There is no
question that Los Angeles Unified School District is facing a serious financial
crisis. They are millions of dollars in the hole and trying to recoup that
money on the backs of teachers. In a particularly audacious attack, they
demanded that United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) accept 20 furlough days
next year (see 4LAKids Blog), which amount to the loss of nearly
a month’s pay or an 8% pay cut.
It is easy
to appreciate UTLA’s desire to protect its members’ jobs. However, in order to
do so, UTLA actually asked for (and got) 10 furlough days, which I suspect most
members will find unacceptable.
UTLA has
stated that its priority is to restore jobs, save educational programs and
protect class size.
If this is
true, then UTLA cannot seriously be considered a union. Indeed, what kind of
union asks the boss for 4% pay cut?
The goals of
protecting positions, programs and class sizes are all great goals,
particularly for students, but they are just a tiny part of teachers’ working
conditions and remuneration. A real fighting union starts with the assumption
that the workers and the bosses have an adversarial relationship (even if they
treat each other nicely) in which the bosses try to extract more work for less
money from the workers. The union’s role is to fight for better remuneration
and working conditions for their constituents, (i.e., the teachers), NOT their
clients (i.e., students).
I don't think the last sentence is really necessary to your argument here. Teacher furlough days aren't in kids interest either, and I'd argue that teacher and student interests are much more aligned overall than in opposition.
ReplyDeleteI would agree, Tom, that teacher and student interests are usually more aligned than in opposition and furlough days are pretty clearly against students' interests (10 furlough days = 2 weeks of lost instructional time).
ReplyDeleteI included that line only to highlight that the public often presumes that our entire purpose for teaching is to help kids, when the reality for most of us that it also provides an income so we can feed our own families. We don't do it for free, though we do work far more hours than we are paid for. And the current wave of reforms is only making that worse.
Unfortunately, many teachers and their unions buy into this notion that "it's all about the kids," which of course is a good tactic to take in terms of public perception, but it is not the whole story and it leads one down the road of accepting more and more anti-student/anti-teacher reforms because we want to appear reasonable in the propaganda war about what's really best for kids.