On the horizon

Diane Ravitch points to a Sept. 24 Frying Pan piece on the Pew / Arnold attack on pensions. There’s a more recent FP article on that topic, with a California focus. Pew and Arnold are coming this way in 2014 ballot initiative

“…This initiative defines that a government employee’s ‘vested rights’ only applies to pension and retiree healthcare benefits earned for service already rendered, and explicitly empowers government employers and the voters to amend pension and retiree healthcare benefits for an employee’s future years of service,” the private draft states.

Add in Matt Taibbi’s article on pension looting and Sirota’s long (PDF) report (on which Taibbi’s is based.

Dealing with this kind of direct attack on pensions, what teachers’ union will have the energy to struggle about issues of classroom autonomy and creativity? Why fight for professional integrity against VAM or Pearson’s Common Core or egomaniacal superintendents / principals when the real battle will be to preserve the financial promises that your employers plan to break?

Makes it more understandable that our union locals would bargain for cash and give in to a lot of the reformers’ bullshit, like UFT did. Hell, when the “reformers” have enough power to be able to disrupt all of public education while admitting that the disruption’s effects won’t be known for at least 10 years, what resistance isn’t futile? At least with bread and butter issues like raises, health benefits, pension promises, the unions might rally over-worked, underpaid members into some kind of united opposition.

The current contract in SFUSD ends June, 2014. Teachers have had no raises in the last eight years, and some of those years included furlough day pay cuts. I wonder what will UESF have to give up in order to get the raise. I predict agreement to some kind of Value Added Measure evaluations and weakening of seniority rules. It’ll be mild at first, but will grow more onerous year by year, until it gets up to the level of NYC’s insanity. But what option does the union have? It makes more sense to save money and resources for the 2014 pension fight.