reached a tentative agreement which includes a proposal to reduce class size.  Stay tuned.

Posted by Michele at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wanted to take a moment to bring some attention to some of the more interesting stuff going on out there in the labor part of the blogosphere.

Dr Homeslice’s blog has a new feature: a teacher strike watch list. Thanks to the Doctor I know to send my best wishes to teachers in Lee County Arkansas, who have been without raises for three years. 

Paul in VA has a diary at Raising Kaine that gets at a lot of issues concerning the Employee Free Choice Act. One we'll be looking at here soon is the issue of employers who, when faced with a newly unionized workforce decide not to negotiate in good faith.

Ms Olivia writes about Costco coming out to support a higher minimum wage.  Costco is one of the few big companies in America that have managed to avoid taking the Wal-Mart influenced low road in employment relations.

A few people you might have heard of have lent a hand in an AFT organizing drive in New Jersey.  AFL-CIO Now has the details. 

Mike in Texas –- who is legally denied the protection of a union contract -- blogs about the problem of how to hold the powerful accountable when you are pretty powerless.

Finally, I want to say farewell to Confined Space, which was Jordan Barab’s blog.  I’ve blogged before about the work Jordan has done bringing workplace safety issues to the fore, busting the union busters and chronicling our broader struggle.  Jordan’s moving on to the House Labor and Education committee staff and will have no time for blogging.  His final line? "What force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one?"

Posted by Ed at AFT at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In trolling around the various education blogs, you come across a fair amount of anti-union sentiment among some bloggers and commenters (see the comments on this post over at Jenny D.). Chief among the critique of teachers unions is the disbelief that the unions can represent teachers' professional interests. 

When time permits, I engage with these bloggers and commenters and try to point out concrete examples of places where local unions are working towards professionalization of the teaching profession.  Sometimes the response I get is something like, "Yeah, well, not very many local unions are doing it, so it doesn't really matter."  Other times, the response if more like this blurb from an edition of the Education Gadfly where, instead of crediting a local union for taking a step in the right direction, they criticize the local for not going further.

If someone has had a personally negative experience with their local union president or vehemently disagrees with how the union has approached bargaining or another issue within the district, I have little hope of changing their views.  But with education policy types, I do hold onto some sense of optimism that I might provide information to at least get them thinking.

To that point: One of the main reasons why more local unions have not taken up a specific professional policies or practices--or haven't gone further on an issue--is because of the lack of trust that is embedded into the educational system.  If you don't have trust, you can't do interest-based bargaining (IBB) which is defined as:

. . . a process that enables traditional negotiators to become joint problem-solvers. It assumes that mutual gain is possible, that solutions which satisfy mutual interests are more durable, that the parties should help each other achieve a positive result.

The components necessary to IBB are:

1. In a collective bargaining environment, evidence of labor-management cooperation during the past contract term.
2. Sufficient time remaining prior to contract expiration to complete the sequence of decision-making about IBB, training and application of the process.
3. Willingness of the parties to fully share relevant bargaining information.
4. Willingness to forgo power as the sole method of "winning."
5. Understanding and acceptance of the process by all participants and their constituents.

Simply put, these components are not in place in enough school districts across the country for IBB to occur.  Until they are in place, it's unrealistic to expect more widespread adoption of policies and practices that will advance the teaching profession.

Posted by Michele at 03:00 PM | Permalink

I almost feel sorry for the shrillest shouters in the right-wing echo chamber.  The facts aren't on their side, they've lost allies in Congress, and their views are so far out of the mainstream that they can't even squeeze their way into much of the media's he-said-she-said coverage of issues. 

Two* of the shouters have found a solution, though:  Take out ridiculous full-page ads in the A section of the Washington Post. 

The Employment Policies Institute's ad argues against an increase in the minimum wage, even though the vast majority of Americans support an increase. The Institute is funded by the fast-food industry and is the brain child of lobbyist Rick Berman.  Sourcewatch's description of the organization offers a clue about the quality of the research cited in the ad:

In 1995, EPI lashed out at Princeton University professors David Card and Alan Krueger, after they published a survey of fast-food restaurants which found no loss in the number of jobs in New Jersey after implementing an increase in the state's minimum wage. Berman accused Card and Krueger of using bad data, citing contrary figures that his own institute had collected from some of the same restaurants. But whereas Card and Krueger had surveyed 410 restaurants, Berman's outfit only collected data from 71 restaurants and has refused to make its data publicly available so that other researchers can assess whether it "cherry-picked" restaurants to create a sample that would support its predetermined conclusions.

Claiming you have research while failing to disclose the data is akin to saying, "I have here in my hand a list of 205 people that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party...." 

Which brings us to the second wing-nutty ad, courtesy of the anti-union group UnionFacts.org.  The ad, arguing against the Employee Free Choice Act, includes photos of communist leaders Kim Jong Il and Fidel Castro, alongside a photo of Bruce Raynor, a union president.  This ad is wrong not only because of the red-baiting but because ultimately it argues that employers should be allowed to continue harrassing and firing workers simply because they want to form a union.  Hey, wing-nut, here's a real union fact: "More working people than ever—some 57 million—say they would join a union if they had a chance, according to a survey from Peter D. Hart Research Associates." 

For those wondering how anti-union forces would respond to their loss of influence as a result of the November elections, these ads provide a clue: McCarthyism, paid ads and fake research.

*UPDATE courtesy of my colleague Ed:  Sourcewatch lists Rick Berman as the executive director of both organizations, which share the same address.

Posted by John at 03:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I posted yesterday about EPI’s economic agenda.  Their work is important because things in the American economy aren’t working.  And we need change. For example:

• I know that there are people who think that teacher tenure should be done away with so that we can get the same efficient system in use in the corporate sector. I’m all for it, as long as teachers, as dismissed classroom CEO’s, get the same sort of deal as Bob Nardelli, dismissed CEO of Home Depot. His parachute is worth $200 million.
• Wal-Mart has come up with a just-in-time scheduling system for its workforce that will mean that Associates are more unsure of when they’ll work and that those who can’t be flexible to seasonal changes in sales data will get less work or no work. Wal-Mart’s work force is larger than the US Army, so that’s an awful lot of people with new insecurities (see here and here).
• This new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research underlines that American corporate management, when faced with workers trying to exercise their democratic rights, has adopted a policy of willfully violating federal law. And, in fact, this is an increasing trend, not a declining one. If you are a worker in a shop with an organizing campaign, there is now close to a 2 percent chance that you will be fired illegally.  Way to go, Corporate America.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My friends* at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) have been working for a while on a rather detailed policy road map for the nation. Late last year I got a preview of this agenda at a presentation the EPI team made at the AFL-CIO--and its good stuff..   The first part of the work was unveiled at an event last week on healthcare by Jacob Hacker. (For some blog reaction on this proposal see Ezra Klein .)  Newly-elected Senator Jim Webb of Virginia took part in the event. Among his comments: "We measure the health of a society not simply by what the stock market is doing, but whether the people who are doing the work of society are truly receiving a fair share.” It’s the sort of thing that should go without saying, and yet it doesn't.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Dan 

Kudos to the U.S. House of Representatives for passing a minimum wage bill yesterday by an overwhelming 315-116 margin. The issue now moves to the Senate, where there will be pressure to dilute the bill with special-interest giveaways.  The AFT and other labor groups are pressing for a clean bill, free of corporate tax breaks and other “poison pill” amendments.

Increasing the minimum wage from its current $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour by 2009 is long overdue and a matter of basic fairness.  But there are other positive implications that don’t always get attention. For instance, a strong body of research shows the indisputable connection between socioeconomic status and student achievement, with the grim reality being that poor students, on average, lag far behind their affluent peers. A higher minimum wage is certainly no panacea, but to the extent that it lifts some families out of poverty and puts the nation on a path to real living wages, it will be a good thing for poor kids and their chances at academic success.

Speaking of living wages, the Memphis City Council recently passed the first living wage law in Tennessee history, a triumph that undoubtedly would have pleased the late Dr. King, who lost his life while supporting striking sanitation workers in that city.

Posted by Guest at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Funny thing about being a teacher, you tend to get sick more than the average bear, especially if you teach the 12 and under set. (Since my son started day care, he has certainly been sick more often, as has the whole family.) And, since most elementary school teachers are women, they tend to be the ones who have to take time off of work when their own kids are sick.  Oh, and there is that biological inconvenience known as being pregnant--lots of doctor's appointment for that one!*

So, what to make of Marguerite Roza's assertion that teachers take too many sick days?  I would conclude that she never taught elementary school.

What's that you say--Roza has more substantative things to say in her new Ed Sector report that demand a response? 

Let's get serious--this report is just another in a series of attacks on seniority and the salary schedule by Ed Sector and the Center on Reinventing Public Education. The rest is just window dressing. So, I pose the same question to Marguerite Roza (or anyone at Ed Sector who wants to take it up) that I posed to Terry Moe five years ago when he was on a Hoover Institution panel on teacher pay: If private schools can pay teachers any way that they want, why do two-thirds of them use a salary schedule that includes years of experience as the basis of pay? Moe did not have an answer, by the way.

AFT's offical press release here.

Posted by Michele at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, the new searchable database of collective bargaining agreements for the 50 largest school districts is up at the National Council on Teacher Quality.  I checked it out, comparing two big districts on differential pay and teacher evaluation.  Several columns came back with "not stated" as the answer, not too helpful.  Other answers on the school calendar and such are more straightforward.

I'm always impressed by large data gathering efforts--I guess that's the policy wonk in me--and I suppose there are some researchers out there who want this kind of thing (although I can't really picture your average parent using it).  But, having worked on too many 50-state reports in my career (what a pain those are!), it always seems like something is missing from such reports and databases--namely, the context.  I appreciate the desire to have simple, yes/no tables where you can compare similar information, but collective bargaining agreements, like state laws, are created in politically-charged environments that differ in important ways.  No database will ever be able to truly capture that dynamic.

On whether the database provides more transparency, it's hard to say.  As Eduwonk himself noted a while back, the contracts for 38 of the 50 largest districts were already available online at either the union or district Web sites.  I guess there is some value in having them located all in one place, and there is the comparison feature.  I wonder, though, whether a parent in New York really cares about comparing the district's contract with that in Philadelphia, but I guess now they can.

Update: Sherman Dorn weighs in here.

Posted by Michele at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The United Steelworkers (USW) and Good Year reached a tentative agreement that was, according to the AFL-CIO blog, "endorsed by the USW’s Goodyear Policy Committee, made up of local union leaders from the company’s master contract facilities throughout the U.S.  Members at these locations will vote at ratification meetings in their communities on December 28." Get the rest of the story here.

Here's hoping that 2007 is better year for Goodyear workers! 

Posted by Michele at 02:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Update: And the winner is--Goodyear!

Jobs with Justice is gathering votes for its sixth annual Grinch of the Year award honoring the "national figure that does the most harm to working families."  The two worthy nominees this year are Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company and Smithfield Tar Heel, a pork slaughterhouse in North Carolina. It's a tough call--to help you decide, check out this video, "Merry Christmas to Goodyear" and read about the working conditions at the Smithfield plant.  I know, I know, you'd like to vote for both, but be sure to vote for one before Christmas! 

Posted by Michele at 01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Beth 

The latest edition of American Educator features a package of articles featuring teacher unions being on the right side of reform. My favorite among them is one about a DC teacher/whistleblower trying to stop grade alteration at a prominent DC high school. His persistence results in a demotion of sorts, but he reflects:

Without the union contract, and especially the building representative and rules for grade changes that the contract gives me, I would not have a foundation for opposing the mismanagement that stands in the way of improving my school and increasing the value of its diploma. The union and the contract allow teachers to be agents of accountability and to be professionals in the service of educational integrity.

I suggest reading the whole article and following it up with a viewing of this video about another great teacher in DC.

Posted by Guest at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the midst of the current imbroglio re: unions and charter schools, Diane Ravitch reminds us of why teachers need unions in the Winter 2007 edition of American Educator. And, last time I checked, ties to the Hoover Institution and the Brookings Institution don't provide street cred as a union goon.

Posted by Michele at 04:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Update: I Thought a Think blogged on the court case last Thursday and says the Evergreen Freedom Foundation has better PR than the WEA. 

I had to catch up on some paperwork this morning, so I took the opportunity to listen to The Education Gadfly podcast for the first time ever.  Eduwonk describes it accurately--listening to the podcast is a "herniating experience."

I have to give the Fordham fellas kudos, though, for nailing an interview with William F. Buckley, even though it sounded like he was talking through cheesecloth.  That wasn't Buckley?

If you tune in, you can also hear the Fordham fellas screw up the details of the upcoming Washington Education Association Supreme Court case. I guess that's what happens when you rely on the Wall Street Journal for your coverage of teachers unions.  Get the facts here.

Posted by Michele at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A while back Ezra Klein  had a post wondering why David Card of Princeton did not take a more active role in advancing the minimum wage, given his work in that area.  Now he's posted an excerpt from an interview where Card says.

I've subsequently stayed away from the minimum wage literature for a number of reasons. First, it cost me a lot of friends. People that I had known for many years, for instance, some of the ones I met at my first job at the University of Chicago, became very angry or disappointed. They thought that in publishing our work we were being traitors to the cause of economics as a whole.

Ezra's response is "Well isn't that rough?"  I agree with his broader point.  But having lived in the academic world, I have some sympathy for Card. I know some people in academia who used to work on the voucher issue back in the day.  Like Card, they have shied away from public engagement for a couple of reasons.  One is that the politics is rough, and the other side is not just going to look for ways to impeach your work.  Yes, people will get funding specifically to do so.  But it's not just the specifics of your ideas that will be attacked. Your credibility will be as well. Paul Peterson and company's multi-year assault on John Witte, wherein Witte's work on vouchers was explicitly compared to one of the circles of hell in The Inferno, comes to mind. 

I also remember a job talk from my graduate student days in American Government, where the candidate was coming not from an academic institution but from Capitol Hill.  He wasn't conversant in the most recent developments in the academic literature, and that was and should have been a strike against him. But it was also clear to me that the sheen of the real world was not seen as a desirable quality by the faculty.  This guy's additions to the conversation were not things that were valued by the institutional incentive instructure of the department or the university.  I think the same dynamic applies on many campuses. I pretty much agree with the recovering economist in Philadelphia that people should find ways not to let the man get them down, but I think this is a more daunting challenge than Ezra implies.

While I'm at it, I'll also note that Ezra is right that more Kipp in and of itself isn't something to fear. KIPP got its start in my old local, UFT, before there was a charter school law.  Adapting and trying to figure out how to scale up elements of the KIPP model makes sense, both for a lot of traditional public schools and the vast majority of charter schools that don't have a model like this.  (My markers, like Michele's, concern paying teachers for the extra time and trying to figure out where the wall between work and the rest of their life should be.  This is where we separate the real charter school supporters from the Taboristas). But if the market forces driving Kipp will largely be about parental self-selection, rather than a desire for excellence, it will have a broader effect that will offset some of the benefits of the KIPP program itself. I think there are better ways to handle these tradeoffs than we are currently using.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Update: Will Bunch of the Philadelphia News has put up a diary at Daily Kos on just this subject. The reporters at the News and Inquirer are within hours of a strike (you can read about it at their own web site www.philapapers.com).  Bunch writes:

Our pay is OK, but it's not as high as most of the future lawyers or investment bankers we sat next to in college; we chose a profession that is fun but also a valuable service to communities, partly because we were promised a secure career with a safety net -- the safety net that Brian Tierney and his millionaire partners want to take away from us. As for losing pension money, do two wrongs make a right? Just because other workers lost that battle, that doesn't mean we should give up now, not when our new bosses haven't even yet tried the creative kind of solutions that could actually grow revenue, an approach that will require teamwork, and not bitter employees spending most of the day updating their resumes -- which is what will happen in Philly if this goes through.

In a lot of ways this could have been written about teachers or any other worker in America.

Jordan Barab has a post up at Firedoglake about the strike by 15,000 members of the United Steelworkers. They are fighting Goodyear’s efforts to close one of its plants and strip retirees of healthcare benefits. This fight is a microcosm of many of the current struggles for American workers. Make sure to check out the video clip in Jordan's post as well.

The Steelworkers fight, and others like it, provide an important backdrop to discussions of public employee benefits. The struggles of workers in the private sector have been exploited by politicians such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and, now, certain members of the New Jersey legislature, to try to generate a pseudo-populist attack on public benefits. Rather than address our society’s retreat from a social contract that includes employer provided pensions and healthcare, this method uses an attack on public sector benefits to distract from these issues.

My friend Jon Shure of the New Jersey Policy perspective, had a commentary on this issue in the Jersey section of the New York Times this past weekend. He finished by writing:

If government workers are seen as tax eaters stealing from taxpayers, we all will lose. Public sector benefits will be ratcheted down to the inadequate level of the private sector, and there will no longer be a standard to which to aspire. We'll have chosen the low road of reduced costs and pitifully little security, and after a while no one will be left who remembers a better way.

Abraham Lincoln made the same point when he wrote "Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."

Even so, it’s be foolish to think that what happens to the Steelworkers won’t have an effect on AFT members, or anyone else. All of us, no matter what sort of house we live in, have a stake in this fight.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 02:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I wanted to give a shout out to Brad Plumer for doing some of the best labor blogging around. In recent days he’s examined the Employee Free Choice Act (aka majority authorization, aka Card Check) an issue near and dear to my heart (see here, and see Ezra Klein too). You should also check out Plumer’s posts on how changing the Democratic primary process helps the labor movement, and how the recent tragic deaths of coal miners are related to legal limits on the United Mine Workers’ ability to use strikes to compel employers to enforce safety standards. It is the failure of companies and regulatory agencies to enforce these standards absent the threat of a strike that led to the deaths of these miners. That and Plumer smacks down the Wal-Mart philosophy here too. That’s a whole blog roundup in itself.

Posted by Ed at AFT at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Update: After this blast from Kevin Carey at The Quick and the Ed, Leo Casey at Edwize goes all Mr. Tyzik on Carey, very effectively I might add. "I'm crushing your head! I'm crushing your head!"- Michele

Another Connecting the Dots from EdSector. Last time, when looking at NEA, Joe Williams connected more dots than he needed.  This time Hassel and Toch leave some unconnected. I'm not sure how you can talk about the Waltons in any part of education and not specifically mention All Children Matter or the rest of the rightwing infrastructure they support. But my point is that the discussion of the Waltons' motivations as being to "defend" charter schools from unions is of the lame variety that has characterized recent Gadflys. Simply put: Wal-Mart attacks unions and those workers who want to form one.  There is no reason to see their support for charter schooling as anything other than part of that attack. It’s the dark side of the so-called “new politics of education.”  This is the sort of thing I was referring to at the end of this post. Lets look at the record.

If there is an anti-union cause, Wal-Mart is there. Here are some examples of what they have done:

• Fund the Right to Work groups. The Waltons funded the right to work campaign in Oklahoma in 2001. One of their management handbooks is titled “The Manager’s Toolbox to Remaining Union Free”

• Utilize what they used to call a “union probability index” to screen out workers who might want to join a union.

• Close an entire store in Canada because the workers had the temerity to unionize. 

• Fired all their meatpackers and outsourced the function because the meatpackers in one store voted to form a union.

• In the absence of unions they have employment policies like this. Sickening.

The charitable giving that the charter school movement is so attatched to comes from the exploitation of the American worker, not to mention the exploitation of those workers who are part of the overseas supply chain.  Ed Sector dropped the ball here, or did they decide to take a dive?

Posted by Ed at AFT at 04:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This month's American Teacher features the United Teachers of Dade (Miami), a local union that has been working hard to rebuild after the departure of its disgraced former president Pat Tornillo.  The current leadership is focusing on professional issues, holding its first-ever education summit this year and working with the administration to improve the schools.  Dade Superintendent Rudy Crew recently remarked at the Broad Foundation's annual awards, "Your number one ally in school improvement is your teachers union.  In New York and Miami, I was only able to do what I did because I did it jointly with the union."

Posted by Michele at 08:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

UPDATE: Edwize reports that new Memorandum of Agreement between the UFT and the NYC Board of Ed can now be viewed online. 

With yesterday's focus on the Congressional mid-term elections, we didn't get to blog on the tentative agreement reached Monday night between the New York City teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), and the Bloomberg Administration. Leo Casey at Edwize has the skinny here.  The New York Times makes much of the agreement arriving 11 months ahead of the expiration date of the current contract, and claims that the focus has shifted from the teachers to the principals in New York City.

Posted by Michele at 08:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I don't think Andy Rotherham wants retirees to have a life of poverty or any such thing, but his latest post does not resolve our disagreement. Andy suggests that my rejection of privatization ducks the issue of a pension funding crisis. Not true.  A handful of pension programs have serious long-term funding problems, but these issues cannot be solved through privatization.

The only way to fix broken pension funds is to cut benefits or increase funding (by getting better investment returns or more revenue). Privatization only changes where you place the risk. The overall return on investments in private accounts is typically lower than in an actual pension system. So privatization would, all else being equal, lead to a diminishment of benefits without fixing the funding problem.  Privatization puts all the risk--and the consequences of having a broken pension fund--on the worker, which does lead to state savings, but it amounts to a backdoor benefit cut.

I’m reminded of Ezra Klein’s discussion of free tr