Wisconsin protest, a sign of things to come?

[RickN]

Interesting.

The United Federation of Teachers knows how to party, even as 5,000 New York City teachers face layoffs.

The Daily News reports the union shelled out nearly a million dollars last year for its 50th anniversary gala. Records show it dropped more than $278,000 on the Annual Teacher's Union Day Ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria and spent $179,000 on training retreats at a Connecticut resort.

The union president, Michael Mulgrew, defends the costs, saying -- quote -- "I'm not going to apologize for spending money to service our members."

 

[elwoodtrix]

the cost of living is higher in Wisconsin

http://www.cityrating.com/costofliving.asp

and checking their salaries... use the drop down to select teachers, pick a county..

http://www.postcrescent.com/article...66/DataMine-Search-Wisconsin-teacher-salaries

bump...


and wolf.. management started the strong arm... so let off the "thugs" lol

 

[dennishoddy]

Green.

HAHAHA!! great reply
I still don't like unions for the record

 

[carbon]

[Broken External Image]

 

[sigsilly]

Public unions are out of hand. They draw higher wages and benefits, especially in retirement, than do union workers in the private sector.
So much so as to be ridiculous.
(Federal retirement pay is unbelievably high for management so unions wanted more too.)
If you think labor vs. management relations are bad in places like the automotive industry, you should see what it is in the USPS or Tinker.
Gov't by nature is slow and unresponsive to the individual citizen. Add in the factor of tenured or senior public servants that don't give a damn whether anything gets done because they are too busy gossiping or drinking coffee, and you have a tremendous and non-beneficial burden on the taxpayer.
Welcome to the world of gov't employee unions.

 

[Good Cheer]

Wisconsin just makes me think about how incredibly stupid we are for allowing government to be in the school business.

 

[SDarkRage]

Public unions are out of hand. They draw higher wages and benefits, especially in retirement, than do union workers in the private sector.
So much so as to be ridiculous.
(Federal retirement pay is unbelievably high for management so unions wanted more too.)
If you think labor vs. management relations are bad in places like the automotive industry, you should see what it is in the USPS or Tinker.
Gov't by nature is slow and unresponsive to the individual citizen. Add in the factor of tenured or senior public servants that don't give a damn whether anything gets done because they are too busy gossiping or drinking coffee, and you have a tremendous and non-beneficial burden on the taxpayer.
Welcome to the world of gov't employee unions.

Not all of us Gov't emps are union nuts. Some of us still value hard work and doing a good job. But I'm also a wage grade and not in mngmt (I speak my mind and make people feel bad for not doing their job so I'll never get promoted). At Tinker, 90% of the people that are in the Union, joined because they got into some kind of trouble out there and believe the union can save them. I'm happy that the union finally got a back bone out there and stopped defending the drug users. They won't even represent them anymore. We had a supervisor selling pot and pain killers... .gov investigated him then fired him. Union refused to represent, he tried to sue them for it. That didn't go anywhere thankfully. My ex-work leader is a Union lackey and she was griping at me one day for not joining the union since everybody else in the shop had... I asked her if I joined, who was going to do all the work? I finally got the transfer I'd been asking for.


I'm not pro or anti- union (for the most part), but for the life of me I can't figure out what good our union is at Tinker. They can't strike or demonstrate, nor bargain for wages. That takes all the sting out of the union. So whats the point besides somebody is making a lot of money at $1 per hour off of 10,000 or so employees. Thats a lotta demp.

 

[SDarkRage]

Wisconsin just makes me think about how incredibly stupid we are for allowing government to be in the school business.

Exactly. Back in the 50's when my pops was growing up, schools were ran locally by the towns. They paid to bring in the best teachers and demanded quality from them. If the teachers where short, the community got together and help provide things like supplies and other. He was telling me about one of his teachers had lost her husband due to some sickness and the town all got together and paid for his funeral and memorium. When's the last time that's happened?

I'm sorry, because kids today are coming out totally stupid. When i was going to high school back in the early 90's, they started this equal opportunity BS about kids being treated equally. There would be no bad students and no excelling students. That took all the drive out of us. They took away all of our Honors programs and the special trips we got for achieving greatness. The courses took a hit and became super easy so the not so smart D students were now making B's and A's. It made it to where I'd sleep through class, wouldn't read or do my "homework", do my projects the night before and I still pulled off straight A's. I started taking college classes my Junior year because I was so far ahead. I'm not bragging because what we've done as a country to our school system is tragic. We've dumbed down America. Where is the drive to excell when all you have to do is show up? What does that do for our future leaders mindsets? I'm sorry, but we've ruined this country and no matter how much we through money at it, its not going to fix it. When no one is held accountable then why bother?

 

[webmogul]

Exactly. Back in the 50's when my pops was growing up, schools were ran locally by the towns. They paid to bring in the best teachers and demanded quality from them. If the teachers where short, the community got together and help provide things like supplies and other. He was telling me about one of his teachers had lost her husband due to some sickness and the town all got together and paid for his funeral and memorium. When's the last time that's happened?

I'm sorry, because kids today are coming out totally stupid. When i was going to high school back in the early 90's, they started this equal opportunity BS about kids being treated equally. There would be no bad students and no excelling students. That took all the drive out of us. They took away all of our Honors programs and the special trips we got for achieving greatness. The courses took a hit and became super easy so the not so smart D students were now making B's and A's. It made it to where I'd sleep through class, wouldn't read or do my "homework", do my projects the night before and I still pulled off straight A's. I started taking college classes my Junior year because I was so far ahead. I'm not bragging because what we've done as a country to our school system is tragic. We've dumbed down America. Where is the drive to excell when all you have to do is show up? What does that do for our future leaders mindsets? I'm sorry, but we've ruined this country and no matter how much we through money at it, its not going to fix it. When no one is held accountable then why bother?

Amen to that. I really saw this when I was in school. For the life of me I couldn't understand why some classes existed. Seriously, 6 years of english/literature and only 3 or 4 semesters of math and 1 year of science? I remember peers laughing at me because I took extra math courses and I'm glad I did.

And who is it that prevents any kind of real education reform? oh yea, the teachers unions. I heard on the news this morning about some study that said that if we fired the bottom 5% of _bad_ teachers, just 5% of them, we'd be ranked at the top again for education, but districts can't because unions protect them. Imagine that.

 

[webmogul]

Wisconsin just makes me think about how incredibly stupid we are for allowing government to be in the school business.

Think it is a coincidence that public education is #10 on Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto?