Ohio vs. Public Employees: A Republican Tar Pit?
Riding high on the top of State of Ohio news is the pending bill in the state senate that would gut Ohio’s collective bargaining laws for public employees and neuter teacher unions. It is sponsored by Senator Shannon Jones from Springboro, Ohio. It has drawn the wrath of the Ohio Education Association, the Ohio Federation of Teachers, the Ohio Public School Employees Union, and just about every other union that exists in the great State of Ohio. It is a dangerous bill with ramifications which will destroy education in Ohio. By way of full disclosure, both my wife and son are public employees. My wife is a teacher retiring at 35 years in 2013. My son is employed by the Mahoning County Board of Elections as its financial dude. If my remarks seem sympathetic to the cause, it’s not because I disagree with the basic premise of Governor Kasich's goals. It’s because I have seen with my own eyes what goes in the public sector. What they are contemplating in Columbus will not fix the problems. It will only fuel tempers and hatred.
Let’s start with the attempt to prohibit strikes by public employees. When I was young, it was against the law for public employees to go out on strike. They did it anyway, and did it en masse making the law ineffective, so the law changed accordingly. Remember the Blue Flu? Remember the "sick-ins"? Here's the problem. The is nothing wrong with collective bargaining. But the public was supposed to be represented by the elected officials they put into office. And those elected officials didn't bargain. The enemy is us. Our representatives caved every time, and then came whining to the taxpayers for more money. The public employees union did exactly what it was supposed to do...bargain!!!! The system didn't fail. Our elected officials did. Over time, the line blurred between who was actually representing whom. After awhile, common sense was gone, and the ELECTED public officials made deals with the public employee unions, AND OTHER EMPLOYEES AS WELL, using other public employee salaries from other districts as the salary/benefit yard stick rather than equivalent salaries for equivalent work in the private sector. Once they started down that path, all contact with reality disappeared, and you have the dichotomy in public/private salaries that has developed today.
While one can make a big deal about unionized employees. The BIGGER problem is salaries given to the employees of elected officials who are not unionized. Those salaries are determined DIRECTLY by the people we have elected to office and seem to follow the old adage about spending other people's money. How many times have we heard we don’t want to lose employees to higher paying jobs in the private sector? Wait a minute. Let me laugh. There are no higher paying jobs in the private sector. In fact, what we have now are public sector jobs cannibalizing other public sector jobs with higher public job salaries. It’s a joke. This has profound consequences in the millions of dollars to county and municipal entities. This is what needs to be addressed in Columbus...not beating up on teachers.
As for the teachers, if the state legislature really wants to make a difference, cap the salaries of administrative personnel in a school system to a percentage of the overall school budget. Salary increases for teachers over the past 5 – 10 years have been nominal if any at all. Meanwhile, the salaries of superintendants have skyrocketed, with raises of 5 – 10% being given on a regular basis BY ELECTED SCHOOL BOARDS. The same can be said for other administrative personnel, whom the school systems continue to hire while laying teachers off. Let’s not even go to coaches. Governor Kasich, fix this!!!!
Finally, a word on the teacher seniority system! Suffice it to say that you haven’t seen politics in action until you have seen it with school boards and their hiring and firing practices. The laws that currently exist are there to protect teachers from being fired by newly elected school board members who have nieces or nephews looking for jobs. For many areas of Ohio, the local school districts equal a local employment agency…hiring the locals to do very little work at very high salaries. The seniority and tenure systems in Ohio are not there to protect bad teachers from being fired. They can be fired with a little bit of effort. Those laws are there to protect good teachers from being fired in order to provide a job to the daughter of the president of the local school board; to protect teachers from political prosecution as the tide shifts from election to election. Most importantly, to protect teachers at the high end of the pay scale from being fired to bring in lesser paid new teachers.
It is easy to point the finger at teachers, who have been saddled with everything from mainstreaming to multiculturalism to no discipline to cell phones continually going off to parents chronically demanding that disruptive little Jimmy be admitted back into school to counting sharp pencils that might be weapons to providing breakfasts and lunches to providing physical care to physically handicapped students who would best be served in a specialized class….it goes on and on. If you want teachers to teach…start there. Not at salaries. It’s a wonder any teaching gets done today in what is nothing short of a hostile environment.
My wife’s first job was at an inner city junior high school in Lima, Ohio, back in 1972. During a study hall, a particularly disruptive student refused to sit down. The student first stood up on his chair, then pranced around the study hall. When the teacher in charge told the student to report to the principal’s office, the student picked up a desk and hurled at the teacher hitting the teacher on the head. The teacher climbing out from under the desk, said to the student…a 17 year old still in the 8th grade…”you mother f____er.”
A week later, the school board held a public meeting broadcast over the radio….to chastise the teacher who was hit by the flying desk for calling the student a mother f___er. Nothing was done to the student. That's when I knew public education was in trouble. That is why we have laws on the books protecting teachers from being fired.
While obviously something has to be done about the ballooning rate of public sector salaries, I would hope that my beloved Republicans in Columbus would take a more reasoned and scholarly approach to the problems rather than throw the baby out with the bath water. If Kasich and the legislature go down that road…they will end up in a tar pit deeper and stickier than anything they can imagine.
Let’s start with the attempt to prohibit strikes by public employees. When I was young, it was against the law for public employees to go out on strike. They did it anyway, and did it en masse making the law ineffective, so the law changed accordingly. Remember the Blue Flu? Remember the "sick-ins"? Here's the problem. The is nothing wrong with collective bargaining. But the public was supposed to be represented by the elected officials they put into office. And those elected officials didn't bargain. The enemy is us. Our representatives caved every time, and then came whining to the taxpayers for more money. The public employees union did exactly what it was supposed to do...bargain!!!! The system didn't fail. Our elected officials did. Over time, the line blurred between who was actually representing whom. After awhile, common sense was gone, and the ELECTED public officials made deals with the public employee unions, AND OTHER EMPLOYEES AS WELL, using other public employee salaries from other districts as the salary/benefit yard stick rather than equivalent salaries for equivalent work in the private sector. Once they started down that path, all contact with reality disappeared, and you have the dichotomy in public/private salaries that has developed today.
While one can make a big deal about unionized employees. The BIGGER problem is salaries given to the employees of elected officials who are not unionized. Those salaries are determined DIRECTLY by the people we have elected to office and seem to follow the old adage about spending other people's money. How many times have we heard we don’t want to lose employees to higher paying jobs in the private sector? Wait a minute. Let me laugh. There are no higher paying jobs in the private sector. In fact, what we have now are public sector jobs cannibalizing other public sector jobs with higher public job salaries. It’s a joke. This has profound consequences in the millions of dollars to county and municipal entities. This is what needs to be addressed in Columbus...not beating up on teachers.
As for the teachers, if the state legislature really wants to make a difference, cap the salaries of administrative personnel in a school system to a percentage of the overall school budget. Salary increases for teachers over the past 5 – 10 years have been nominal if any at all. Meanwhile, the salaries of superintendants have skyrocketed, with raises of 5 – 10% being given on a regular basis BY ELECTED SCHOOL BOARDS. The same can be said for other administrative personnel, whom the school systems continue to hire while laying teachers off. Let’s not even go to coaches. Governor Kasich, fix this!!!!
Finally, a word on the teacher seniority system! Suffice it to say that you haven’t seen politics in action until you have seen it with school boards and their hiring and firing practices. The laws that currently exist are there to protect teachers from being fired by newly elected school board members who have nieces or nephews looking for jobs. For many areas of Ohio, the local school districts equal a local employment agency…hiring the locals to do very little work at very high salaries. The seniority and tenure systems in Ohio are not there to protect bad teachers from being fired. They can be fired with a little bit of effort. Those laws are there to protect good teachers from being fired in order to provide a job to the daughter of the president of the local school board; to protect teachers from political prosecution as the tide shifts from election to election. Most importantly, to protect teachers at the high end of the pay scale from being fired to bring in lesser paid new teachers.
It is easy to point the finger at teachers, who have been saddled with everything from mainstreaming to multiculturalism to no discipline to cell phones continually going off to parents chronically demanding that disruptive little Jimmy be admitted back into school to counting sharp pencils that might be weapons to providing breakfasts and lunches to providing physical care to physically handicapped students who would best be served in a specialized class….it goes on and on. If you want teachers to teach…start there. Not at salaries. It’s a wonder any teaching gets done today in what is nothing short of a hostile environment.
My wife’s first job was at an inner city junior high school in Lima, Ohio, back in 1972. During a study hall, a particularly disruptive student refused to sit down. The student first stood up on his chair, then pranced around the study hall. When the teacher in charge told the student to report to the principal’s office, the student picked up a desk and hurled at the teacher hitting the teacher on the head. The teacher climbing out from under the desk, said to the student…a 17 year old still in the 8th grade…”you mother f____er.”
A week later, the school board held a public meeting broadcast over the radio….to chastise the teacher who was hit by the flying desk for calling the student a mother f___er. Nothing was done to the student. That's when I knew public education was in trouble. That is why we have laws on the books protecting teachers from being fired.
While obviously something has to be done about the ballooning rate of public sector salaries, I would hope that my beloved Republicans in Columbus would take a more reasoned and scholarly approach to the problems rather than throw the baby out with the bath water. If Kasich and the legislature go down that road…they will end up in a tar pit deeper and stickier than anything they can imagine.
Oh yes...the teacher assault in Columbus will do NOTHING to fix the state budget shortfall. School budgets are local. There is a state contribution, which goes up and down, per student. Canfield, where I live, gets practically nothing. Youngstown City, on the other hand, gets unlimited funds with unlimited dismal results. And another oh yes....State Teachers Retirement is statutory. Adjustments have already been made to the system raising the retirement age and cutting back on benefits and increasing teacher contributions. All the legislature has to do is vote on it...and the problem goes away. Finally, most if not all teachers make a contribution to their health care packages. We do not have the same problem here that there is in Wisconsin or California.
One Republican to another....guys in Columbus.....think twice about this.
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