strike \ˈstrīk\: verb :to stop work in order to force an employer to comply with demands
On the historically socialist May Day holiday, North Carolina teachers will be striking for the second consecutive year.
And, yes, it is a strike - despite the unwillingness of organizers, media, and politicians to call it that.
Yesterday, the NC Association of Educators held a news conference with Democratic lawmakers - calling for collective bargaining rights for government workers.
Because the NCAE is a union.
And unions protect bad workers.
And in order to protect bad workers, the union must have the ability to extract sweeping contract concessions from politicians. The NCAE campaign we see is the classic con employed by unions: use the best employees as examples to win protections for the worst ones.
Like most people, I had some great public school teachers.
But I also had some very bad ones.
I shouldn't have to pay them the same amount of money.
Dan Way at the Carolina Journal covered the news conference:
North Carolina is one of only three states with a blanket prohibition on public-sector union collective bargaining. This bill doesn’t require local governments to enter collective bargaining or allow public employees to strike.
“The repeal of public sector bargaining provides a first step to bring North Carolina laws in line with those of a majority of states,” said Mark Jewell, president of the N.C. Association of Educators, which acts as a de facto teachers union.
If you think the NC teachers (non)union is disrupting families' lives now with their May Day strike, wait until they can dictate the terms for every teacher in the entire state. The strikes will get worse - at least when Republicans are in power. I suspect the strikes will morph into appreciation rallies when Democrats are in control of the legislature.
To be clear, this is what Democrats want. The union will be a reliable voter base to farm. Which raises the most obvious fatal flaw in allowing government employees to collectively bargain: employees will be picking their negotiating adversaries. It's a rigged system that leads to runaway spending, single-party control of government, and corruption of the profession and education system.
[Democrats] said North Carolina should emulate California and New York, heavily unionized states that he said are thriving.
Steven Greenhut was surprised someone California as a model to emulate. He’s a senior fellow at the nonpartisan R Street public policy research organization and author of the book “Plunder! How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation.”
“If you’re a mediocre teacher, or worse, it’s the best place to be,” he said.
Union protections make it nearly impossible to fire bad teachers, and binding contracts impose enormous challenges to reforms. Compliance officers are hired to meet contract terms as bureaucracy and administrative costs grow. Across-the-board pay makes it impossible to reward the best teachers with merit pay and disallows financial incentives to recruit top educators to teach specialty subjects, or to teach in poor performing schools.
Greenhut links unionization to California’s decline of traditional public schools, and steady rise in charter school openings. Teacher unions grow stronger and richer under collective bargaining, get more involved in the political process, and more resources flow to schools, but not to areas that help students learn.
So, while you're scrambling to figure out how to cover child care needs for the NC Teacher Cut Out Day, keep in mind that the NCAE wants you to feel the pain and inconvenience - which are necessary to convince you to meet their demands.
Just do what they demand, give them more power to extract more money, and they'll relieve the pain.
Until they want something else.
Which they always do.
Pete's Prep: Thursday, April 25, 2019
- Millionaire socialist Senator Bernie Sanders said millionaire senators are immoral, according to CNN. He's also been "double-dipping" by receiving a pension from his time as Burlington, VT mayor.
- The Citizen-Times reports: Asheville has a homeless crisis.
- Stacey Matthews at North State Journal: What's extreme about wanting to protect a baby survives an abortion?
- Aunt Becky claims she didn't know that scamming the college admissions process was illegal, according to Yahoo News.