Teachers and other union members in Wisconsin have decided that it is better to protest at the capitol rather than show up for work. They have decided to express that it is more important to fight for more benefits and wages than educate the children of Wisconsin. Union bosses would have you believe that this confrontation is about workers rights and defending the worker. It is not. This is about unions maintaining power over the political process. You don’t think so, just go to Madison and ask a Democrat State Senator; wait, you can’t find a Democrat State Senator in Madison because they all left rather than allow the Wisconsin legislature vote on the issue. That should tell you something. The Democrats are beholden to the unions. Democrats are dependent on the unions for campaign funds and resources. Who do you think walks door to door and mans phone banks during campaigns for Democrat candidates? And, they probably do it while being paid by the unions. The pending legislation would force the unions to have to certify every year. And not just by a majority of those that vote, but a majority of all their members. Additionally, the legislation would end the practice of the government collecting union dues. Currently all costs of collecting union dues are born by the government; from manpower and computers to accountants etc… All the union does is go to the bank. ATF Wisconsin represents over 17,000 public employees. If the average union employee pays between $700 and $1000 a year to the union that’s an amount somewhere between $11.9 and $17 million every year; and since there won’t be any compulsory collection of dues and no requirement to belong to the union in order to teach, the likelihood is that many union members will stop paying the dues, and as a result the Union will no longer have the political clout it has enjoyed for years.
This is about money, plain and simple. The average Wisconsin teacher’s salary is $77,718. The average Wisconsin worker’s salary is $53,724. So this isn’t about underpaid teachers. And bear in mind that their salary isn’t even for a full years work because they usually get a winter and summer break. If teachers in Wisconsin get two months off a year that comes out to $7771 per month for the ten months that they do work.
And what about the Wisconsin State legislators are they taking vacation time, sick leave or are they just refusing to come to work? It has been a week, are they still being paid, even though they are obviously shirking their responsibilities and failing to represent their constituencies? And who gets stuck with the tab? The people paying for this egregious behavior are the taxpayers of Wisconsin.
Why does this matter? Well, Governor Walker was elected on this platform, and Wisconsin, which voted handily for President Obama, suddenly turned red in the 2010 midterms. This is not a good omen for Democrats. The American people, state by state, are finally putting a stop to liberal, nanny state policies. Good for them! At the end of the day, all of this money and cost is paid for by the Taxpayer, in this case the Wisconsin Taxpayer. They are the ones on the hook for the teachers pay, the legislators pay, the extra security needed to control the protesters, the extra pay for those that have to clean it up. Wisconsin taxpayers are also the ones paying for every bit of activism undertaken by the public sector unions since that money ostensibly started as a percentage of the wages paid to public sector employees by the government provided by the Wisconsin taxpayer. That is the fight in which Governor Walker has decided to engage, the right of the taxpayer versus the right of unions. It is about time that the taxpayer has someone on their side. This is the time, and Wisconsin is the place.
(see also: http://ronaldoreaganblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/public-sector-unions-should-be.html)
Good job dude. When you can make average working stiffs believe other working stiffs are robber barons, you've really got something. I guess you clowns won't be happy until unions join the ranks of the poor working slobs that don't have representation. Then we can all be poor AND not have a chance to fight for our rights again. You really are scum.
ReplyDeleteI'm a retired educator. I didn't go into teaching to get rich. The joy of turning kids into lifetime learners was my greatest reward.
ReplyDeleteBUT.....
What you are not considering is; that teachers work long hours at home grading papers. And we
have workshops, off-duty chaperoning, extra curricular activities include tutoring during our lunch time. We spend many hours planning lessons to access the different learning modalities of the students in our classes.
We also do the job most parents won't do -because they are too busy at work, tired, or just don't care. We listen to the kids frustrations, and dreams, we counsel on proper behavior because they didn't learn it at home. Often we serve as banks and give them lunch money because mom and dad forgot to do it. And,
because they are in school all day, we see them more than their parents do. We are blamed for their not learning or failure to excel, when in reality; a lot of it comes from parents failure to parent at home. Many -not all- parents figure it's our job to teach them moral behavior, but if they don't learn it at home by example; we can't teach in only during the time we are responsible for them at school, particularly in High School when we only have them for one hour class periods! They must also learn it at home.
During those holidays you say we enjoy, we also
read, order materials, and study new ways of teaching to those who need it most. While we enjoy our families as you all do during the holidays. That's what most dedicated teachers do. And, no, not all of us are as dedicated. Like in all professional fields, there are teachers who are more self centered also.
Summers are not totally free, we have workshops,
we organize our classrooms, we select books and materials to use in the coming school year. If we go traveling to other countries, we take photos, we bring little, inexpensive souvenirs for the classroom to teach our students how other people live in other countries.
Those who don't teach, have no clue of just how much we actually do for all children. I never quite made the kind of money they make in Wisconsin or other areas. But when I retired, I knew I had made a difference in many young people's lives. My small retirement check is not what my life was about. I would never have
gone on strike or make outrageous demands when our economy is hurting everyone. There are millions of dedicated teachers who work with the children of dis-functional families and we
manage to provide a safe place in our classroom for them. Yes, we have our share of incompetent teachers, but for the most part,I was a witness to many highly qualified, greatly caring, hard working teachers. No, we are not all like the Wisconsin liberal,Union, brain-washed teachers.
The great majority of us go into the Teaching Profession out of idealism. Many of us keep that to the end, many allow the critics to take it away. I did my share for the world. I hope those of you who criticize teachers take the time to walk in their shoes sometime.