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Follow CapCon on XUnion President Receives 'Outstanding Organizing' Award For Shutting Down School To Protest Right-to-Work Law
Taylor School District local union staged 'sick-out' forcing 7,500 students to miss school
On Dec. 11, the Taylor School District closed because so many of its teachers skipped school to go to Lansing to protest right-to-work legislation. As a result, about 7,500 students in Taylor were forced to miss classes that day.
For organizing that "sick out" protest, the American Federation of Teachers-Michigan gave Taylor teachers' union president Linda Moore an award for "outstanding organizing."
Public Act 112 in Michigan makes public school employees strikes and/or lockouts illegal.
In a Jan. 28 announcement posted on Facebook, AFT Michigan boasted that so many union members took Dec. 11 off "that Taylor schools shut down."
The photo (see nearby) shows AFT-Michigan President David Hecker and Secretary-Treasurer Lois Lofton Doniver with Moore during the presentation of the plaque. Hecker and Moore didn't return requests for comment.
"I don’t think it is good thing to reward people for misbehavior," said Rose Bogaert, chairwoman of the Wayne County Taxpayers Association. "And I think it is misbehavior to abandon your students in the classroom for your own personal gain. They should have been in the classroom where they belong. For the union to heap praise on these individuals only tells me where their priorities lie."
Bogaert said the Taylor teachers' union has shown a pattern of misdeeds. Not only did the teachers play hooky, she said, but the union also negotiated for and received a 10-year “security clause agreement” that skirted the state’s recently signed right-to-work law.
That security clause agreement, which expires July 1, 2023, forces school employees to pay money to the union as a condition of employment. Taylor Public Schools became the first district to approve such contractual language when it was approved by the Taylor School Board and ratified by the Taylor Federation of Teachers AFT Local 1085 AFL-CIO members.
Taylor was one of three public school districts to close because not enough employees showed up to work. Warren Consolidated Schools, which has schools in Macomb and Oakland County, and Fitzgerald Public Schools in Macomb County also were shut down. More than 26,000 students were forced to miss school when the teachers chose to protest instead of teach classes.
As of 2011, the Taylor School District paid for the local union head to spend most of his time working exclusively on union business and not teaching in the classroom. Former local union head Wayne Woodford made $96,419 in total compensation to spend 75 percent of his time on union business while only 25 percent of his time teaching. Current local union president Linda Moore made $88,016 to spend half her time teaching and half her time on union business.
The district has a $6 million deficit it is trying to eliminate.
Taylor school district and union officials were invited by Rep. Tom McMillin, R-Rochester, to explain at a Tuesday hearing of the House Oversight Committee how the extended security clause benefits students, but they chose not to attend. They sent written information instead, but that didn't answer questions, Rep. McMillin said in a statement.
“I can't understand why they are scared to come explain it to us since, apparently, they believe it's a great deal," Rep. McMillin's statement said. "Unless, maybe it's not so great after all. I've never heard of any school having a 10-year contract with teachers."
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See also:
Taylor School Board Approves Contract Forcing Teachers To Pay Union
School Districts Closed Because Of Excessive Teacher Absences Over Right-to-Work
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.
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Big Business Supports Minimum Wage Hikes
Lobbying intended to hurt mom-and-pop competitors
A new poll shows that a majority of Americans support raising the minimum wage. Doing so would almost surely help large businesses at the expense of smaller mom-and-pop stores and lower-skilled workers.
A few years ago, the conservative chief executive at Wal-Mart went public advocating for an increase in the minimum wage. A short time later, the “maverick” left-wing Costco CEO Jim Sinegal followed suit. Was it out of the goodness of their hearts? Maybe, but the more likely reason is that this would help their bottom-line.
While small businesses tend to be only marginally profitable and would have to spend a greater proportion of time and money dealing with this increase, larger corporations face no such predicament. Wal-Mart and Costco already pay significantly higher hourly wages than the current federal minimum — an average wage of $10-$13 an hour at Wal-Mart and $17 an hour at Costco as of a few years ago.
But minimum wage workers generally work for smaller, locally owned operations. These jobs tend to be temporary and help get low-skilled and first-time workers into the workforce. Many readers have undoubtedly started out with a similar experience. So while a higher mandated minimum would barely touch larger corporations, it would certainly hurt their small business competition.
Big business loves big government. In 2009, Philip Morris teamed up with the Obama administration and supported a bill that would allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco in a way that hurts its competition. A few years ago, Coca-Cola announced a "world-wide commitment" to support putting energy information on all products — significantly hurting smaller bottlers while barely denting the huge conglomerate's bottom line.
Nike and Apple advocate for a “carbon tax,” which would hammer their competitors while leaving the majority of their out-of-country operations unscathed. And H&R Block and Turbo Tax continue to lobby the Internal Revenue Service to crush smaller operations so they, in their own words, "won't be competing against people who aren't regulated and don't have the same standards as we do."
These larger companies are able to more effectively lobby the government while smaller businesses bear the brunt of the legislation. And legislators, who offer unpaid internships that are not affected by minimum wage hikes, go along with it.
A small percentage of Americans actually make the legally allowed minimum, typically 2 percent to 5 percent of hourly workers, compared to nearly 15 percent in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These workers tend to be young, low-skilled and just starting out in the workforce. But as they gain skills and experience, workers move up and their compensation increases.
For these reasons and more, it should not be surprising that poll after poll shows that the vast majority of economists believe a minimum wage hurts unskilled workers while virtually every study finds that an increase in the minimum wage reduces employment.
As the late moderate/liberal economist Paul Samuelson wrote in 1970 about a proposed minimum-wage hike to $2 an hour: "What good does it do a black youth to know that an employer must pay him $2 an hour if the fact that he must be paid that amount is what keeps him from getting a job?"
In politics, there are a lot of issues that are popular, but not good policy. Minimum wage hikes is one of them.
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.
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