Railroad union megathread

[Aurelius]

The is an issue that where the negative externalities of a strike are orders of magnitude greater than the costs to the two parties involved (the companies and unions), so it's in the best interests of the nation to have it resolved as quickly as possible via outside intervention.

The problem I'm seeing is that so far, only the Republicans in Congress want to take actions to end the strike, by screwing over the unions' demands. Can the Democrats also create a competing proposal that would force the railway companies to accept the workers' demands? Since they are the ones in control of Congress, they should be able to pass a bill (presuming they can get it past the Senate), taking advantage of public opinion if they can get it on their side.

Yeah, you'd think that Congress could just vote to give the unions the sick time policies they want and also pay the railroads however much money they'll lose from that. A lot cheaper and less disruptive than a strike.

[Aurelius]

https://twitter.com/alexisdomm/status/1570208171100368897
Is this good news?

I don't see how the interim period can feasibly be extended when trains are already being taken out of service in anticipation of a strike.

[Aurelius]

As far as I can tell, the carriers are behaving in a hubristic manner, treating conductors like they're non-union Amazon employees because the federal government has the right to stop railroad strikes. This has happened time and time again over the past few decades, sending carriers the message that they don't need to make any concessions when contracts are negotiated.

This is why conductors face a scheduling policy that's so draconian that you would mistake it for the attendance policy at an Amazon FC. In a de-facto sense, these workers are non-union because their union is totally emasculated, has no ability to strike, so management does whatever they want. On top of this, every carrier has a policy that workers cannot speak to media outlets on the record without facing severe sanctions.

A prolonged railroad strike would cripple the United States, possibly having reverberations around the world, but, sadly, I think it's necessary if companies won't budge. We can't live in a country where we allow companies to treat workers like this. We can't treat engineers and conductors like serfs.

I don't understand why the only alternative to the companies' early acquiescence is a prolonged a strike that "cripples the United States". Why can't Congress intervene and force the companies to give in?

They can, thanks to the Railroad Labor Act. But good luck actually getting anything through Congress (and not just the senate - good luck getting AOC and Gottheimer to agree on this).

[Aurelius]

Does anyone actually believe this would have been averted under Trump?

I mean, I think Trump would have defaulted to bashing skulls, particularly as inflation would probably be worse with economic leadership chosen by the spoils system. It wouldn't avert the problem or the eventuality of workers collapsing on the job or mass quitting leaving the rails unable to function, but it'd be enough for his ghouls to say problem solved.

My dude, the proximate reason for the past year's inflation was Biden's American Rescue Plan. Trump would probably engage in some pointless and stupid money printing to buy votes, but not nearly to the extent that Biden and the Dems have done since taking office.

[Aurelius]

I get this argument for some bureaucrat in the parks department or whatever, but I really don't think most teachers view themselves as "public employees" in the same way. Teaching is its own thing.

Two questions, then:

1) How would you reform teachers' unions? How would you make it easier to identify and fire bad teachers without fighting the unions every step of the way?

2) Do you at least agree that donations of this size from a public sector union constitute a severe conflict of interest? Actually, I expect you'd want to reform campaign finance across the board, so we should probably be in agreement here.

1. I don't think they need reform, and want to give them more power.

2. I do want campaign finance reform, but what makes the teachers union donations more of a conflict of interest than other public employees? Like what specifically is the conflict of interest.

So when kids get stuck with a sh#tty teacher who is incompetent at teaching, can't control the classroom, and is protected by tenure, tough luck, sucks for them, and we should protect and enable sh#tty teachers even more?

This is fundamentally why teacher unions deserve so much more scrutiny than most other unions. Most workers have responsibilities only to their employer. If a factory worker or restaurant worker is lazy and incompetent, whatever, that's between them and the company. Teachers also have responsibilities to the kids they teach, i.e. the general public, and outcomes from good and bad teachers are hugely divergent. Teacher unions universally do everything in their power to protect the jobs of awful teachers and allow them to keep harming the educations of kids who have no choice.

[Aurelius]

I get this argument for some bureaucrat in the parks department or whatever, but I really don't think most teachers view themselves as "public employees" in the same way. Teaching is its own thing.

Two questions, then:

1) How would you reform teachers' unions? How would you make it easier to identify and fire bad teachers without fighting the unions every step of the way?

2) Do you at least agree that donations of this size from a public sector union constitute a severe conflict of interest? Actually, I expect you'd want to reform campaign finance across the board, so we should probably be in agreement here.

1. I don't think they need reform, and want to give them more power.

2. I do want campaign finance reform, but what makes the teachers union donations more of a conflict of interest than other public employees? Like what specifically is the conflict of interest.

So when kids get stuck with a sh#tty teacher who is incompetent at teaching, can't control the classroom, and is protected by tenure, tough luck, sucks for them, and we should protect and enable sh#tty teachers even more?

I didn't say that.

This idea that we have some epidemic of crappy teachers who should be fired but aren't is completely fictional. Obviously bad teachers exist, but not enough to warrant changes that would put good teachers at risk.

Replacing tenure with performance based metrics does not put good teachers at risk, because they will do well on those metrics. Only crappy teachers have anything to fear. And FFS, read almost any article about the pedagogy of teaching kids to read and you'll hear about how, even though the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of phonics over context-based reading, there are still tons of teachers who stubbornly continue to teach context-based reading because they think it's more tedious for them to teach phonics or whatever.

Privileging teacher unions puts the well being of a relatively small rent seeking interest group over the well being of all American kids and their education. The state ought to crush the teachers unions, and crappy teachers in particular should be PATCOed, banned from teaching for life. There's already been far too much damage done. Good teachers have absolutely nothing to fear - and I'm in favor of raising their pay too. (And to avoid random statistical noise punishing unlucky good teachers, you can very easily make performance metrics be based off a 5-year average or whatever instead of a single year.)

[Aurelius]

I get this argument for some bureaucrat in the parks department or whatever, but I really don't think most teachers view themselves as "public employees" in the same way. Teaching is its own thing.

Two questions, then:

1) How would you reform teachers' unions? How would you make it easier to identify and fire bad teachers without fighting the unions every step of the way?

2) Do you at least agree that donations of this size from a public sector union constitute a severe conflict of interest? Actually, I expect you'd want to reform campaign finance across the board, so we should probably be in agreement here.

1. I don't think they need reform, and want to give them more power.

2. I do want campaign finance reform, but what makes the teachers union donations more of a conflict of interest than other public employees? Like what specifically is the conflict of interest.

So when kids get stuck with a sh#tty teacher who is incompetent at teaching, can't control the classroom, and is protected by tenure, tough luck, sucks for them, and we should protect and enable sh#tty teachers even more?

I didn't say that.

This idea that we have some epidemic of crappy teachers who should be fired but aren't is completely fictional. Obviously bad teachers exist, but not enough to warrant changes that would put good teachers at risk.

Replacing tenure with performance based metrics does not put good teachers at risk, because they will do well on those metrics. Only crappy teachers have anything to fear. And FFS, read almost any article about the pedagogy of teaching kids to read and you'll hear about how, even though the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of phonics over context-based reading, there are still tons of teachers who stubbornly continue to teach context-based reading because they think it's more tedious for them to teach phonics or whatever.

Privileging teacher unions puts the well being of a relatively small rent seeking interest group over the well being of all American kids and their education. The state ought to crush the teachers unions, and crappy teachers in particular should be PATCOed, banned from teaching for life. There's already been far too much damage done. Good teachers have absolutely nothing to fear - and I'm in favor of raising their pay too. (And to avoid random statistical noise punishing unlucky good teachers, you can very easily make performance metrics be based off a 5-year average or whatever instead of a single year.)

Performance Based Metrics is useless. What if you work/teacher in a lower income school where it's hard to raise test scores in such a bad school ? Right ? What if the parents refused to read to their kids ? Or help their kids with their homework ?

Performance Metrics benefit richer schools; because of socio economic factors.

Obviously the performance metrics compare between different teachers at the same school, not between teachers at different schools. This is an extremely lazy copout.

[Aurelius]

I get this argument for some bureaucrat in the parks department or whatever, but I really don't think most teachers view themselves as "public employees" in the same way. Teaching is its own thing.

Two questions, then:

1) How would you reform teachers' unions? How would you make it easier to identify and fire bad teachers without fighting the unions every step of the way?

2) Do you at least agree that donations of this size from a public sector union constitute a severe conflict of interest? Actually, I expect you'd want to reform campaign finance across the board, so we should probably be in agreement here.

1. I don't think they need reform, and want to give them more power.

2. I do want campaign finance reform, but what makes the teachers union donations more of a conflict of interest than other public employees? Like what specifically is the conflict of interest.

So when kids get stuck with a sh#tty teacher who is incompetent at teaching, can't control the classroom, and is protected by tenure, tough luck, sucks for them, and we should protect and enable sh#tty teachers even more?

I didn't say that.

This idea that we have some epidemic of crappy teachers who should be fired but aren't is completely fictional. Obviously bad teachers exist, but not enough to warrant changes that would put good teachers at risk.

Replacing tenure with performance based metrics does not put good teachers at risk, because they will do well on those metrics. Only crappy teachers have anything to fear. And FFS, read almost any article about the pedagogy of teaching kids to read and you'll hear about how, even though the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of phonics over context-based reading, there are still tons of teachers who stubbornly continue to teach context-based reading because they think it's more tedious for them to teach phonics or whatever.

Privileging teacher unions puts the well being of a relatively small rent seeking interest group over the well being of all American kids and their education. The state ought to crush the teachers unions, and crappy teachers in particular should be PATCOed, banned from teaching for life. There's already been far too much damage done. Good teachers have absolutely nothing to fear - and I'm in favor of raising their pay too. (And to avoid random statistical noise punishing unlucky good teachers, you can very easily make performance metrics be based off a 5-year average or whatever instead of a single year.)

Performance Based Metrics is useless. What if you work/teacher in a lower income school where it's hard to raise test scores in such a bad school ? Right ? What if the parents refused to read to their kids ? Or help their kids with their homework ?

Performance Metrics benefit richer schools; because of socio economic factors.

Obviously the performance metrics compare between different teachers at the same school, not between teachers at different schools. This is an extremely lazy copout.

That's not my point. Even Between different teachers at the same school; the socioeconomic factors are going to play in.

If you're teaching from the same curriculum, with the same teaching materials, the comparision is weak. It's basically up to the kid. And the kids's parents who should take more responsibility for their kids's education ( but alas, that isn't always the case ".

I would agree with performance metrics provided that Teachers in return get full autonomy, be allowed to create their own curriculums, and, AND, have higher pay, and Higher Educational Standards for teachers themeselves.

https://hechingerreport.org/teacher-voice-in-finland-its-easier-to-become-a-doctor-or-lawyer-than-a-teacher-heres-why/

Raise the standards for teaching. Raise the pay for it to become a Real Profession.

1. This is why I propose averaging metrics over several years. When you are teaching four classes a year, of 25 kids each, that's 100 kids a year. 500 kids over 5 years is enough to remove small scale statistical anomalies.

2. Full autonomy over curriculum - hell no. For example, phonics should be the required method for teaching kids to read. A ton of teachers still continue to use the context based method, even though the evidence is OVERWHELMINGLY on the side of phonics, because they enjoy teaching the other method more, or simply don't like phonics, or whatever else.