Tag Archives: Unions

Minnesota Metro Transit Bus Drivers: Pay And Overtime

Posted on January 1, 2012 | Leave a comment

A recent analysis of bus drivers for the Minnesota Metro Transit system provided some interesting data:

  • Base pay for drivers is nearly $50,000 a year.
  • The top earner in the system made $120,000 a year.
    • He did this by working, on average, 74 hours a week.
  • Overtime in the system has jumped by 52 percent from 2008 to 2010.
  • A driver on overtime – paid at time and a half – saves Metro Transit $4 an hour on average.
    • This due to the fact that the agency would have to pay for training, additional benefits and pension.
  • A union agreement says that no more than 24 percent of Metro Transit’s workforce can be part time – prompting the agency to turn to overtime.
  • In October, 89 percent of weekday overtime assignments were during rush hour and lasted less than three hours.

The incentives are undeniable.  For a system that demands flexibility; traffic doesn’t occur in neat 8 hour blocks, the rules prohibit the proper response.  Further, regulations surrounding benefits, those benefits that include vacation, retirement and health care, make it more cost effective to work an already employed person than to hire someone else.  And lastly, being a Metro Transit driver isn’t all that bad; 50 large is a good deal of money.

Finally I’d like to point out that for at least one of these drivers, the overtime is a feature and not a bug.  And it’s a feature because of decisions HE’S made in HIS life:

Lance Wallace is happy to drive a few extra hours if it means his wife can stay home with their four children – all younger than 5.

The New Hope man is among the top 5 percent of overtime earners at Metro Transit. Picking up extra shifts and working nearly every day, he averages 60 to 70 hours a week. The $37,700 in overtime he earned last year pushed his total earnings to $86,400.

“I don’t really want to work overtime,” Wallace said. “But I do it to make up the income.”

The extra work doesn’t make him “overly tired,” Wallace said. In fact, after working two jobs before, he “feels good” to now work where he can dictate his own hours.

Mr. Wallace is a father.  A father of FOUR.  A father of FOUR in a family that has the mother stay home.  And of those FOUR kids, all are younger than 5.  And this father of four young children is happy that he’s able to work the hours he does in order to prevent having to carry two jobs.

My point?  Incentives matter.  Raising the cost of hiring means that you will see less hiring.  Wage earners will enjoy working more hours if it benefits them, not the other way around.  Government union work pays well.  People who have 4 kids in 4 years time have a more limited ability to dictate their time.

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Posted in Liberty, Life, Middle Class

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Ohio: Unions and Elections

Posted on November 9, 2011 | Leave a comment

Liberals love to scream that corporations influence elections in an unfair manner.  They have tons of money and are able to exert influence that ordinary people can’t.

Strangely they are silent when that exact same influence is wielded by unions:

The nation’s biggest labor unions spent nearly $30 million to repeal the law. That was more than twice the amount spent by Republican-affiliated groups backing the law.

30 million dollars.  30.  Million.  Dollars.

Listen.  The Left complains that abuses take place all the time by “actors” of the right.  Rules are broken and advantages are exploited.  But make no mistake.  The REAL complain isn’t that those rules are really important or that advantages shouldn’t exist.  The REAL complain from the Left is that they aren’t the ones benefiting from ’em.

Once again we have Unions using illegally obtained money to elect officials and pass laws that benefit the Union.

Occupy Ohio people, Occupy Ohio.

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Posted in Economics, Idiots on Parade, Liberty, Lobby/PAC, Politics: National, States Behaving Badly

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Teacher’s Unions: Not In Favor of Students

Posted on November 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

One more for the file labelled: We Hate Kids, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers has come out against a policy that would allow the city to fire and hire teachers based on merit, you know–teaching kids–rather than on seniority:

A coalition of City Council members, former school leaders, parents and pastors are calling for Minneapolis public schools to end seniority-based hiring and firing practices in the next teachers union contract.

In its “Contract for Student Achievement” position paper, the group argues that past agreements between the district and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) “repeatedly put the needs of adults over the academic needs of students.”

“We call on the district and the MFT to negotiate a different kind of contract — one that recognizes the academic crisis in our schools and makes student achievement the top focus,” the coalition says in its letter, which was delivered to the school board this week.

Saying the letter “feels like an attack” on teachers, union president Lynn Nordgren disputed some of its findings and the argument that past contracts have halted reform.

At the heart of all successful organizations is innovation.  And innovation requires change; sometimes massive disruptive change.  And Unions aren’t in favor of that.

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Posted in Education, Lobby/PAC, States Behaving Badly

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Teacher’s Unions: It’s About Power – How They Hate Kids

Posted on October 19, 2011 | 3 comments

I love teachers.  My dad taught, many of my friends teach, some in my family currently teach.  Hell, I was a teacher.

I love great teachers.  We should fire the horrible ones, not the bad ones, just the horrible ones, but that’s a post for another day.

My beef is the Union.  That organization that represents teachers and bargains and negotiates for them.  If you ever had any doubt, any doubt what so ever, that Unions not only don’t care about kids, but hate children, here it is.  In all its glory, how Unions are power hungry monsters:

To the relief of college-bound seniors, Lakeville high school teachers will once again write letters of recommendation under a deal reached this week between their local union and the school district.

The agreement ends a standoff that began two weeks ago during contract negotiations between the union and district. Hoping to spur a settlement, some teachers began refusing to write recommendation letters, among other measures requested by their union.

The Union requested teachers stop writing letters of recommendation for seniors trying to get into college.

Power.  Pure and unapologetic power.  Unions do not exist for the benefit of the children.  They exploit children.  And teachers.  And you.

Measure teachers.  Fire shitty ones.  Reward great ones.  And abolish teachers unions.

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Posted in Education, Liberty, Lobby/PAC, Politics: National, States Behaving Badly

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#10

Posted on October 5, 2011 | 2 comments

Francis Tarkenton.

When he retired from playing professional football, he was the greatest quarterback of all time.  Still today he’s mentioned in the top 10.  He was really somethin’; really something to see.  Two things about Sir Francis:

  1. He was an innovator.
  2. He achieved at the highest level.

So, when #10 speaks about educational achievement, I tend to wanna listen.  At least listen:

Inflation-adjusted spending per student in the United States has nearly tripled since 1970. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, we spend more per student than any nation except Switzerland, with only middling results to show for it.

Over the past 20 years, we’ve been told that a big part of the problem is crumbling schools—that with new buildings and computers in every classroom, everything would improve. But even though spending on facilities and equipment has more than doubled since 1989 (again adjusted for inflation), we’re still not seeing results, and officials assume the answer is that we haven’t spent enough.

These same misguided beliefs are front and center in President Obama’s jobs plan, which includes billions for “public school modernization.” The popular definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. We’ve been spending billions of dollars on school modernization for decades, and I suspect we could keep on doing it until the end of the world, without much in the way of academic results. The only beneficiaries are the teachers unions.

…

Perhaps no other sector of American society so demonstrates the failure of government spending and interference. We’ve destroyed individual initiative, individual innovation and personal achievement, and marginalized anyone willing to point it out. As one of my coaches used to say, “You don’t get vast results with half-vast efforts!”

The results we’re looking for are students learning, so we need to reward great teachers who show they can make that happen—and get rid of bad teachers who don’t get the job done. It’s what we do in every other profession: If you’re good, you get rewarded, and if you’re not, then you look for other work. It’s fine to look for ways to improve the measuring tools, but don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Listen.  Let yourself listen and you know, you simply can NOT deny that he’s right.

Listen:

— we’re still not seeing results

— The only beneficiaries are the teachers unions.

— The results we’re looking for are students learning, so we need to reward great teachers

— get rid of bad teachers

And the one that rocks me to the very core of my being:

— We’ve destroyed individual initiative, individual innovation and personal achievement, and marginalized anyone willing to point it out.

We are turning into France!

Still don’t believe me?  STILL?  Consider:

Imagine the National Football League in an alternate reality. Each player’s salary is based on how long he’s been in the league. It’s about tenure, not talent. The same scale is used for every player, no matter whether he’s an All-Pro quarterback or the last man on the roster. For every year a player’s been in this NFL, he gets a bump in pay. The only difference between Tom Brady and the worst player in the league is a few years of step increases. And if a player makes it through his third season, he can never be cut from the roster until he chooses to retire, except in the most extreme cases of misconduct.

Imagine if sports were managed like teachers are managed.  Rather than think about how it is that our schools are failing us, consider this.  How is it even possible that our schools are succeeding to the degree they do?  The industry drives out innovation.  It drives out competition.  It drives out achievers.  It is left with far FAR too many who teach for three reasons:

  1. June
  2. July
  3. August

There are great, really great teachers in this country.  Let’s honor them and the work they do by firing the teachers who really REALLY suck.

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Posted in Education, Politics: National, Rocket Surgery

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Public School Teachers: Compensation

Posted on September 27, 2011 | Leave a comment

Can you imagine working in an environment that doesn’t reward merit?

In that vein, here are some complains I have regarding public education:

  1. Compensation takes many forms.  Days off, training, health care and what not.  One form of compensation is that of being safe from firing for poor performance.  This pushes down the salaries of teachers.
    1. Competent highly motivated people willingly trade such safety nets for higher salaries.  They have no fear of being perceived as incompetent.  Find a teacher unwilling to fire poor performs, rest assured that you are speaking to a poor performer.
  2. Highly motivated proficient teachers have no hope of earning more than older incompetent teachers.  This applies downward pressure on innovation and motivation.
  3. Teachers complain that salaries can not be merit based because there is no good method to measure merit.  Teachers fight tests and test scores in the same way a vampire fights garlic and mirrors.

Much of the reason teachers feel underpaid is due directly to how the system is set up.

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Posted in Economics, Education

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Teacher’s Unions: We Hate Kids

Posted on September 18, 2011 | 1 comment

Let’s face it, teachers might be in this gig for the kids, in fact, I’d say many are.  But not all, and certainly not their unions.

I have found that there are three very strong methods to identify what is important to a person or to a group of people:

  1. Listen to what they say
  2. Watch what they do
  3. Look where they spend their money

Teacher’s Unions?  There is little doubt that they do not care for kids.  They care only for themselves.

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Posted in Economics, Education, Politics: National

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Government Regulation: Equal Opportunity Basher

Posted on September 13, 2011 | 2 comments

Not surprisingly. as President Obama is trying to create jobs all across America, the government is working just as hard as it can to make it as hard as possible to hire and keep people employed.  See, it turns out that there is an amount of work that American’s don’t wanna do.  In order to allow business who need that work done, the government has a program, a program called H-2B:

The H-2B non-agricultural temporary worker program allows U.S. employers to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary nonagricultural jobs. A U.S. employer must file a Form I-129, Petition for Nonimmigrant Worker, on a prospective worker’s behalf.

To qualify for H-2B nonimmigrant classification:

  • The employer must establish that its need for the prospective worker’s services or labor is temporary, regardless of whether the underlying job can be described as permanent or temporary. The employer’s need is considered temporary if it is a one-time occurrence, a seasonal need, a peak-load need, or an intermittent need
  • The employer must demonstrate that there are not sufficient U.S. workers who are able, willing, qualified, and available to do the temporary work
  • The employer must show that the employment of H-2B workers will not adversely affect the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers
  • Generally, a single, valid temporary labor certification from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), or, in the case where the workers will be employed on Guam, from the Governor of Guam, must be submitted with the H-2B petition. (Exception: an employer is not required to submit a temporary labor certification with its petition if it is requesting H-2B employment in a position for which the DOL does not require the filing of a temporary labor certification application)

So, how does this impact us today?

After years of complaints from employers that the program was inefficient and cumbersome, the administration of President George W. Bush sought to streamline the application process, putting new regulations into effect in January 2009. Farmworker organizations sued the Labor Department to reverse them.

In August 2010, a federal court in Pennsylvania hearing one of those lawsuits ordered department officials to issue new rules on how employers should determine wages for H-2B workers. The new wage rules were issued in January, but department officials, acting under court order, announced only last month that they would go into effect Sept. 30.

So, a year ago, the courts ordered the administration to issue new rules.  Rules that, in essence, will replace the old rules issued under Dubya.  Rules that objected to by … Farmworker organizations.

These new rules?

Starting Sept. 30, they would have to pay guest workers at crawfish and shrimp processors wage increases that range from 51 percent to 83 percent of current hourly rates, according to the suit.

And the result?

The employers said these sudden increases would be crippling and would expose them to unwinnable competition from foreign imports and from other businesses that hire illegal immigrants.

Again, no one in the Obama administration seems to have learned Econ 101.

Finally, a lasting testament to the angelic intentions of government that lead us down a road populated with devils, we have this little gem:

Many here cannot afford to lose year-round government benefits if they take seasonal, piece-rate jobs with Mr. Guillory, he and several of his full-time American employees said.

Perfect.  The government is providing benefits such that people don’t wanna work for fear that they lose ’em.

Keep on keepin’ on baby.

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Posted in Economics, Government, Politics: National

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Wisconsin: Thoughts On An Election

Posted on August 10, 2011 | 1 comment

So it turns out that the Wisconsin Democrats didn’t win as much as they wanted and, more importantly, as much as they needed..  They fell short of taking back control of the Senate.  Now, to be fair, a 17-16 majority is razor thin and in truth is probably better for government than a very large majority.  For example, who can argue about the damage the the US Senate did to the nation as a result of their super-majority in 2009-2010?  No one.

However, what is the impact?  The read?  What does this mean?

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Posted in Government, Politics: National, States Behaving Badly

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Tea Party Is Me

Posted on July 29, 2011 | 2 comments

So, I’m sittin’ here looking at old articles regarding the Tea Party and how racist they are.  Right?

After all, we’ve seen the pictures that show how the Tea Party protests lack a certain…a certain, shall we say, touch of color.

And who can argue?

But what is your reaction when I tell you that those protests weren’t Tea Party protests?  Rather, they were Union protestors opposing Scott Walker.

Racists!

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Posted in Politics: National, Race

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