Three members of the Douglas County School Board have floated proposals to terminate dealings with teacher's unions.

Three board members proposed three separate ballot questions, each chipping away at what have been traditional district-union relationships in the affluent county south of Denver.

  • Should the district be prohibited from using public funding for the compensation of union leaders?
  • Should the district be prohibited from collecting union dues from employee paychecks on the union’s behalf?
  • Should the district be prohibited from engaging in collective bargaining with the union?


Board members are expected to vote at their Sept. 4 meeting on which of the questions – or all or none of them – to place before voters on Nov. 6. School boards have until Sept. 7 to submit ballot language to their county elections officials.
 
Three Superb Ideas

Hopefully this is the start of a trend because those are three superb ideas. I commend the board members for those ideas.

Willfully dealing with public unions when you don't have to is blatantly stupid. Unions are 100% guaranteed to increase costs and reduce productivity, then demand tax hikes on top of it, while whining the whol
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Mike Shedlock

Mike Shedlock

Mike Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for Sitka Pacific Capital Management.

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14 Comments So Far
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Blair31 Wrote: Aug 28, 2012 8:45 PM
I hope the Unions are busted.
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gary47 Wrote: Aug 28, 2012 4:30 PM
The Unions. The people who brought you the weekend. Shedlock would take teachers and other workers back to sweatshops. We need a balance between union and management, but the decline in the union movement is bad for all workers.
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MoreFreedom Wrote: Aug 28, 2012 4:21 PM
"The clear-cut way to do something for the kids would be to eliminate the unions and pass some of the saving on to hire more teachers."

Shedlock falls for the "more teachers equals something for the kids" mantra coming from government school workers. Getting rid of the unions and collective bargaining would be doing something for the kids and their families, especially if government lets future savings stay with taxpayers and their families.

There is very little correlation between class size and learning. See http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/lets-rethink-classsize-amendment
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George33 Wrote: Aug 28, 2012 7:17 PM
How about we use the savings to put police officers in the class room and make talking back to a teacher or otherwise disrupting class a misdemeanor - with a free 3 day vacation in jail, with no TV or other entertainment, and no phone.
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Phil323 Wrote: Aug 28, 2012 3:31 PM
Collective bargaining, especially when it comes to teachers and teachers unions has become increasingly dangerous to states and their taxpayers. Consistently we see collective bargaining awarding state and local employees total compensation packages that far outstrip those found in the private sector (http://bit.ly/pZofYR). And when it comes to schools we’re not seeing much bang for our buck, and as a result, we continue to lose confidence in public schools despite putting more and more money into it (http://bit.ly/LmszmU).
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faultroy Wrote: Aug 28, 2012 12:49 PM
Mr. Shedlock seems to be mudding the waters cosiderably. It is illegal to not deal with any unions. The issue is collective Bargaining. Since each school district has a right to work within the fed and state system, collective bargaining is not the same thing as not working with the Union. They are two separate issues altogether. I'm not sure if Shedlock is aware of this because he uses loose language in his blog. A school board must negotiate with Unions as a matter of law, they have no choice--and it is not open for referendum.
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loadstar Wrote: Aug 28, 2012 2:56 PM
Unions of public employees were ILLEGAL until JFK first allowed them as payback for the union votes in the razor close election 1960...it was one of a number of his blunders.

The nation had done VERY well for almost 200 years w/o such unions...now we have communities and even states in dire straights even as we have cops and firefighters making 6-figure incomes with H.S. educations and retiring after as little as 20 years.

Public fiscal challenges? Well, DUHHHH!
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loadstar Wrote: Aug 28, 2012 11:51 AM
It is OBSCENE, prima facie, that unions might have paid officials on the public payroll-- PERIOD!

Even FDR, the archetypal Big Guvment liberal opposed unions of public employees--

"The process of collective bargaining, cannot be transplanted into the public service," Roosevelt wrote in 1937.

Yes, public workers may demand fair treatment, wrote Roosevelt, but, "I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the public sector. A strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government."

Even George Meaney, long-time head of the AFL-CIO, agreed that it is inappropriate for guvment employees to unionize.
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D216 Wrote: Aug 28, 2012 10:33 AM
Either we start cutting these "gimme - gimme - gimme" programs or the whole house of cards is going to collapse. The "feel-good" & "if it helps just one - it's worth it" liberals have brought this country to the brink of bankruptcy. We are facing total social and governmental implosion.
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Christine102 Wrote: Aug 28, 2012 8:39 AM
Yes we need to get rid of the Unions and the free lunch program throws tons of food in the garbage every day in ever classroom, every district in the USA. It is based on the asumption that we have starving children in America. The huge proportions, the food choices. No preschoolers do not eat lettuce salad with french dressing.
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Chris from Kalifornia Wrote: Aug 28, 2012 9:46 AM
Feed it to rabbits then eat the rabbits.
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Greg1084 Wrote: Aug 28, 2012 6:49 AM
Taking money out your neighbor's pocket and food out of the mouths of his children with what would have been the future income of those children is now a snap!
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