Sponsored Content




Intermarkets' Privacy Policy
Support


Donate to Ace of Spades HQ!



Recent Entries
Absent Friends
Bandersnatch 2024
GnuBreed 2024
Captain Hate 2023
moon_over_vermont 2023
westminsterdogshow 2023
Ann Wilson(Empire1) 2022
Dave In Texas 2022
Jesse in D.C. 2022
OregonMuse 2022
redc1c4 2021
Tami 2021
Chavez the Hugo 2020
Ibguy 2020
Rickl 2019
Joffen 2014
AoSHQ Writers Group
A site for members of the Horde to post their stories seeking beta readers, editing help, brainstorming, and story ideas. Also to share links to potential publishing outlets, writing help sites, and videos posting tips to get published. Contact OrangeEnt for info:
maildrop62 at proton dot me
Cutting The Cord And Email Security
Moron Meet-Ups

NoVaMoMe 2024: 06/08/2024
Arlington, VA
Details to follow


Texas MoMe 2024: 10/18/2024-10/19/2024 Corsicana,TX
Contact Ben Had for info





















« In Cairo, "Protesters" Scale Wall of US Embassy, Tear Down US Flags | Main | Surprise: CTU Head Karen Lewis Rallied the Occupy Crowds »
September 11, 2012

Charles Lane: "I cannot describe the moral repugnance" of the Chicago Teachers Strike

Whose schools? Their schools, they chant.

Keep the following numbers in mind for the next time a public-sector union official starts lecturing you about social justice.

In Chicago, 85 percent of the roughly 400,000 public school students are either African American or Latino. A similar percentage receives free or reduced-price meals, which means these students live at or near the poverty line: $27,214 for a family of three, in a typical case.

Chicago teachers go on strike after talks with district officials fail: Tens of thousands of Chicago teachers and support staff went on strike Monday for the first time since 1987. The strike comes after school district officials and the Chicago Teachers Union did not reach an agreement over teachers’ contracts.

The average public-school teacher in Chicago earned almost triple that amount — $76,000 per year, according to the school district. In contract negotiations this year, Chicago Public Schools offered an average total pay increase of 16 percent over four years.

...

[L]et’s just say events in Chicago illustrate rather dramatically the contradictions between public-sector unionism and the efficient delivery of vital public services.

A very good post from a Green Room-er at Hot Air, which includes this video from the Illinois Policy Institute.

Whose schools? Yours, right?


"We will not rest/Teachers know best"? They do?

"No more teachers/no more books/until we get the money Rahm took"?

For the children, remember.

Evan Coyne Mahoney did a good video for Reason the other day:

Charles Lane suggests that the reason for this strike is motivated, largely, by a power play. Apparently Karen Lewis got elected as head of the CTU promising to fight-fight-fight. And so she's calling a strike, to let people know these are "her schools."

Here she is in action, talking up smoking pot at a conference which includes children:

What Are They Striking Over? Not pay. They're specifically striking in opposition to 1, strict evaluations of their performance and 2, shockingly, their demand that bad teachers, previously laid off for poor performance, be rehired.

Let me note this very obvious but underappreciated fact: The most loyal troopers for any union are the worst performing at their actual jobs. And the union, in return, is most loyal to them.

Think about it: People who are doing their jobs well do not need the union as much, if at all. They might be pro-union, but at the end of the day, people who are good at their jobs know two things:

1. It is unlikely they will be fired or laid off. Well, in a normal economy it's unlikely. Even in this economy, it's less likely.

2. Even if they were, for some reason, fired or laid off, they would have a reasonable expectation of finding new employment after a short time of unemployment. Again, with the caveat: In a normal economy.

So, who really, really needs the union to fight like hell for bad workers? The bad workers do, of course.

And who then provides the unions with their most fervent shock troops? The bad workers-- because they are under small illusion about their employability without a union fighting to keep them in their jobs, despite their incompetence.

This is why the unions are so against evaluations and performance review -- while there are good teachers in the union, the good teachers are not the real clients of the union.

The real clients of the union are the bad teachers.

Consider performance-based pay. Now, in any group, one third of the people will get more money. One third will neither get less nor get more. One third will, in a regime in which pay is based on performance, get less.

So, in any union, there should not really be a firm opinion on merit-based pay. There is no overwhelming majority against it, nor for it. It breaks pretty evenly into pro/neutral/anti.

And yet the teachers unions are always stridently against merit-based pay. Why? Because their real clients are the bottom-feeders, the most marginal of workers.

The higher-performers know they really don't need the union -- and the union knows they know that.

Their dedicated shock troops, their most fervent street-beaters, are those who know that without a union, they wouldn't have a job, period.

I look at these videos of angry, spit-foaming chanters in the street and I don't hear their stupid rhymes. I hear one thing: I'm hanging by a thread and I know it.


digg this
posted by Ace at 03:14 PM

| Access Comments




Recent Comments
Presidentish Joe : "Tucker C points out that we have doubled our popul ..."

Pete: "Why should one obey laws that are arbitrarily appl ..."

Thomas Paine: "Adverse possession should be illegal. If there is ..."

Montec: "The $1 houses are really $1 for the property once ..."

[/i][/b][/s][/u]I used to have a different nic: "[i]Future Headline: "California Insurers Cancel Al ..."

Our Country is Screwed: "361 Michigan wants to pay homeowners $500/month t ..."

davidt: "Eventually parasites kill their hosts. ..."

Montec: "And this is deliberate. The ultimate goal of the " ..."

Thomas Bender: "@145 >>In MO, it's only 10 years before a squat ..."

A face in the crowd.....: "Didn’t Baltimore sell row homes for $1? Gran ..."

Megthered: "I saw Harrison Floyd as Harrison Ford too. ..."

junior: "@350 I own vacant land that someday will be develo ..."

Recent Entries
Search


Polls! Polls! Polls!
Frequently Asked Questions
The (Almost) Complete Paul Anka Integrity Kick
Top Top Tens
Greatest Hitjobs

The Ace of Spades HQ Sex-for-Money Skankathon
A D&D Guide to the Democratic Candidates
Margaret Cho: Just Not Funny
More Margaret Cho Abuse
Margaret Cho: Still Not Funny
Iraqi Prisoner Claims He Was Raped... By Woman
Wonkette Announces "Morning Zoo" Format
John Kerry's "Plan" Causes Surrender of Moqtada al-Sadr's Militia
World Muslim Leaders Apologize for Nick Berg's Beheading
Michael Moore Goes on Lunchtime Manhattan Death-Spree
Milestone: Oliver Willis Posts 400th "Fake News Article" Referencing Britney Spears
Liberal Economists Rue a "New Decade of Greed"
Artificial Insouciance: Maureen Dowd's Word Processor Revolts Against Her Numbing Imbecility
Intelligence Officials Eye Blogs for Tips
They Done Found Us Out, Cletus: Intrepid Internet Detective Figures Out Our Master Plan
Shock: Josh Marshall Almost Mentions Sarin Discovery in Iraq
Leather-Clad Biker Freaks Terrorize Australian Town
When Clinton Was President, Torture Was Cool
What Wonkette Means When She Explains What Tina Brown Means
Wonkette's Stand-Up Act
Wankette HQ Gay-Rumors Du Jour
Here's What's Bugging Me: Goose and Slider
My Own Micah Wright Style Confession of Dishonesty
Outraged "Conservatives" React to the FMA
An On-Line Impression of Dennis Miller Having Sex with a Kodiak Bear
The Story the Rightwing Media Refuses to Report!
Our Lunch with David "Glengarry Glen Ross" Mamet
The House of Love: Paul Krugman
A Michael Moore Mystery (TM)
The Dowd-O-Matic!
Liberal Consistency and Other Myths
Kepler's Laws of Liberal Media Bias
John Kerry-- The Splunge! Candidate
"Divisive" Politics & "Attacks on Patriotism" (very long)
The Donkey ("The Raven" parody)
Powered by
Movable Type 2.64