About 700 New York City public school teachers draw full salaries to spend their days playing games, reading, painting, piddling and gossiping, according to a recent article that drew outrage across the nation. Union rules prevent these teachers from being fired or being in the classroom while awaiting disciplinary hearings that may be months or even years into the future.
My first reaction to this as a teacher is that we need a union like that in Eagle Pass. I’m sure most other people react with, “That’s just plain crazy.”
EPISD sometimes sees teachers and administrators put on paid leave during investigations of wrongdoing. The difference between us and New York is that it doesn’t happen that often and the investigations wrap up quickly. Teachers can be fired immediately if caught red-handed in their wrongdoing, but they usually know not to be that blatant with actions that might result in termination.
Another difference in New York is that the teachers cannot be assigned to other duties. So they draw their salaries while sleeping, selling real estate, learning tai chi, earning graduate degrees and teaching each other yoga.
Such deals result from myopic union leaders who care only about greed and nothing about the well-being of their employer and nothing about the public perception of themselves or their bosses. Such lack of foresight by the UAW helped push GM into its current bankruptcy. What good does it do to have the union’s advantages once that union has bled the employer out of business?
Here’s a situation reported about GM that exactly mirrors the NYC teachers:
“Unbelievably, at its assembly plant in Oklahoma City, GM is actually obliged by its UAW contract to pay 2,300 workers full salary and benefits for doing absolutely nothing. Since G.M. shut down production there last month, these workers have entered the Jobs Bank, industry’s best form of job insurance. It pays idled workers a full salary and benefits even when there is no work for them to do.”
Generally, I give begrudging support to unions. I think they’ve kept this country from a state where the executives of corporations make billions, while the average workers live in poverty. My dad belonged to the railroad union and as he rose in seniority and neared retirement, he was doing well for someone with a 7th-grade education. Without that union, I probably would have grown up poor instead of being middle class.
However, too many unions achieve their members’ benefits when times are good, then refuse to let go of any gains when their companies hit rough spots. If GM workers, for example, had allowed some givebacks over the years, it might have helped that company stay solvent.
Unions for teachers, police, firefighters and some others have an advantage in this way, because nobody worries about a city, county or school district going bankrupt. These unions can push hard at contract negotiation time because they can insist that their employer either find the money for raises or increase taxes if they have to.
Police and firefighters, I think mostly have reasonable salaries, but they do in some places get benefits beyond what they deserve. Due to their union protection, they also are difficult to fire and know they have leeway to act unprofessionally with little fear of serious consequences.
Unions must realize that when they protect their members like this to an unreasonable extreme, they’re just shooting themselves in the foot. They damage the reputation of their profession. They lose public support. They lose political support. Finally, they might risk putting themselves, and/or their employers out of business.
The NYC teachers’ union needs to pull back. They shouldn’t insist that a member under investigation cannot be temporarily reassigned. They’ve created an insane situation that everyone can see is the union’s fault. So, I’ve reconsidered. Eagle Pass DOESN’T need a union like that, and if we had one, I wouldn’t want to belong to it.
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