Jesus fucking Christ, oh no you didn't, you have no shame. You who bemoaned the slanting and manipulation of data to fit one's world view have just cited Cato Institute and American Enterpise Institute. that's like going to Dr. Mengele to get scientific proof that Aryans are superior.

I can match you study by study that public employees make slightly less than the private sector given comparable education and experience. By the way, I am management in the public sector. I have personally negotiated down compensation packages in the last two years. The unions in Wisconsin were ready to talk about reducing the compensation packages... they just wanted what was, until this week, their legal right.

Haha.

i was kinda wondering...

I'd also add that the USAtoday article that most conservatives spout off about when the public vs. private sector pay issue gets raised is totally flawed as well. Essentially it doesn't take into account job, experience or education when making comparisons.

My favorite was a table on Fox news (which, even in its facts was contradicted by Politifact - overstating teacher benefits and understating the average worker) comparing the "average" Wisconsin teachers salaries to the "average" American worker. (the last including all workers... dishwashers, part time, pre-literate parking lot sweepers). If you add education and experience I have not seen a survey that does not place teachers below what colleagues in the private sector receive. Beginning teachers, even in high standard of living states like California, with four years of college and one year of graduate school... make 34k per anum.

Yeah Walker sort of ignores the apples to apples thing in his editorial:



There's also the completely non-quantifiable fact that teachers deserve better than they get. They deserve better compensation than banquet managers and for that matter, bank managers.

I have several friends who are teachers and a few also have masters degrees. They are 5-10 years in and make in the 50-60k range for 9 months of work. Not terrible but not living like royalty, especially in a city with a fairly high COL.

I will say that none of them were particularly great students though, and a few fell into it after they washed out of other things or ran out of weed money.

I also love the "because i know people with shitty jobs and bad benefits or have one myself, everyone else should have their benefits and pay reduced to match my crappy job" argument. (that will inevitably lead to a reduction in pay of private school teachers to pull them more in line with public school teachers (who don't need degrees, certifications, etc.)

Plus the old....i wish i had a cushy job like that. There are job openings all the time in the government...go to usajobs and apply and see how many you qualify for. My career field has openings all the time. Get in.

i do enjoy now working for a quasi-public entity and getting a 12% 401(k) contribution by my employer without me having to put anything in...

I love how this article doesn't mention years of experience for teachers, necessity of degree and certification for public school teachers (not required in private schools) and it even had the absurd number that unions have forced the size of public classrooms down to a ratio of "8-1" pupil-staff ratio from 18-1 in the 1960's. Obviously "pupil-staff ratio is not the same as classroom size (i.e. - pupil-teacher ratio). It's like their trying to get people to make that connection when they're actually including janitors, cafeteria staff, coaches, substitutes, etc in their pupil-staff ratio because in reality private schools may have 8-1 student to teacher ratios but not public schools....even in small farm communities.

Talk about a slanted piece of garbage article/comparison.

every teacher I know either was a complete failure at life before turning to substitute teaching, or is someone who desperately wants to stop teaching. It does make me wish that I had put the moves on some of my skankier looking teachers in high school, as it seems like they were likely recently reformed skanks.

Yeah, most of the chicks from hs/college that i know that went into teaching weren't exactly the highest moral rectitude. They were only not considered prostitutes because you didn't have to leave money on the nightstand.

I'm somewhere in the middle on the compensation discussion. As a whole the people I know who make the most are all private sector, followed by public sector and then you have you dumb ass non-profit workers like me. Teachers are a specific case and I think the teachers being woefully underpaid and how they could make a fortune in the private sector is a bit long in the tooth and not entirely accurate. However, I know many competent teachers who set out to be teachers. You all obviously have a very different experience there than me. Most of the people I know who are teachers are serious about it and wanted to be teachers first and were not failures in other things. They also all do quite decently and are comfortable. Harry's point about private school teachers not being necessarily certified and such is true as I know a couple of those too. I actually feel for those guys though because they are just as dedicated and a couple of them have won awards and done well, but their private schools know that without certification they can dick 'em around on salary as they don't have many other options.

And this is what gets to the real crux of things to me, and where the conversation always gets off track. I would prefer to see the non-unionized private school teachers lifted up for equality rather than see the public school teachers beaten down. This is the same problem that I have harped on before about how too many look at unions today and why their power has dwindled. We fail to look at unionized workers and say...damn, we should all get that job security, we should all be treated like that. Instead we look and get jealous and say...well, I don't get those conditions...you shouldn't either.

And it is unionization and the right of workers to bargain collectively that is at stake anyway, not specifics og teacher compensation. The union was never opposed to discussions about teacher compensation packages. Walker specifically set out to bust the unions and strip them of their legal right to bargain collectively. Time and again as the story has evolved we have seen that the budget was much more secondary t this central issue. Despite and agreements to talk compensation or negotiate, Walker would not compromise the removal of these rights. UNION BUSTING was the point here. All this compensation talk is a red herring.

On a different side of the union coin, how do you guys feel about union folks protesting outside of restaurants that used non union construction workers? I have mixed feelings because usually it's just a few people handing out fliers peacefully giving their side of the story to people who most likely don't even care. But on the other side, why should a restaurant (which is a business that fails 90% of the time) have to play by their more expensive rules?

I live near a street with a lot of restaurant turn over, so I've probably dealt with this more than most people.

I don't see how any businesses can be forced into hiring union workers as long as there are those non-union ones who will do the work. To some degree I think that's analogous to labor market competition. I have heard horror stories over construction unions although not sure how true they are. We don't really have any down here or that I have dealt with at least.

i dated a teacher briefly and this is true

You didn't have to pay her for sex? Sounds like a good dating arrangement!

Sorry, I'm not a fan of these insulting personal anecdotes about the teachers you guys know/knew and the generalizations being formed out of them.

We'll certainly get better teachers by paying them less.

As far as the union construction worker thing goes, no place is forced to use them. But, unions have every right to peacefully inform people that a business refuses to do so. Personally, I won't cross a picket or informational line to enter a business and I wish more people would follow this seemingly forgotten protocol. This in how a union has power, it is the collective will of the people to demand better pay and better working conditions and to support others in that struggle by not rewarding businesses who are not willing to pay a decent wage for their labor. As long as we as a people ignore this and cross lines and support businesses that refuse to hire unions workers and go for lower cost workers, unions will continue to see their power diminish.

Personally, I think leaving out the service industry from labor unions was their big downfall and something that makes the restaurant construction example interesting when you consider the same restaurants regardless of using union construction fuck over the their normal staff regularly. Unions left a whole gigantic group of people at the low end of the labor pool who get fucked in the ass on a regular basis out to dry and now you see none of those people giving a damn about union workers who are so much better off than they are and who never cared about getting them into the fold. It's really not so surprising. If you added this giant segment of American workers to the pro-labor pool, you would have a coalition with real numbers and real power. Sadly, it never happened.

drinky are you a teacher