Most of the teachers in any given state work for the public school systems in those states.  Therefore most of the money paid to teachers happens in the form of tax dollars raised through property and other local taxes, state taxes and fees (fees are just another form of tax) and our federal income taxes.  So the majority of the union dues paid to the teacher’s unions to which teachers must belong as a condition of their employment comes from our tax money.

As taxpayers we are required then to support the teacher’s unions and they in turn use this money to lobby our government.  As a labor union they are negotiating on the premise of doing what’s best for their members as any labor union should – but they are doing it at the cost of the education system and the children trapped within it.  They are also doing it with public money.

I’ve lately come to really resent sending my children to school.  I have no choice – I must educate them according to law.  I could send them to a private school but I’ve not found one that meets my educational philosophy.  I could home school them but that presents other challenges and denies them certain opportunities as there is sometimes a social stigma attached to home schooling.  The balance I’ve struck is to send them to our local school system but to be aware of what they are learning and to supplement and amend the curriculum in our home to meet my personal education requirements.

Then I read articles like this: The Long Reach of Teachers Unions.

The largest political campaign spender in America is not a megacorporation, such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft, or ExxonMobil. It isn’t an industry association, like the American Bankers Association or the National Association of Realtors. It’s not even a labor federation, like the AFL-CIO. If you combine the campaign spending of all those entities it does not match the amount spent by the National Education Association, the public-sector labor union that represents some 2.3 million K–12 public school teachers and nearly a million education support workers (bus drivers, custodians, food service employees), retirees, and college student members. NEA members alone make up more than half of union members working for local governments, by far the most unionized segment of the U.S. economy.

So if you think you don’t spend money on political campaigns – think again.  For Massachusetts, the amount spent per teacher on politics is $81.24.  Total spending for the year $5.7 million dollars.  Millions of dollars spent to advocate for a broken system dedicated to maintaining the status quo.

Look at one of the big ticket items they spent these funds to support:

Two very large donations concerned a noneducation issue on which NEA has been active: health care. The union contributed $450,000 to Health Care for America Now (AFT chipped in another $125,000) and $275,000 to the National Coalition on Health Care (AFT, $10,000). Last year, NEA president Dennis Van Roekel was part of the labor coalition that persuaded the White House to delay the implementation of the “Cadillac” excise tax on health care coverage, but only when it applied to union members.

No wonder the local teacher’s union won’t negotiate health care concessions.  They’ve got a few extra years before those unwieldy “Cadillac plans” come into the penalty phase.  Once that happens then they will negotiate just enough to avoid the excise tax.  And we, the taxpayer, get to pay both bills.

The three school committee members who partake of the health insurance benefit available to them have agreed to switch to the Value Option Plan.  Finally.

Although I need to wonder how much this (from the linked article above) factored into their decision:

Prior to the School Committee meeting, Fiorentini produced a legal opinion from City Solicitor William Cox that the mayor could switch the School Committee members into the new plan without their consent. In summary, the legal opinion says the city must make health insurance available to members of the City Council and School Committee that want it, but that the mayor has the authority to decide which health care plan is offered.

Nothing like making the change voluntarily now that they know their existing plan won’t be available forever.  And I really love how conscientious everyone is about making sure the details are available and that everyone is happy with the plan.  Do these folks realize the rest of the working world simply gets a notice that their insurance has been changed and to change doctors and plan accordingly.  The notice generally also outlines the increases in premiums, co-pays and prescription costs as well.

The whole health insurance situation is untenable and I wish as a society we had a better method of dealing with it but the reality of health insurance is that it is the most expensive benefit employers offer.  Companies across the country have made cuts to health care and people across the country have had to make adjustments to their lives because of those cuts.  As much as I sympathize with individuals who will face rising costs because of this – as a tax payer I am also a shareholder in the business of the City of Haverhill.

Things had just settled down after last year’s sick time scandals when we start this summer with two more pieces of poor press for our firefighters.  We have the EMTs who decided re-certification was a waste of their time and the firefighter spending 4 months in jail without anyone having a clue.  None of this helps the firefighters, their union or the overall public opinion of our town!

Then I find the official Haverhill Firefighter’s IAFF homepage and scrolling down there is a tasteless cartoon about the Mayor’s Office.  I get that there will be animosity between the Mayor’s office and various departments – especially at budget times – but that’s a cartoon best pinned to a wall in a locker room and not posted on the internet on the official union website.

Now we add controversy over moving the Fire Chief’s job out of civil service and add to that the Firefighter’s Union being one of the last holdouts on health care concessions and I’m having a really hard time seeing these guys in a sympathetic light.  We’ve also learned that the jailed firefighter seems to have gotten quite the break after he caused an accident in 2005.

Now we have this article about the Mayor looking to finally hire some new firefighters to fill positions and hopefully stop the overtime bleeding.  I’m disappointed but not surprised at the bitterness in the comments over the thought of adding a woman firefighter to the ranks.  Everyone assumes these females are not qualified firefighters.  Of course they may not want to accept positions here based on anticipated hostility in the work environment.

Our firefighters are people who generally only come into our lives in a moment of need and vulnerability.  Their poor press lately is not confidence building in this regard.

As we go through the summer, negotiations continue with principals and teachers over contracts and the ever present issue of health care. We’ve listened to budget talks for weeks about how the health care costs are crippling the school budget and have resulted in layoffs, increased class sizes and decreased offerings for our students.

We are now 13 days past this post and this article and still Mr Wood and Mr Toohey haven’t bothered to return the Eagle Tribune’s calls regarding their unwillingness to change to the Mayor’s health care plan. This bothers me especially because Mr Wood and Mr Toohey are 2/3 of the negotiating team that is working with the teacher’s union to finally sign a contract that hopefully switches the teachers to the Mayor’s Value Option Plan.

This strikes me as very poor leadership by these high profile members of the School Committee; Mr Toohey is the current president and Mr Wood is the former president. Both seem to feel it is appropriate to negotiate from the position of “take what we tell you is the best health care plan available – despite it not being good enough for us.” This is one of the largest problems I have with national health care reform; the plan forced by law on all of the citizens does not apply to members of Congress. I like this even less when it happens locally and is perpetuated by people in my own neighborhood!

I’m not sure what really happened in this meeting with the principals but I’m betting the truth lies someplace in the middle. The School Committee found quite a bit of cash to reward the interim superintendent and to hopefully entice a new superintendent to our city and every other union who has switched health care has gotten something in return so I can understand the principals looking for a carrot in this negotiation. This is how negotiations work – each side pushes and pulls to work out something in the middle of what one side wants and what the other side offers.

Of course the principals are just a few individuals and the real budget impact will only be seen when the Teacher’s Union adopts the Value Option Plan. I’m betting with this article that a health care concession won’t be reached any time soon with the 600 members of the teacher’s union. I am a little leery of his quote about doubling premiums last contract – one of the sticking points in one of the last union contracts negotiated while I still worked at Shaw’s Supermarkets was health care. The union balked at the unreasonable concept of union workers paying any amount for health care. The union actually went on strike that year because $2 per week per employee for health insurance premiums was unfair. So until I know what that doubling is in actual dollars I’m not going to give it too much weight.

While I don’t usually give much weight to the comments because they are generally the same dozen trolls all feeding each other I noted a few who echoed rumors I’ve heard around town that Mr Harvey doesn’t act on the will of the entire body of teachers but listens closely to a few more vocal groups. If this is true I think perhaps the teachers need to vote in a new spokesperson and negotiator.

Tonight’s School Committee meeting will be the last one of the year to deal with the 2010-2011 budget.  If there’s anything you’d like to say about the budget this is pretty much the last chance open forum on the issue.  If you would like to see the proposed budget they’ve posted a link to the very large pdf here.

The last School Committee meeting was pretty much a rubber stamp approval of the budget by the Committee and then a round of pats on the back for everyone.

A few parents got up to speak.  They were frustrated with the cuts in the budget and felt people didn’t know how badly programs are affected.  I wonder where these parents were all year.  I certainly never saw them at any of the other meetings I attended over the school year.  Parents can’t just show up at budget time and expect the committee to just pull money out of air for their children’s programs!  We need to band together and fight how this fiasco is being funded at the state level if we want anything to change in our town.  I can’t be the only one emailing my representatives and looking for people to speak to on beacon hill!

Along the way someone on the committee was bright enough to figure out that they sounded awfully obnoxious with all their comments about how well they did this year; so they then each took 20 minutes to bemoan the state of the economy and how that made this an awful budget to work with.  Education in Haverhill is in dire straits.  Those poor children are missing out.  None of us are happy with this budget.  Services are at a bare minimum across the board.  Once they felt they’d been appropriately contrite the meeting moved along to new business.

The Mayor proposed that those non union employees of the Haverhill School Department including the School Committee adopt the health plan they are currently trying to convince the unions to accept.  This was met with a surprising amount of contention.  The committee felt the employees should be notified and asked if this is something they want to happen.  Apparently the committee doesn’t understand how executive decisions are made when unions aren’t involved.  No one I know who is non union ever gets a say in benefit changes.  The companies simply say “Here’s your new insurance plan.” or “Here’s the new rate for your insurance plan.”  or “Here’s the pay cut we’ve instituted.”  While I can appreciate letting people know that as of X date your plan is changing… I don’t understand having endless discussion on the topic – especially if this is the plan you want all of the unions to adopt!

Another disappointingly business as usual meeting of the Haverhill School Committee.

I believe in health care reform.  I believe everyone should have access to medical care – especially the sick people.  I believe preventative medicine is an important part of overall good health.  I don’t believe in the bill currently headed to President Obama’s desk.

First, the bill lacks reform.  So lets be accurate in our naming please.  This is health care legislature voted in to make President Obama look like he succeeded where President Clinton left off.  This vote is the political version of two little boys on the playground fighting over whose father is the toughest.  Nothing about this bill will bring meaningful improvement to anyone’s health care.

Second, I love how they are paying for the legislation:

• Taxes will increase – shocking that.  So take some of that money you will be “saving” in premiums and get ready to hand it to the government.
• Then there will be an “excise tax” on the premium health care plans.  The government expects the insurers to pass this tax along to the consumer so be ready to not actually see any savings in your premiums.  Oh well.  But the companies will give everyone raises once health care costs drop!  Have these people never taken economy 101?  Companies and municipalities are being strangled by health care costs… if those costs drop they aren’t going to be flush with money – and should they find themselves flush with money do you really see it going to the worker?  Did we not watch the banks give their CEOs taxpayer funded bonuses with the bailout money?  The board members are the only ones seeing gains in a windfall.
• They will be increasing the threshold for how much people have to pay in medical fees before you can deduct costs from your tax returns thus keeping more of your tax money there.
• Then there is the penalty for those without insurance who the government assumes can afford it and are just ignoring their mandate.
• Likewise they will penalize employers too for not providing insurance when they’ve mandated it if your company is large enough.  I wonder how many employers will then just turn all their workers into contract workers to save themselves the headache?
• Companies who provide medical supplies will have to pay extra fees because they will be getting extra business from all these previously uninsured people flooding the system.  Back to Economy 101 – any fee assessed to a business is passed on to the consumer!
• Providers will be paid less in their Medicaid contracts.  They already subsidize their Medicaid patients by over-billing private insurers and those who pay cash for medical care – you want to cut this further?  Look who pays!  Cut it too far and Doctors won’t accept Medicaid as an insurance any longer.  This effectively denies health care to the most at risk people – the ones reform was supposed to help!  I can see Congress writing an addition to the bill requiring Doctors to take Medicaid and all of our Doctors fleeing the country.  We already have fewer people willing to take on the profession due to the high cost of malpractice – lets penalize them further for trying to save our lives.

Third, I don’t know a single person who wants this legislature passed.  Voters spoke in MA and supposedly this landmark vote was a warning shot Washington did not heed.  When you have the Senate Seat of the most outspoken and fervently Pro Health Care Reform Democrat – Ted Kennedy – up for replacement and the State of Massachusetts votes in a young Republican; the pendulum is shifting!

So we come to what the vote was really about.  Can Obama finally get something done?  He hasn’t fixed NCLB – I think he might actually have made it worse and I wasn’t sure that was even possible.  He certainly hasn’t brought any troops home – I think we have more of them overseas than before; he’s just beefed up forces in Afghanistan instead of Iraq while leaving all the other troops where they were.  The Stimulus Packages have done nothing but put us further in debt in this one year span than all of the other presidents combined over the history of the United States.  All that stimulates is frustration and desperation.  Unemployment is still double digit.  This leaves health care.  In an attempt to rally support for his Presidency and not make the Democratic Party look ineffective this bill is being rammed through Congress before the November election backlash brings a Republican majority with it.  The hope is that all of the good feelings from “getting something done” will erase in the voting public’s minds the betrayal at being ignored in their wishes to not have this bill pass.

If the politicians thought the vote for Obama was historic – wait for November!  There’s never been a better time to dust off that voter registration card and submit it and take back our democratic process from the poorly named Democrats!