Labor unions have been credited with the rise of America\u2019s middle class. In the 1950\u2019s about 40 percent of the nation\u2019s workforce were union members. Today that number has dropped to less than 7 percent of private sector workers and about a third of public employees. Economists now warn of a disappearing middle class and the income gap between labor and management employees has widened.<\/p>\n
In the five years from 2002 to 2007, 65 percent of all income growth in the U.S. went to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population, according to researchers at UC Berkeley and the Paris School of Economics.<\/p>\n
Politicians have jumped on the bandwagon of union bashing for ruining state and local economies. Carlsbad\u2019s new mayor built his successful campaign on a promise to prevent a union takeover on the council that would threaten the city\u2019s future prosperity. <\/p>\n
Follow the jump for the rest of the story.
\nLabor unions have been credited with the rise of America\u2019s middle class. In the 1950\u2019s about 40 percent of the nation\u2019s workforce were union members. Today that number has dropped to less than 7 percent of private sector workers and about a third of public employees. Economists now warn of a disappearing middle class and the income gap between labor and management employees has widened.<\/p>\n
In the five years from 2002 to 2007, 65 percent of all income growth in the U.S. went to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population, according to researchers at UC Berkeley and the Paris School of Economics.<\/p>\n
Politicians have jumped on the bandwagon of union bashing for ruining state and local economies. Carlsbad\u2019s new mayor built his successful campaign on a promise to prevent a union takeover on the council that would threaten the city\u2019s future prosperity. <\/p>\n
The steady drumbeat of criticism leveled at public employee unions has become both tiresome and troubling. Tiresome because of the mindless clich\u00e9s: public worker jobs are \u201ccushy,\u201d their paychecks \u201cfat,\u201d their pensions \u201cbloated,\u201d and their bonuses \u201chefty.\u201d Teachers are said to be greedy and self-serving, caring more about their own job security, pay and benefits than student learning. It\u2019s troubling because the overblown rhetoric makes it harder for people of goodwill to work together on common problems.<\/p>\n
We can\u2019t blame unions for the greed, stupidity and shortsightedness that led to our financial woes. Mortgage industry executives, government regulators, and our elected leaders had the power to prevent the meltdown. <\/p>\n
Comparing North County city budgets and school test scores, it\u2019s hard to understand why unions get such a bad rap.<\/p>\n
Carlsbad prospers, while Oceanside, Vista and Escondido face cuts to public services. All have strong public employee unions that are now under assault by city officials, either for threatening future prosperity, in Carlsbad\u2019s case, or for not bailing out the budgets of the other three. If unions are the problem, you have to wonder why Carlsbad has been left unscathed.<\/p>\n
While several schools in Vista and Escondido are threatened with state sanctions because of low test scores, Carlsbad, San Dieguito and Poway schools face none. If unions are spreading an epidemic of failing schools, why are some schools immune? <\/p>\n
Unions are blamed for denying administrators the right to lay off teachers based on merit rather than seniority. Good teaching is assumed to be easily recognized, and that experience cannot be trusted as a reliable measure. <\/p>\n
Teaching success, like student learning, can be assessed in multiple ways. It’s not possible to rank teachers precisely on their effectiveness. When budget shortfalls require layoffs, administrators could take into account the cost of retaining experienced, highly paid teachers, regardless of their effectiveness. Speaking from personal experience, I know I was a far better teacher in my fifth year than my first.<\/p>\n
My beef with administrators arises when they hire and award tenure to ineffective teachers, removing students from their classrooms when parents complain. That\u2019s an administrative failure, not a matter of union obstruction. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never been a union member, but having worked with unions as a state university administrator I learned that complaints about their obstructiveness was often related to a manager’s failure to treat staff members fairly and openly when making tough personnel decisions. <\/p>\n
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently convened a meeting of school officials and union leaders from across the country to consider how management and labor can develop strong partnerships to improve student learning.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s a good start. Union bashing hurts us all.<\/p>\n
Richard Riehl<\/a><\/strong> is a Carlsbad resident. Contact him at fogcutter1@yahoo.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Labor unions have been credited with the rise of America\u2019s middle class. In the 1950\u2019s about 40 percent of the nation\u2019s workforce were union members. Today that number has dropped to less than 7 percent of private sector workers and about a third of public employees. Economists now warn of a disappearing middle class and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,46],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9746"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9746"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9748,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9746\/revisions\/9748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.carlsbadistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}