Teachers Offer to Work for Free and Get Fired Anyway

The small Buena Vista, Michigan school district (500 students) closed its doors this week—more than a month early—because it is broke, despite the fact that its teachers agreed to work for free. If the district does not find the money to reopen, seniors may be prevented from graduating.

The cause of the district’s financial woes, according to the Huffington Post, was that it spent money provided by the state for running the Wolverine Secure Treatment Center, an organization with which the district no longer works. Consequently, the state has frozen district funds until the district can repay $402,000. The district also lost $3 million in state funding due to declining enrollment, Yahoo News reported. However, Buena Vista, like many other districts throughout the U.S., has suffered most significantly from across the board cuts in education spending by state governments.

The state of Michigan could have bailed out the struggling district, thus saving parents the hassle and expense of finding childcare for a month and the government the expense of paying unemployment insurance to dozens of teachers, but that apparently would have sent the wrong message The Michigan Department of Education argued that the district created the problem through incompetence and must now pay the penalty (even if that means that children, parents and employees are the ones who actually pay).

The local school board could also have found a way to keep its schools open, but unanimously approved the closure. The board approved a “deficit reduction” plan they hope will appease the state and result in the release of funds for next school year. It also proposed a summer boot camp emphasizing standardized testing skills (to be paid for with federal funds) in lieu of normal instruction, Michigan Radio reported on Wednesday.

In late breaking news, state Superintendent Mike Flanagan approved the Buena Vista school board deficit reduction plan, allowing the district to start up again and finish the school year without having to resort to their boot camp plan, according to the Holland Sentinel. The district will also recall 27 laid-off teachers.

What remains unclear (probably deliberately so) are the details of the deficit reduction plan. Will pay and/or benefits be slashed for the 2013-2014 school year? Will course offerings be cut and the teaching and support staffs downsized? Will furlough days be imposed? Buena Vista may be out of the frying pan for the current school year, but back they students and teachers will likely be back into the fire next year.

Illegal Strike Looming in Detroit?

Public sector workers in Michigan are forbidden by law from striking, yet several Detroit municipal unions are considering strikes as Mayor Bing plans to eviscerate them by extracting devastating concessions and cutting more than 2,500 city jobs (25% of the total), according to the Daily Finance. His goal is to avoid being taken over by an emergency financial manager who would have the ability to rip up collective bargaining agreements and fire the mayor and city council. The concessions could include job outsourcing, no automatic reinstatement of higher pay levels, as well as health care and pension givebacks.

Despite the illegal status of strikes, Detroit workers have a long history of defying the ban and striking anyway. In November, bus drivers walked off the job for a half-day over safety concerns and in May of 2007 over similar safety issues. Garbage collectors and bus drivers
shut down service for 19 days during a 1986 strike and 1,700 workers held a three-day strike in 1978.

In March, 30 of the city’s unions sold out their members by giving away major concessions to the city, including a 10% pay cut, layoffs, and changes to their pensions. It will be interesting to see if any of these unions strike. It will be interesting to see if any of these unions go on strike. Considering what they are up against, they have little to lose.

It is important for workers everywhere to remember that ALL strikes were once illegal and workers were routinely assaulted by thugs, goons, vigilantes, police and federal troops. (For a partial history of the violence unleashed on the labor movement, please see Modern Schools Labor Timeline). Workers have made all of their most significant gains, (including moribund ones like the 40-hour work week, weekends, and overtime), through sacrifices and risks such as refusing to work even when work stoppages were illegal.

Detroit Unions Give It Away, Snyder Not Satisfied, Will they Strike?

Will Work for Free (Image from Flickr, by psyberartist)

Last week, 30 Detroit public sector unions sold out their members by giving away major concessions to the city, including a 10% pay cut, layoffs, and changes to their pensions, in a completely voluntary reopening of existing contracts well before they expire. The move was an attempt to preempt the declaration of financial failure by the state and the imposition of a financial manager who could dissolve local governmental agencies and union contracts.

The Detroit City Council has decided not to vote on the new contracts because they conflict with a proposed consent agreement negotiated with the state and is telling unions the state is requiring them to return to the bargaining table, mlive reported this week.

Gov. Rick Snyder wants city leaders to approve a consent agreement that would eliminate the need for an emergency manager. Snyder’s agreement would require even more take backs from the unions, including a watering down of the grievance procedures.

3 Council members (JoAnn Watson, Brenda Jones and Kwame Kenyatta) criticized Mayor Bing for delaying approval of the contracts and suggested that by doing so they will jeopardize long-term labor relations with the unions.

Now that the deal is off, AFSMCE local 25 President Al Garrett, is refusing to any more negotiations until their current contracts expire and said he would call for a strike before he agreed to the state-requested reforms.

30 Detroit Labor Unions Sell Souls for Illusion of Security

A coalition of 30 labor unions representing Detroit workers ratified new sell-out contracts this week in hopes of averting the imposition of an emergency financial manager by Gov. Rick Snyder. Under Michigan’s Emergency Manager law (see here, here and here), the governor can dissolve union contracts, abolish collective bargaining and fire elected officials when a city or municipality is deemed a financial failure.

The unions agreed to accept 10% pay cuts, layoffs and changes to city pensions, according to MSNBC. As has become the norm for unions lately, Detroit’s city unions have completely forgotten their reason for being: to improve the working and living conditions of their members. Union officials said they were willing to help save their city from financial meltdown, but apparently forgot that their members were not the cause of the city’s financial woes, which are the result of lost revenue due to the financial crisis, mismanagement, a declining population and tax base, and politicians’ unwillingness to tax themselves and their wealthy friends at a rate that could keep the city in the black.

The unions’ concessions not only contribute to the immiseration of their members, but they won’t even necessarily save their jobs or their union contracts. Under the agreement, Detroit would save about $54 million per year from the concessions, which is less than half of what Mayor Dave Bing had hoped for.  Thus, a financial manager could still be imposed, union contracts abolished, and pay and benefits reduced even further.

Indeed, Terry Stanton, a spokesman for Gov. Snyder, said "The state's concern is that the agreement does not generate the savings needed to address (Detroit's) long- and short-term crisis."

When Detroit Mayor Bing called the labor agreements historic he was not far from the truth. Unions have been giving away more and more over the years, but in this case they gave it away without getting anything tangible in return. Furthermore, it significantly improves Bing’s chances of being appointed the new financial manager, which would give him greater flexibility to bust the unions and privatize public works.

Financial Martial Law in Wisconsin, Too?

According to Forbes magazine, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his cronies are drafting legislation that would allow him to appoint emergency managers who could cancel union contracts, fire elected officials and school board members, and take control of entire cities and towns. Rick Unger, who wrote the piece, said that the plan is being written by the largest law firm in the state, Foley & Lardner, and is scheduled to be introduced to the legislature next month.

Walker went on the radio yesterday to deny the report, asserting that it was “absolutely bogus.” He denied that he or anyone in his office ever did or said or planned anything like this, which leaves open the possibility that Foley & Lardner are indeed working on such a plan, and that Walker is simply making a stab at plausible deniability. Unger’s source, a Wisconsin political organizer named Nate Timm, refused to name his source for this information, but had confirmed that he received his information from a “highly placed GOP source” who was in a position to know the governor’s plans.

If true, Wisconsin’s plan would be very similar to the financial martial law plan enacted in Michigan earlier this year, where Governor Snyder has already appointed an Emergency Financial Manager, Joseph Harris, to take over the town of Benton Harbor. One of Harris’ first acts as Manager was to issue an order stripping away all powers from the city’s elected officials. Erik Kain, another Forbes writer, said that the Michigan and Wisconsin plans followed a pattern of similar legislation being pushed through in other Tea-Party controlled states enacting strikingly similar legislation all at the same time across the country.