Quote:
Originally Posted by RainMaker
Not when one side had leverage on you. This removed that leverage they had.
|
If all it was was removing leverage, you'd have an even negotiating position. You don't have that now. The ability of public servants to influence their bargaining position was taken away, and the result has been an increase in teacher retirements to preserve the benefits they had earned under previous contracts. Why? They have no bargaining power any longer to ensure those benefits aren't eroded. They are literally, by law, not allowed to bargain those things. That isn't good for the state, when you have an exodus of experienced teachers.
Quote:
|
There isn't a shortage of teachers out there either. They are still being paid well above market value.
|
1) That's not a term that has any meaning when the labor involved has no ability to bargain for its own worth. And, remember, this isn't just about teachers. ALL public servants, save for the first responders' unions (who also supported Walker) were impacted by this. Market forces aren't a one-way entity.
2) You say "Wisconsin is still in the top half of the country" as if that's something to be proud of. "Yay, we're average"? Wisconsin had a top-5 educational system in the country when I moved here, and by most metrics, that has slipped under Governor Walker. Education has been his favorite punching bag, and that's after declaring the state "open for business."
Define your terms, though. When you talk about rankings, are you using the mean? The median? I can tell you that new teachers in my school district make about as much as I would make working part time at a major retailer over the course of a year. State law has previously been fairly specific about requirements to be a licensed teacher, as well, so most of these people also aren't going to have a bachelor's and call it a day. Advanced degrees and they make about what they might make in retail. Oh, it might be different in Milwaukee, just like it's probably different in LA proper compared to rural northern California, but that skews the numbers.
Quote:
|
And if this is about having the best teachers, why would you be against a measure that removed things like binding arbitration which made it near impossible to fire a bad teacher?
|
Why is it necessary to completely excise bargaining rights in order to be able to fire a bad teacher? That's a little bit "we had to destroy the village in order to save it." Whatever issues you have with the teaching profession, completely removing the right of public employees to bargain anything related to their employment because "we can't fire bad public employees under the current contracts" is ludicrous.