No class in WI as teachers protest union-busting governor

[Plow]

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2...um.php?ref=fpa


Where's Tom Delay when you need him to call Homeland Security? Oh right he's on his way to jail..

this is too fucking awesome for words

1) Demand for teachers is set by the state/local government based on number of students
2) there aren't enough teachers (http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/pol/tsa.pdf)
3)
4) teachers are overpaid and need to have their benefits cut

I'm wondering what goes in number three?

Pink Floyd

[Ferion]

even then there is no set idea for a labor to supply ratio. how do you put a value on knowledge? And I wouldn't call teachers wages being too high, as someone said your training has to equate to something. Teaching definitely isn't worth minimum wage. Which would be my counter that the teachers union doesn't really fall into the "standard issues" with other unions.

I'm starting to see what you're saying. I definitely agree that teaching isn't a minimum wage job. But while you may not be able to calculate marginal product for labor directly for the demand for teachers, I'm sure there's some kind of way to proxy for it. I think the way economists proxy for the competitive rates are by looking at the salaries for private school teachers. In a paper by Andrew Coulson he talked about how teachers at public schools are paid 42% higher salaries on average than private school teachers. He also produces a figure that shows the increase in pay for public teachers isn't very strongly correlated with the rise of the teacher's union. However, I'm kind of skeptical about how accurate these statistics are considering he doesn't appear to control for anything.

Honestly, you could be right that the teacher's unions don't really effect unemployment too much since most of the papers I've read on this issue are about auto workers unions or things of that nature. However, the fact is that in general unions do cause unemployment in the long run.

Edit: Meant isn't very strongly correlated in the first paragraph, not is.

[Ksandra]

I'm starting to see what you're saying. I definitely agree that teaching isn't a minimum wage job. But while you may not be able to calculate marginal product for labor directly for the demand for teachers, I'm sure there's some kind of way to proxy for it. I think the way economists proxy for the competitive rates are by looking at the salaries for private school teachers. In a paper by Andrew Coulson he talked about how teachers at public schools are paid 42% higher salaries on average than private school teachers. He also produces a figure that shows the increase in pay for public teachers is pretty strongly correlated with the rise of the teacher's union. However, I'm kind of skeptical about how accurate these statistics are considering he doesn't appear to control for anything.

Honestly, you could be right that the teacher's unions don't really effect unemployment too much since most of the papers I've read on this issue are about auto workers unions or things of that nature. However, the fact is that in general unions do cause unemployment in the long run.

ya I'd have to say those numbers are way off or he is doing a generalization without going state to state or looking at new teachers vs. older teachers who have gotten raises. 42% lower than a public school teacher would put private teachers way under minimum wage.

Also I'm not necessarily disagreeing about the unions and unemployment in general, but just that you shouldn't generalize when you look at the teachers union specifically. There are too many different factors involved to say that studies on unions as a whole apply to them.

[Plow]

The reason people are able to make credible arguments about unions being negative as a whole is pretty simple:

Virtually all examples are for shitty fucking jobs.

Make teaching a prized, well rewarded job and you won't have the same union issues as the shitheads at the dmv or the guys that drive forklifts for Boeing.

[Olo401]

Ferion, did that study include private parochial schools where the teachers are clergy, nuns or "educators" employed by the church for a minimal salary because they aren't always certified to be a real teacher?

I guarantee that it did deliberately to skew the numbers, considering Coulson is a fellow at the hyper-conservative think tank, the Cato Institute.

[Cantih]

minority state Senate Democratic caucus walked out within the last few hours

Fucking WOW.
I know fuckall about WI Demos, but I like how they're fucking standing up.

[Ferion]

His data set is cross-sectional so it just looks at the entire country from 2007-2008 and doesn't control for any kind of discrepancies, from what I can tell. I know that in New Jersey you can teach at a private school without having any kind of certification, so half the teachers at private schools by my home town are just recent college graduates who got a job there while they figure out something else to do. Just knowing this is one of the main reasons why I'm very skeptical of his results.

But yeah I probably should have specified in my first post that I was talking about unions in general. I do agree though that teachers unions seem to cause some problems with the general model used when looking at the relation between unions and unemployment. This actually might be a pretty interesting research topic considering I can't really find too much literature about unemployment and teachers unions specifically.

Edit:

Ferion, did that study include private parochial schools where the teachers are clergy, nuns or "educators" employed by the church for a minimal salary because they aren't always certified to be a real teacher?

I guarantee that it did deliberately to skew the numbers, considering Coulson is a fellow at the hyper-conservative think tank, the Cato Institute.

Honestly I have no idea. He said he got his numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics. So while I can't imagine the Center skewing them on purpose, those figures may be included in the wages without Coulson explicitly stating that they are and controlling for them. However, his paper doesn't really appear to be for or against unions from what I've read. I've only skimmed through it though. Coulson basically concludes that "collective bargaining appears to offer minimal returns within the public school sector, but protect them from having to compete in the educational market place." Here's the paper if you're interested:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj30n1/cj30n1-8.pdf

[Weeks]

1) Demand for teachers is set by the state/local government based on number of students
2) there aren't enough teachers (http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/pol/tsa.pdf)
3)
4) teachers are overpaid and need to have their benefits cut

I'm wondering what goes in number three?

Apparently it's $140 million for discretionary spending and tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy.

[Olo401]

The protesters have a Twitter feed going #SolidarityWI

[Not Kuno]

I am amused by the juxtaposition of 'It's easy to talk [about teacher merit pay]' and the throwaway addition of '[teacher merit pay] isn't possible.'

Teacher merit pay is a sham. There was a school near where I live that is under scrutiny for passing every single student. Passing students who don't deserve to pass is all you're going to get out of teacher merit pay. It's bad enough that they (quite literally) pass anyone with a pulse in middle school. It's called seat time, all you have to do is show up and be in your seat.

[Kuya]

It's cute that some of us are having arguments over whether unions are bad or good in general or in certain instances while the general trend has been for union power to diminish over the decades, and the few remaining areas where unions still have apreciable presence is the public sector. Interestingly the public sector is also the target of a lot of austerity policy in recent years, which has the consequence of further diminishing already diminished union power. Meanwhile wealth polarization has pretty much followed the opposite trend of union power.

I also find it interesting that much of this austerity policy started right after governments went on spending binges trying to save banks from collapsing after some of these banks caused the very same crisis they petitioned the government to save them from. And right after some governments spent billions on saving banks, they thend procee to impose austerity on government programmes and in some instances reduce government workforce during a period of recession.

I just think it's kind of funny.

[Ksandra]

Teacher merit pay is a sham. There was a school near where I live that is under scrutiny for passing every single student. Passing students who don't deserve to pass is all you're going to get out of teacher merit pay. It's bad enough that they (quite literally) pass anyone with a pulse in middle school. It's called seat time, all you have to do is show up and be in your seat.

why hello there no child left behind

[Kuya]

I think at this point we might as well just absolutely ban unions and declare fridays give rich people bags of government money day and be done with it.

[Cantih]

I just think it's kind of funny.

How would you reverse it?

[Kuya]

I wouldn't. I love tax cuts.

[Kuya]

Dollah dollah bill y'all

[Cantih]

Right, nevermind. Someone just quote him when he throws out a non troll post.

[Kuya]

What makes you think that my other posts weren't troll posts?

[Olo401]

NBC News ran the Wisconsin story for the first time tonight, second on the broadcast. However they've dumbed the whole story down but linking it to an overriding story about how all state budgets are strained., and not mentioning the fact that Walker is trying to cut nearly the exact amount of money by breaking the unions that he spent on his buddies the week he came into office.

[finitek]

Don't ever count on corporate media to properly cover a story that involves unions in any form.

How is it in a private corporations best interest to give any credence to the real arguments?

But hey private businesses think unions are bad. People who think those private business care about them are lovingly misled daily.

I am just waiting for some cable news station/right wing pundit/etc to start comparing these massive protests to Egypt or Bahrain.