Union Sells Out Bus Drivers For Nothing

Image from Flickr, by Michael Fleshman

In one of the clearest examples of the folly and stupidity of unions’ love affair with political action, the leadership of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) called off the New York City bus workers’ strike last week, after only one month. Their justification was a letter signed by the five Democratic Party candidates for mayor calling for an end to the strike. The union never asked for a vote of the membership and got literally nothing in return for the back-to-work order aside from a nebulous promise by the mayoral hopefuls to “revisit the school bus transportation system and contracts” if elected, the WSWS reported today.

Without a solid victory, the drivers face losing their jobs entirely or being forced to reapply for a fraction of their old wages, as the Employee Protection Provisions (EPP) that once protected their seniority and wage scale, regardless of which bus company was hired by the school district, came under attack. The assault on the EPP was launched by Mayor Bloomberg in January and the ATU’s initial response was to ask him to reconsider. Even after it became clear that negotiations were going nowhere, the ATU leadership, like most unions these days, made little effort to promote and support the strike, according to the WSWS, even going so far as to interfere in the dissemination of strike information among the workers.

An obvious question is why would the union leadership acquiesce to a request from a group of wannabe mayors to end the strike without getting anything concrete in exchange? There is no way of knowing whether any of them will actually be elected or whether they would actually do anything to preserve the drivers’ wages and job security if they were elected.

Historically, the goal of strikes has been to aggravate the bosses to the extent that they were willing to compromise and make concessions. The workers remained on strike until they won concessions or were forced to give up because of the hunger and poverty that resulted from going too long without a paycheck. In the case of the New York school bus drivers, many were clearly pleased with the prospect of once again earning a paycheck, but it was premature to argue that poverty was killing their solidarity. In fact, many were angered that the one paycheck they did give up may have been for naught.

Some of the drivers speculated that the union leadership colluded with the bus companies to drive down wages. While this may have been the case, there is also another more basic reason why the ATU leadership sold out its members: Their role (like that of all unions) is to help maintain the profitability and efficiency of business by keeping workers on the job and content with their lot. To this end, capital accepts unions and the occasional concession as a cost of business, while the leaders of the large unions have an incentive to keep their members on the job and paying dues so they can maintain their high salaries (ATU leaders make $200,000 per year). Furthermore, because union leaders generally make so much more than those they represent—often for sitting in an office and wining and dining with politicians, rather than doing the same work as their members—their interests tend to align more with the bosses than with the workers.

In contrast, protracted strikes can result in jail time for union officials, while injunctions, lawsuits and loss of union dues because workers are not getting paychecks sap money from union coffers, thus jeopardizing unions leaders’ income and personal freedom. Yet, if they want to maintain their jobs and high salaries, they must also seem like they are fighting for their members’ interests. Therefore, they often make forceful public statements, pretend to be aggressive, criticize (and sometimes insult) the bosses, and occasionally even go through the motions of taking a job action in order to legitimize their positions and win their members’ support. This creates a fundamental strategic conflict in which strikes, which are workers’ most powerful weapon, are also feared and consequently avoided by their leaders.

Hey Liberals, Democrats Are Evil, Too

The left press and blogosphere have been ranting about the crazy, evil, greedy and/or stupid Republicans and mostly overlooking the fact that Democratic lawmakers, too, have launched a scorched earth policy against children, teachers, unions, and working people in general.

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Consider these examples reported today on the WSWS:

The Democrat-controlled Colorado senate, by a 30-5 margin, approved budget cuts of $250 million from K-12 education, which will result in massive teacher layoffs, larger class sizes, and a shortened school year. The budget also guts higher education and Medicaid, while canceling a $3 million nutrition program for poor children. Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper initially called for $375 million in cuts to K-12 education, but agreed to reduced education cuts in exchange for bigger tax cuts for the rich and corporations. Keep in mind, Colorado’s six billionaires with a combined wealth of $20.3 billion, more than 20 times Colorado’s entire $988 million deficit, have no need for a tax break.

Washington State, with a Democrat governor and Democrat-controlled senate and house, approved a budget that slashes $2 billion from public education, cuts pay for state workers and teachers by 3%, and strips funding from “underperforming” schools. Their budget saves an additional $1.2 billion by refusing to fund a voter-approved program to increase teacher pay and decrease class sizes. Washington is also planning to cut $530 million from higher education, which would cause tuition to increase by 16% at universities and 12% at community colleges. The budget also imposes furloughs and cuts funding for Medicaid. Washington’s six billionaires have a combined net worth of nearly $100 billion, which is 25 times the state’s budget deficit.

Or consider these examples:

California has a Democrat governor and Democrat-controlled state house and senate. Yet they are proposing to close their $25 billion budget gap by slashing $1.4 billion from higher education and $4 billion from k-12 education, according to the CTA. Additionally, Reuters and CNN report that the proposed budget would cut wages by 10% for many unionized state employees, while slashing Medi-Cal by $1.7 billion, Welfare-to-Work by $1.5 billion, and $705 million from the agency serving people with developmental disabilities. Yet, if just the richest 19 residents paid 10% more in taxes, the state’s $25 billion deficit would be completely erased.  California has 80 billionaires, or 20% of Forbes’ richest Americans.

In New York, Democratic Governor Cuomo has proposed a budget plan calling for nearly 9,800 layoffs. The plan also calls for massive cuts to K-12 education (7.3%) and health care, in addition to 10% cuts to colleges and universities, reported NBC news. Additionally, CNN said that state agencies will have their budgets slashed by 20%. New York City, alone, has 58 billionaires who, together have so much wealth they could erase the State’s budget deficit without even noticing a change in their bank accounts.

In Maryland, Democratic Governor Martin O'Malley, who ran a pro-education and pro-labor campaign, and the Democrat-controlled state legislature, are now considering cuts to education and the state work force, according to the Baltimore Sun. Under the plan, current employees would have to increase their pension contributions by 25%, (7% of their pay), or they could opt to continue contributing about 5.6% of their pay, but would risk decreased benefits. WaPo reports that new employees would have no choice and their early retirement age would be raised from 55 to 60. Daily Censored says that $94 million will be cut from k-12 education, with $15 of it coming entirely from Baltimore City Schools.

Connecticut’s Democratic Governor, Dan Malloy, has pitted unions against the cities, basing his budget almost entirely on union concessions worth $1 billion over the next two years, according to CBS news. If the unions refuse to accept the cuts, he has threatened to slash state funding for cities. Hearst Connecticut Newspapers says that the losses to cities could be as much as $67 million for Bridgeport, $10.4 million from Danbury, $4.9 million Stamford, $1.8 million from Greenwich, and $5 million from Norwalk.

Merit Pay Does Not Work

To the uncritical ear, Merit Pay sounds like a good thing. You become good at your job and you are rewarded with more money. Seems fair and, when it comes to teachers, it seems like it should be good for students, too, as it should encourage teachers to grow and develop professionally and to strive to become better at their jobs. The problem is that it does not work, and there are studies to back this up.

One reason for this apparent contradiction is that teachers do not go into teaching for the money (which, contrary to the rants of the anti-teacher pundits, is still not that good). They enter the profession because they care about children and they want to make a difference in their lives. With this as the primary motivator, most teachers strive to become better and to develop professionally, regardless of compensation, because it allows them to better achieve their goal of helping children.

A new randomized study by Harvard economist Roland Fryer, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, concludes that New York City’s $75 million experiment in merit pay failed to raise student achievement. In fact, according to Fryer, student achievement actually declined at the participating schools. The program, which was funded by foundations and later by taxpayers, had no impact on teacher behavior, nor did it improve student attendance, behavior and graduation rates. The experiment involved 200 schools and 20,000 teachers between 2007-2008 and 2009-2010.

Cuomo and Republicans Compete to Abolish Tenure

Republican Senators Tightening the Screws (by cadmonkey)

Democrats & Unions Tightening the Screws (by cadmonkey)

The New York state senate passed legislation this week, backed by NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and schools chancellor Cathy Black, which would end tenure and seniority protections for New York teachers. The move will have no effect on the 4,600 layoffs that Bloomberg has already demanded. The bill passed the state Senate this week, by a vote of 33 to 27, and would allow the city to lay off teachers based on performance and disciplinary records, rather than seniority.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is planning to introduce his own bill that would expedite implementation of the new teacher evaluation system negotiated by the sellout AFT. He said his bill would also eliminate seniority-based layoffs. It would also base evaluations partly on student performance.

The bill passed in the Republican led senate, but faces a tougher road in the Democrat led assembly. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver opposed the senate bill and favors Cuomo’s, which would still screw teachers, but it would do so with the seal of approval of the Democrats.