"Entrenched Job Security"

A friend of mine recently wrote:

"For other contexts, staying in the classroom may the best option- teaching has lots of perks that are often underappreciated- relative stability when compared to other job options based on education/experience, shorter work year, decent benefits, and again- entrenched job security despite what many actually perceive...."

"Entrenched job security" is a necessary feature of the sort of deferred compensation schemes historically employed in civil service.  What "entrenched job security" really means is robust due process, i.e. one can only be fired for just cause related to actual performance, not because you are the wrong race, you didn't give the school board chair's daughter an A, a younger teacher would be cheaper, or the superintendent's niece needs a job.  I am willing to talk about ways that due process has become too robust, but I strongly believe that due process and seniority protections are absolutely necessary corollaries of the single salary schedule.

As I've written before, we have a system that provides civil servants with the greatest rewards in terms of top level salaries and dignified pensions in exchange for longevity.  There's a whole raft of assumptions built into this system, but in the final analysis, it is what it is.  Unless you have a reasonable expectation that you can make it to retirement in your chosen profession, a single salary schedule is not worth the paper it is printed on.

Another historical thing to remember is that government employees and their unions have tended to opt for pensions and benefits at the expense of salaries.  If these seem generous, it is because we have paid for them with cold hard cash.

In the current environment it would be a lot safer to take the cash up front.  We are governed by a kleptocracy that is seeking to steal the deferred compensation not only of teachers, but of all manner of government workers.  Our due process rights, pensions and benefits (thanks to our unions - not just NEA and AFT but all public sector unions) are a slap in the face to private industry, and create pressure for decent treatment for all workers.  Very inconvenient for the 1%....

To be clear, I am not a fan of the single salary schedule, and it's accompanying arrangements. I would prefer to explore different compensation methods.  The political/economic problem is that these methods would accelerate payment of wages and benefits from the future to the present.  Let's face it - it's far cheaper to be unfair to people, to get rid of expensive employees, and to steal their deferred compensation, than it would be to create rational strategic compensation plans that pay people today for the work they do today.

The recent release of test data in NYC is part of an ongoing effort to flush the system of mid-end career educators.  People are not excrement; they should never be flushed.  We must be offended when people are treated this way, not because we are fellow teachers, but because we are fellow human beings.  Even if we were not teachers, I would claim we would have a moral obligation to be offended by what is at best basic unfairness and at worst criminal contempt for human beings.

Teacher compensation is not bunch of "perks" and rights that other people do not have.  That plays right into the so-called "reform" narrative playing out in Indiana, Wisconsin, NYC, etc.  Rather, we have earned these things.  Want to talk about other ways of doing business Mr. Politician?  I'm all ears.  But we're not going to fund it through wholesale theft.  Crime is un-American - at least in the America I aspire to.

More on Vermont Teachers Negotiations

I appeared on CCTV on October 28 with Avery Book and local VT-NEA leader Amy Lester, who is vice president of the Vermont Workers Center.  Just discovered it was online.  I was incorrectly identified as an executive board member - in fact I am a member of the VTNEA board of directors.  This broadcast speaks to the reasons that we need to reform teacher negotiations, and to the reality that we need to act in solidarity with others on matters of social justice.

Please view the video.  The teacher negotiations issues start at around minute 10 for those of you in a hurry.  The program happened over three months ago, but all the issues are still valid.

Relate this back to Reforming Vermont Teacher Negotiations.

How Things Have Changed in Two Years....

In November 2009 a statewide labor conference convened at the Davis Center at the University of Vermont under the auspices of the Vermont Workers Center.  The big news at the time was a contract that the Vermont State Employees Association (VSEA) was considering, a contract which was cutting state employees compensation almost 7%.  A group of us at the conference agreed to begin a statewide letter writing campaign to urge state employees to vote against ratification.

The letter writing campaign was not very successful.  Even though a dozen of us were writing to literally every statewide and regional newspaper, only a couple the letters were published.  It was an object lesson for me in the control exercised over the conventional media by conventional ideas.  My letter ended up being published on the Socialist Worker website.  I wrote:

As a teacher, I foresee reduction in services that will reduce the effectiveness of schools, as stressed families are less able to support their children's education. The negative effects of the proposed VSEA contract will be felt in schools in the form of behavior problems, hunger, abuse and neglect, with less backup from state agencies. The bad public policy represented by this contract will diminish the value of our communities' education investment.

Working people everywhere will be dragged down by this contract. Whether public sector or private sector, union or non-union, the task of achieving fair settlements and livable wages will be more difficult with the example of this bad contract hanging over us.

Fast forward two years.  Yesterday a tentative agreement was reached between the state and VSEA.  According to VT Digger

Shumlin administration officials and the state employees union announced on Friday afternoon that they have come to an agreement on a two-year contract that includes the restoration of the 3 percent pay cut that was instituted two and a half years ago and a 2 percent pay increase in July 2012 plus a 2 percent increase in July 2013.

This sounds promising, but I’m withholding judgment until I have a chance to talk today with other labor leaders.  But here’s another important change of attitude:

Jeb Spaulding, secretary of the Agency of Administration, said “I think it’s a fair deal for the taxpayer and a fair deal for state employees, and the fact we can do it without an acrimonious process … is a benefit for everyone, and I hope a morale booster for state employees.”

The agreement marks the first time the three bargaining units – Corrections, Supervisory and Non-Management Units — and the state have not had to resort to mediation or fact finding as part of the negotiation process.

Spaulding said the administration projected ahead of time what it would cost to go through the longer, more typical, adversarial process and determined that if they spent months of wrangling with fact finding and legislative lobbying the result would have been the same. “We spent quite a bit of time trying to project where we would be with the acrimonious route,” Spaulding said.

“We don’t have time for that kind of a game that ends up using state employees as pawns, and it’s not the most courageous or productive way to go,” Spaulding said.

This is the Jeb Spaulding of the infamous Spaulding Commission that two years ago tried to destroy public pensions in Vermont.  How things have changed in two years.

I hope school boards everywhere are listening….

Today the Vermont Workers Center and Students Stand Up! is again convening a statewide conference entitled “Human Rights for the 99%”  In a couple of hours I’ll again be climbing into my battered Corolla for the trek to the Davis Center, this time for a much larger conference which already boasts over 550 registrants.

How things have changed in two years…..

• A VSEA contract that on the surface appears to be reasonable
• An administration that appears to get some of the basics of labor-management collaboration
• A statewide online publication, VT Digger, which is dedicated to balanced journalism and understands that a dialogue of diverse voices is essential to great public policy
• A reinvigorated labor movement, energized by Occupy, rolling back the assaults in Ohio, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, now rallying not just dozens, but hundreds at a statewide Human Rights conference

I look forward to joining with my fellow workers in solidarity to celebrate progress and plan next steps.  As a labor leader, I give up a lot of weekends for the cause.  But without my union, and without the wider labor movement I would not have those weekends to do this work.  It is a great privilege to be able to do so.

A Modest Proposal

After years of toiling for unions that protect lazy teachers and allow them to harm innocent children, I’ve finally come to my senses and bought into the neo-liberal agenda.  Privatization, choice, competition and markets….think of this as my reverse Diane Ravitch moment.  If you can’t beat’em, join’em.    This is my ticket to the gravy train and I want to share some great ideas I’ve come up with.

We have a problem.  As taxes on the wealthy approach zero, foundations are no longer going to be necessary to shelter the wealth of the rich from taxation.  Revenues will decline as the middle class (the people who get taxed) shrinks.  How are we going to fund our schools with neither revenue, nor foundations?

The answer lies in the financial markets.  Wall Street has the talent and the capacity to develop innovative investment instruments that can save our schools.  Why did this never occur to me before?  There are so many smart people on Wall Street – I know this is true because they have more money than I do.  If we unlock the genius of Wall Street everything will be OK.

There are a couple of key innovations that make this financial miracle possible.  First of all, thanks to standardized tests, education has become a commodity.  It can be traded just like pork bellies or Brent crude.  Second, when a product becomes a commodity, the efficiency of the market allows the producer to be paid below the rate needed to sustain life, meaning that education costs cannot only be controlled, but radically cut.  The commoditization of education provides a way to quantify costs per unit output (test scores.)

I propose that investors be able to make direct investments schools – in essence, buy shares.  The value of the investment will fluctuate according to the value of the school, which will be a function of test scores and per pupil spending.  Like any good commodities business, schools that can squeeze higher test scores at lower unit costs will be more valuable.  When this occurs, the value of the security will rise.

This market could be part of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.  Investors will be able to use put and call options so they can bet either for or against student learning.  In addition, a futures market would allow accurate predictions of test scores at individual schools through the price fluctuations of these securities.  With securities pricing information in hand, management could bring resources to bear on problems pro-actively.  The miracle of the invisible hand will improve schools even as everyone gets rich – and all with no messy revenues to raise!

One difficulty this poses for the wealthy investor is exposure to conditions in individual schools.  For example an outbreak of flu, or an inconvenient school shooting during testing could cause an investor to lose money.  Plus, statisticians have warned us of the instability of VAM when applied to the relatively small student populations of individual schools and teachers’ classrooms – what rational investor would want to be exposed to this sort of risk?

Luckily, we can use derivatives to hedge against these risks.  Individual school securities can be sliced up and bundled with other schools with similar characteristics.  These derivatives could be sliced and bundled a second time to allow creative money managers to customize investment portfolios for the risk profiles of their wealthy investors.  Investors would be able to hedge their risks and bet for and against student learning simultaneously, while continuing to make money.  These derivatives could become so divorced from the underlying value of student test scores that they increase in value indefinitely.  This will encourage the wealthy to pour their money into schools, now guaranteed money makers.

I believe that similar mechanisms can be employed on other public goods.  A prime example is infant mortality rates – a candidate for commoditization if there ever was one.  We have a statistic which can float up and down, and a measurable unit cost.  The use of derivatives in this case would create an efficient market that would allow infant mortality rates in a community like East St. Louis to settle to an economically sustainable level.

The miracle of the market is that by removing irrational considerations, like ethics, that distort the economic system and lead to inefficiencies, like doctors and hospitals, we can achieve the best possible rates of infant mortality at the lowest cost.  Self interest flows naturally to the public good, with no sacrifices. 

I am so glad to have discovered the power of unregulated markets.  I’d like to pitch this idea to Goldman Sachs, and the Gates Foundation.  I don’t think I’ll bother with the US Government, since there won’t be much of it left in a few years. 

A College Student Speaks Out

My daughter Liz Beatty-Owens gave this speech at a labor rally at Johnson State College in October.  Liz is 20, and is already a skilled organizer, with a deep understanding of the political and educational issues we face.  She and I work together when we can on behalf of the Vermont Workers Center.  Liz spent last weekend at Zuccotti Park in New York City participating in Occupy Wall Street (that's Liz serenading Mayor Bloomberg)

I am standing here today because- I am a student- half way done with my college career and I am already $20,000 in debt. And yes- in terms of debt I am one of the lucky ones.

I am here today because I am a student with a 15-credit work load, working 2 part time jobs, thousands of dollars in debt and I still cannot regularly afford to live comfortably - and I know I am not the only one.

I am here today because I have followed the rules.  I graduated from high school and I went to college - the path laid out for us by our society - yet it has not been made a sustainable path.

I can’t help but feel discouraged when each semester I have multiple peers drop out of college for financial reasons- going off to minimum wage jobs or, in two cases, the military, with semesters of debt looming behind them.

I don’t know about you but I want to live in an educated society where a college degree is not considered a privilege but recognized as a social good.

I have had the opportunity these last two semesters through numerous political science classes to speak to many of our Vermont political leaders and active community members. And more often than not the question is asked of me in this situation- why aren’t more young adults involved with politics- more active and driven in this field?

And as this question resonates with me I can’t help but turn to them and say: How can we expect the majority of students to support the government when students are not being looked out for by our government.  We are underfunded and consequently unsupported.  It’s a give and take deal.

That said, it has become clear to me this semester that the student population at Johnson is no longer willing to stand idly by.  We have groups forming such as Students for a Democratic Society (Wednesday nights at 7:00) and an ambitious group of students named Johnson to Wall Street (Tuesdays at 7:00).

And lastly, I would like to see the creation of a student union to represent our voice and our expectations at a state wide level- initially here at Johnson but then becoming VSC wide.  There is power in numbers- and we have the intelligence, the energy and the drive to create change right here, right now.

I would like to invite every Johnson student to sign up for the Student Union.  Our table is right over there….

With a unified voice we can stand up for students and create change at a localized level.

Let’s ask Vermont to once again set an example for the rest of the country- we’ve done it before with health care and same sex marriage- let’s do it again! Let’s support our students, fund our colleges and create social justice!

SB5 Repeal: Ohio Injustice Averted

How you spell relief?  I spell it SB5.  Finally the tide has turned in the corporate anti-labor assault on public sector unions.

If there were teacher unions in any state that didn't deserve SB5 it was those of Ohio.  Ohio is the home of the Toledo Plan, the ground breaking Peer Assistance and Review System (PARS) which has been a national model of teacher taking control of professionalism for decades.  According to new research, deployment of a PARS system leads to more collaborative labor management relations.

Another example: The Dayton local was recently highlighted in NEA Today for using the grievance procedure to acquire textbooks for special needs students.

But I discovered the most significant example of the progressive work of Ohio's teacher unions in Denver, at the US Department of Education's Labor Management Conference.  At a reception, I spent considerable time talking with several representatives of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, a federal agency charged with improving relations between labor and management.  At one point I was talking with an FMCS mediator from Ohio, who turned to a colleague and asked, "What percentage of teacher negotiations we do in Ohio do you think are interest based?"  The colleague thought about it for a moment, and replied, "Eighty percent."

Eighty percent.  As a VT-NEA local leader, I've been working to encourage the use of interest based bargaining (IBB) in two Vermont supervisory unions, a state where the labor-management relations often have an adversarial character because they rely on distributive tools.  We are just taking our first baby steps to achieve what has been achieved in Ohio.  And Ohio, where FMCS deploys this tool 80% of the time, which has been using contemporary conflict management tools for decades, where unions join with their communities to create great student results, experiences SB5.  I was shocked, saddened and angered.

Ohio's unions did not deserve this assault.  They were punished for doing some of the most progressive, collaborative and innovative work in the country.  I am incredibly relieved that the citizens of Ohio recognized the treasure they have in these great civic institutions, public sector unions, by not just repealing SB5, but repudiating their governor by an almost two to one margin.