I wish I could offer a more entertaining blog tonight, but I'm not in a terribly happy mood. The strike is draining, and nothing seems to help much. The words won't come, so blogging is very difficult.
I'm aware of many people who are anti-union. I'm not exactly a big fan of unions myself, though I can see the good they've accomplished through the years. Some people seem to think they've done no good at all, or that any improvements in working conditions would have happened eventually anyway. The key word they seem to forget is "eventually". People with power will get away with exactly as much as they are allowed to get away with, in general. While there are many exceptions, much of the time the "Boss" will lord it over the workers unless there is some kind of counter to the boss being ... well, bossy. Intelligent bosses realize that happy workers are more productive workers, and thus conditions are improved. But too many bosses aren't that smart, and so work their people harder and harder to try and get results they want, killing morale and sometimes people while they are at it. While I believe that natural market forces would get rid of bosses like that eventually, the deaths of many more workers would have happened first if unions hadn't come along.
Of course, to an anti-union person, the death of some hypothetical historical worker means absolutely nothing. Besides which, modern unions aren't about preventing death so much as getting a better deal for the worker, right? I don't know. I think a lot of modern unions fighting to preserve basic things like health care are going a long way towards preventing death. Still...
Getting to the teachers' union, they are all about making it possible for teachers to actually teach, instead of just babysitting kids. In the particular district that hubby-Eric was hired into, members of the Tulalip tribe make up about 10% of the student population. The district also decided many years ago to build a strong special education program, and many families with special needs students started to move to Marysville just to get the best schooling available. This has created a teacher core that is diverse and culturally sensitive. Apparently, 25% of the teachers in the district have Masters degrees or higher. And, until the current administration arrived a couple of years ago, teacher turnover was very low. Teachers liked the district and wanted to stay. This meant that average salaries in Marysville were higher, because most of the teachers had more experience.
When this strike came along, the goal of the union was to preserve the status quo. While the situation has been deteriorating for a couple of years, the hope was to get the teachers a deal similar to the last one, with modest raises in line with the state averages, and to keep all the programs intact. What the district offered was a proposal that would gut the special education program, allow for unlimited class sizes, and cut teacher pay in the case of the most experienced teachers. Anti-union folks think that the teachers should have accepted the deal, even though it would have resulted in some teachers with over 40 kids per class, including no limit on behavioral problem students, and a pay cut. Why on Earth should any teacher accept that? That's not a teaching job, that's a babysitting job. But if you ask an anti-union person what the teachers should have done, they say that if the teacher didn't like it, they should quit.
Ok, suppose every teacher that is dissatisfied with the situation quits. Just pretend that the district can then find people to replace them. The replacements will be less experienced, and won't be familiar with the other teachers or even the teaching program. After facing classrooms of 40 or so students for a few days, some of them will quit. Then you get less experienced people. Until you aren't getting people who love teaching, you are getting people who just want a job. Some of them will succeed in getting some information into some of the students heads, but most of the students will remain uneducated. Chaos will rule in the classroom, and the quality of education will plummet. Pure anti-union folk think that this is the ideal solution. After all, who cares about the current generation of students? In a decade or two, the problem will sort itself out and things will be peachy again.
That's what I don't get. Why anyone in Marysville would want this to happen. I suppose I can almost understand people who don't have children having that attitude, but how on earth could any parent who actually wants their child to learn be willing to let the district administration destroy the solid core of teachers that the district has built up over the years? And yet there are actually parents out there actively campaigning to get a court injunction against the teachers. Are these people idiots? Are they completely ignorant of what's really happening? I can't believe they care so little for their children that they would let the district remove all the safeguards that make real teaching possible, yet that's what they are doing.
I wish I had answers. I wish I could help. I wish I could fully understand every side of the issue. I wish I could end this stupid strike so my hubby could get back to work and so the seniors could stand a chance of graduating on time. If only, if only...
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