Health care workers, hell--if they can do this to nurses, they'll go after teachers next. Who directs what goes on in their workplace more than teachers?

So if unions cause bad schools, all the states like Mississippi with no bargaining rights for teachers are the best, then?

And are you seriously arguing that you have such confidence in education administrators that you assume that they would keep competent teachers and not just those who brownnose well?  Tenure exists precisely because historically teachers were eliminated for political reasons quite often, not based on their teaching skills. 

This is not to say there aren't some "awful teachers" (most of whom are athletic coaches first and teachers second) out there, but the supposed army of subpar educators is as big a GOP myth as the so-called welfare queen, popping out babies for an extra $20 a day.

As to your second point, pharmacists and physicians are organized into immensly powerful bodies. The AMA's word is almost unimpeachable on certain health care matters. So I'd argue that they're actually MORE powerful then the R.N.s and Educators right now. But, even just talking about the traditional union functions, the fact is that pharmacists and physicians are true supervisors in that they don't NEED to be unionized- they've already got the power to direct their work and that of those around them (including, may I add, R.N.s).

KikoKimba
Let's cut right to the chase before this thread goes way out of whack. Comparing nurses to school teachers and overlaying the issue with good labor union-bad labor union arguments are beside the point.

Nurses -- not doctors, administrators or pharmacists -- are the people who make hospitals tick. They are historically underpaid, overused and abused and have brought much of the grief upon themselves because they are taught to be advocates for their patients and not themselves.

Classifying nurses as supervisors so they can be further screwed will only exacerbate a national nursing shortage that grows more grave by the year. Nurses are being driven out of the profession and nursing schools are unable to provide replacements because the very people that need them the most -- the vast majority of hospitals that have become profit driven and not health-care driven -- treat their most valuable assets like sh*t.

For the candid comments of a career RN on all of this, go to

http://kikoshouse.blogspot.com/2006/05/from-nurses-perspective-its-nightmare_08.html

Let' focus on the main issue, not everyone's pet side issues. Please!

 

This is not to say there aren't some "awful teachers" (most of whom are athletic coaches first and teachers second) out there, but the supposed army of subpar educators is as big a GOP myth as the so-called welfare queen, popping out babies for an extra $20 a day.

Not so. Most of them are tenured and teaching classes which they are not certified to teach due to their tenure they are retained and placed in those subject areas due to seniority. If anything, it is the people who are the coach who have the degree in math but are not able to teach in the classroom due to their lack of seniority...it is either coach or be laid off.

There is a legion of teachers who are kept on their jobs each year due to seniority and young teachers are laid off consistently, no matter how good they were, due to their lack of seniority.  You have people with degrees in music who are the math department chair, due to them being tenured! 

As to your second point, pharmacists and physicians are organized into immensly powerful bodies.

O please. You are talking apples and oranges a professional association is NOT a union.  If you lack an understanding of this fundamental difference this dialogue goes nowhere. A union has bargaining power with an employer a professional association does not.

The AMA's word is almost unimpeachable on certain health care matters.

This is totally false. Name one such matter!

But, even just talking about the traditional union functions, the fact is that pharmacists and physicians are true supervisors in that they don't NEED to be unionized- they've already got the power to direct their work and that of those around them (including, may I add, R.N.s).

Huh? Sounds like you are arguing against your own premise most likely because you do not understand the roles of health care professionals. Nurses are supervisors as much as physicians and pharmacists are. They are all licensed health professionals and none of them needs to be unionized, just as teachers do not. 

To connect this to the larger anti-union movement, the fact is that unions often function to protect the quality of the goods and services you receive, as much as they protect the quality of paycheck received by their employees.

This may hold true when it comes to non-health professionals in terms of goods and services. Unions in health care, however do not enhance quality, if anything they result in sub-quality service, beacause they allow institutions to utilize uneducated and poorly trained 'medical aides' in place of nurses with degrees from 4 year programs. You get folks who are LPN's and hospital trained staff..  Folks who do not understand how to take blood pressure but are allowed to draw blood and give PAINFUL shots.

Come on-- you are blaming teachers unions for short school days and long summer vacations that long preceded the rise of teachers unions.  And please note, all the countries in Europe with longer school years usually have stronger union movements.

I am blaming unions for the extra holidays and teacher conferences and training that are scheduled during the school year, vs. during the summer vacation or spring break/Xmas break time periods. Unions are responsible for many schools going to 90 minute periods during the school year, and dimishing the electives that kids can take in HS..that is directly related to the union contracts.  Teacher opted to teach fewer periods and the kids were shafted.

So here we have these educated 'professionals' bargaining to work fewer hours, teach fewer classes and not be laid off.  Name another group of educated professionals who can do this and yammering about they meet the standards. No other profession does this. All other professions understand that meeting the standard is the minimum required not some high bar for excellent performance. The vast majority of other educated professionals understand that working a 40 hour week is the bare minimum and doing the job well demands significantly greater time investment. NOT teachers.  There are NO other educated professionals who get to retain their jobs over other peers based on seniority. Teacher unions are a major problem in terms of attracting and retaining individuals who do the bare minimum and think because they have tenure it is sufficient.

So the minute you start arguing about "bad US schools" compared to other countries, you are comparing us to countries where teachers unions are often much stronger.

First off, I have made no such argument. You are the one throwing in other countries to make a false argument. Nothing about American schools compares to international schools other than perhaps the subjects taught. The international standards for teaching are far different than in the USA and whether unions are stronger there has no bearing on how unions have diminished the quality of teaching in America.

And as for the idea that other professionals don't unionize -- that would suprise all the unionized airline pilots, nurses, Boeing engineers, and a host of other professions with strong unions.

Engineers are not unionized. Some engineering jobs in certain industries are unionized. The same goes for pilots and nurses. There is simply not a host of professionals with strong unions who are college educated that is anywhere near comparable to teachers. NONE.

Pharmacists are not unionized? Not very knowledgable of your own field, eh?

How about you name the union.

USW -- formerly PACE -- prior to that, OCAW.

Organizations, whether public or private, get the unions they deserve. In the case of short-sighted school districts who have historically not treated teachers as professionals this is particularly apt.

As Nathan suggests, it's not as if school districts will enact an educational utopia in the absence of unions.

You've failed in your posts to establish that unions are the cause of ails in public schools. There is an issue with teacher quality in too many underserved districts but it can be attributed to attitudes towards teachers. You keep harping on engineers but if teachers were paid like engineers teacher quality wouldn't be a problem.

I am blaming unions for the extra holidays and teacher conferences and training that are scheduled during the school year, vs. during the summer vacation or spring break/Xmas break time periods. As a daughter of a teacher (who is also a Union rep), I'll tell you that most teachers HATE those conferences, and would far rather be in the classroom. Going is not typically their idea, but that of an administrator or politician who wants to teach some new standard.  My mother has had to go to the mat to NOT be sent to a conference 1 week before her students' finals.

 Unions are responsible for many schools going to 90 minute periods during the school year, and dimishing the electives that kids can take in HS..that is directly related to the union contracts.  Teacher opted to teach fewer periods and the kids were shafted.  Um, once again, no.  The lack of electives, etc., is directly related to the rise in the emphasis on testing.  The 'block scheduling' fad is also not beloved by most teachers.  Perhaps the teachers' unions didn't fight hard enough against it- there are some pedagogical benefitst to longer class times.  But you're right in the intimation that it's been largely unsuccessful.  But teachers have little to no control over such things, and you would strip them of whatever control they do have.

 So here we have these educated 'professionals' bargaining to work fewer hours, teach fewer classes and not be laid off.  Name another group of educated professionals who can do this and yammering about they meet the standards. No other profession does this.

As to the 'summer's' off argument: First of all, teachers do not get the full time off that students do, since they ARE in inservices and going to continuing ed, etc.

Second of all, even this benefit does not make up for the difference in compensation between teachers and 'other professionals': MBAs graduating in 2005 with less then 3 years work experience can expect to earn a base salary of over $68k, plus signing bonuses, according to the wall street journal. For similarily situated teachers (i.e. master's degree), it's somewhere in the 30s- MAYBE fourties in some districts. As a matter of fact, NEA is seeking to establish a minimum salary of $40k- hardly an outrageous goal for people with post-graduate degrees.  Plus, those same teachers pay an average of $400-$500 out of pocket for classroom expenses.  Name me one other professional who would volunteer to buy pens for his whole office!  And teachers work an average of 50 hours a week- doing related work- counseling students, hosting extracurriculars, etc. And their work environments, while rewarding, can be dangerous and even deadly- at the very least, often unpleasant. 

You make legitimate points about what's wrong with the educational system.  But the problem is neither teachers nor their unions, and getting rid of them will only exacerbate them by leaving the very people who actually do the work without a voice in determining policy.

Perhaps way, way off-topic (and perhaps not), as this began with nurses. What's happening with respect to nurses in consistent with other actions taken by this administration. For example, the new work rule that was adopted (last year, I believe [?]) was so vague that it permitted employers to categorize virtually any white-collar employee as management and, therefore, unable to unionize. Moreover, that rule's interpretation gets Chevron deference (the courts basically take the agency's word for it unless it's barred by the statute's plain langugage), which would again be decided initially by, I think [?], the NLRB. It's a nasty circle and, if we are in fact moving to a "service economy" as the source of the middle class, a really big deal.

But thanks to our world's best brightest national leadership I am sure all will agree the United States health care 'system' is the greatest in the world, bar none.

There is at least a lot of money to be made, 25% or so of the $4500 percapita health care dollars going to paperwork and overhead. No other western country spends as much on paperwork.

We spend about twice as much (percapita) as other western countries on healthcare, and lead with the highest rate of those with no insurance, the US also has the western world's highest infant mortality, we lead in poor immunization rates, lack of pre-natal care, and although 25th or so in the world, we still are ahead of some nations in longevity.

For those still in doubt, the USA is clearly best because Saudi princes choose America when they want to rent an entire floor in a hospital. What could be better proof of the priorities in the 'system'?

Well, they're part of it - W., is correct that unions do contribute to the problem - but then so does lack of funds, parental neglect, community ennui and a few other factors.

No one factor is responsible, but we all have to give up a little to gain better education. A mechanism to stop union protection of bad teachers wouldn't hurt, although it's a sacrifice to ask teachers to do this, when other professions don't police themselves.

I wish I had the solution.

So do all the other folks slimed by the rightwing message machine have to clean up their image?  So Kerry should stop looking so much like he stole his medals?  Gays should clean up their image as likely to molest children?  Feminists should fix their reputation as man-hating, abortion-loving freaks?

Maybe liberals with anti-union views should learn a bit more, like there is zero evidence anywhere of nurses unions (or most unions at all) having any history of being "mobbed up" or whatever cliche you want to spout.

 When you're friends libel good union folks, do you correct them on their prejudice or nod along?

I think this goes well before Kerry. Now, there are union shops when I've had excellent relations with the people. These were telephone company CWA members, who really appreciated it when we made them part of our team.

I've also had very negative experiences, mostly with the electricians' union in New York, where they considered all wiring their jurisdiction, even if it was network cabling they didn't know how to do. I have literally had them walk into seminars I was giving (with labs) and cut cables.

If it's a good union, I do correct. I've always had good relations with CWA people, and some of the airline unions. In the building trades, I'm not convinced they are as efficient as they could be.

Whether you intend to or not, you are coming across as if the union is always right, and the employer, and clients of the employer (e.g., the person hiring a contractor to build a house) are automatically wrong. Can you suggest a balanced view?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

Let's see:

I began my career with the Building Service Employees, Local 370 of the AFL-CIO. The "buildings" I served were tombs. I was a grounds-keeper at a cemetery in Minneapolis Minnesota. My wages, upon joining, went from 90 cents to 1.25 an hour (this was back in the fifties). Was I corrupt? mobbed up? lazy? No lazier than any other 15 year old.

My Next Union was the Teamsters. I was a trucker's helper at a lumber yard that time around. Was I corrupt? mobbed up? lazy? One doesn't feel particularly lazy climbing four flights of stairs carrying 5/8" sheet rock in 8'x4' double bundles.

My Current Union is the NEA (National Education Association). I don't think I'm particularly mobbed up, corrupt, or lazy now, either. I've been a member of this one 33 years. We formed the union in the first instance in order to get a general governance contract...the right to teach in our disciplines according to the tenets of the disciplines, to control the curriculum, and to create a faculty senate.

I have attended conferences on poverty and progressive politics the past three years running. In 2004 I was at the Conference on Poverty held at NYU off Washington Square. I heard the AFL-CIO Choir sing there. They represented all the labor unions, as I remember it. They didn't strike me as particularly corrupt, mobbed or lazy... they even sang on tune.

In 2005 and 2006 I went to the Take Back America Conference... the registration in 2005 was about 1500, the registration in 2006 was over 2000, and my guess is that 1999 of these were good liberals. We heard Tom Harkin, Russ Feingold, Barak Obama, John Kerry, Hilary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Tom Vilsack...I guess we were mobbed up by people wanting us to vote for them. . . We also heard of, and were inspired by, the great work of Project Acorn  http://www.acorn.org/  and we remembered Cesar Chavez and the ongoing work to bring dignity to farm workers.  http://www.ufw.org/  who need our help now, just as much as they did when many of us boycotted grapes back in the 1970s. The conference was co-sponsored by the AFL-CIO and we heard John Sweeney speak to us about all sorts of issues dear to our hearts. I don't think we felt corrupted, mobbed up, or lazier for the experience.

I love Josh Marshall's word Bamboozlement. White Collar Professional liberals have been subject to bamboozlement on the union issue. It is utterly frustrating for me to hear people talk about those in unions or feeling the need for unions as "them". Just as southern business interests used race to separate the poor black from the poor white in the first Progressive Era (to the detriment of both, of course)...the Corporate Business Culture (so pure, so innocent, so rational, so market driven and impartial--Enron anybody???) has driven a wedge between the once mighty industrial and craft unions and the white collar workers in the service industries. As long as the Chamber of Commerce types can convince us that unions are corrupt, mobbed up, and lazy, they can outsource jobs, lay off thousands in the re-monopolizing of the banking industries, and underfund pensions.

I'm not suggesting Unions are pure as the driven snow... which, after all, is pretty cold sterile stuff anyhow. I am suggesting that we ask ourselves, "whose interest is it in to create a negative impression of the labor movement?" The answer to that question may suggest how many grains of salt we take the claims of corruption, mob-ism, and laziness with. The next time one hears a slur against labor, the best response is to ask for a reference? Those lovely reportorial questions, who, where, what, and when. If the person can't come up with any name besides Jimmy Hoffa, direct them to one of the many good references on the History of the Labor Movement in the United States.

 http://clusty.com/search?query=History+Labor+Movement+USA

 Mike

I didn't say they were bad, I said that people see them as bad. Instead of pissing and moaning that the unions are victims of a smear campaign, (and of which I agree) unions need to advertise a better image.

And yes, I always defend unions - unions have done a lot for the people of this country and people have the right to collective bargaining, so while your gratuitious remark about nodding along is hurtful, my message remains the same - unions need to project a better image - perhaps if Kerry had mounted a campaign against the swift boat liars, it would have helped him.

Whether a given hospital's workforce is unionized or not, the NLRB decision would be unfair. Floor supervisors have no say on staffing levels. They can juggle schedules of those on staff, but they can't hire staff. RNs other than the supervisor have zero say on scheduling or staffing.

It is not in a union's interest to see RNs replaced with LPNs, although for at least a while it was apparently not in the hospital's either. My wife was a medical LPN (now RN in psych) and saw the trend of letting LPNs go and the hospital using a smaller staff but with higher percentage of RNs.

She wished she had the opportunity to work at a union hospital but remembers only one experience of union organizing which led to multiple firings (in Virginia).

No one except owners is served by forced overtime, so it should come at a high price. The logic that a "supervisory role" needs no overtime protection is that the person in question has choice in the matter of work scheduling. Lacking that choice there is no logic in calling this worker "management".

For our commenter that has something against unions, please remember the days before their arrival. And please do not blame unions for curricula (school boards) or period length (same) or summer vacation (state legislatures intending to help farm families).

An owner risks his (or her) money in business. A professional risks his (or her) life, in the sense of committing to years of training. Once completed, the professional will never be able to shift into another profession without being at a crippling disadvantage compared to those that began study when young.

We offer certain rewards for certain activities that society values, such as copyrights and patents. Presumably society would value professional expertise in basic civilization-building fields like teaching, so taking away a reward structure seems self-defeating.

Starting salary for teachers in Illinois (avg. from NEA data): $35,114. Starting salary, national avg., for staff RNs is $37,000 (from allied-physicians.com). Not exactly a road to riches, just a decent job. I am not sympathetic to any complaints about teacher or nurse salaries, being close to both professions.

I am asking serious questions as a request for information. It may well be that some professionals in places where I've worked should organize. Nevertheless, many information workers have limited experience with unions. It is not a sudden shift to ask about experience with other unions, from my perspective.

The example I used was of temporary wiring for a class, cabled by qualified electronic engineers, that had nothing wrong with it. It was cut by a union representative not because they found anything wrong with it, but that they had not strung our temporary cables. Pure jurisdictional issue, with threats of having all unions walk out of the hotel if we didn't comply with something the electricians did not understand how to do.

I also sincerely ask the question: do all unions operate by seniority? That is the most frightening things with engineers, the good ones being the ones that study constantly -- 10 years of experience, not 1 year repeated 10 times.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

And, despite your comments, professionals in government employment across the country are heavily unionized, from engineers to city planners to a host of other groups.  Teachers happen to have separate unions, while those other government professionals often combine together in more general unions, but there are millions of professionals unionized outside the teaching profession. 

Individuals who work for the government may be unioned but again that is not a profession. You seem to not be differentiating between an industry or government having unionized workers and a entire profession being unioned. Those are two separate things. Teachers are the later and despite your attempts to assert otherwise you have yet to name another profession which is college educated and unionized. There simply are not any.

And you still ignore the issue that many states have no collective bargaining, yet they have many of the same issues you mention, so your argument that they are "caused" by teachers unions fail on its face. 

I am not ignoring anything. I am staying focused on the issue and not going on your tangents, whether it is international schools, international unions or states that have no collective bargaining. None of these points address the comment that teachers are the only 'profession' unionized nor do they address the points that union contracts hamper the ability of school districts to fire poorly performing staff nor does it address the significantly fewer hours that teacher work while yammering about being professionals that meet the minimum standards. Those are the points I raised.

hcberkowitz

First of all, what you are describing is not a jurisidictional dispute. A jurisdictional dispute is where a member of one craft union does work that is claimed to be work properly done by another craft union.

What you are describing is a dispute over whether an employer can bring in an outside contractor to do work that the employer has agreed will be done by it's employees. In other words, the hotel has a contract with the IBEW which likely states that all electrial work in the hotel will be done by IBEW members.

As to your second question, as it stands, it is unanswerable. Seniority is a collection of rights achieved through collective bargaining. All aspects of seniority are achieved through the employer agreeing with the union on certain language to be placed in the collective agreement.

The collection of rights that are grouped under seniority include: relief from lay-off, right to recall, vacations, vacation pay, right to pick vacation time, pension right, and promotion opportunities, to name just a few. Which one of these rights do you think engineers do not like?

unions have done a lot for the people of this country and people have the right to collective bargaining,

I find this to be true as well. Particularly, when it comes to the mfgring and service industries. I have not found unions to be that great when it comes to teachers.  I do not believe that unionizing nurses would be beneficial for patients either.

As Nathan suggests, it's not as if school districts will enact an educational utopia in the absence of unions.

I made no suggestion that the absence of unions would cause a educational utopia. However, it would be far easier to let go teachers who were sub-par without them. They need not even improve to remain on staff and staff who are a lot better are let go due to them not having seniority, despite,them being top performers.

You've failed in your posts to establish that unions are the cause of ails in public schools. There is an issue with teacher quality in too many underserved districts but it can be attributed to attitudes towards teachers. You keep harping on engineers but if teachers were paid like engineers teacher quality wouldn't be a problem

No,I did not fail to establish that point. I never made such a broad assertion, Nathan attempted to misconstrue the statement.. My point was about tenure and poor teacher  performance being a problem due to districts having to retain sub-par teachers. My issue was quality,which you appear to agree with.

I am not harping on engineers...that was another tangent and misconstued point Nathan raised.Teachers being paid like engineers is not something that would necessarily impact quality.

My observation is that teaching remains a female dominated profession,for the most part and that unlike in the 50s and 60s when females had fewer professional choices, the majority of the  best and brightest females no longer select teaching as their profession. That is why the quality has diminished, the individuals who are selecting the profession were often not top students and perform the same as teachers.  Mediocre teaching at the level of mediocrity appears to dominate most classrooms. Teachers complain about having to teach to anything but the 'average' mind.

Those are acronyms for what?  I asked that you name the union.

To add to the pesky details, unionization in classical music is essentially 100%. For large-label recording it is also 100%.

As to worries about nurses cutting shifts short, I haven't heard of it happening. The usual culprit in short-staffing is hospital administrators.

As to teachers in general, it's hard to imagine a more fundamental activity in building civilization. They should be paid much more than typical public-school salaries. The ones that actually do earn a lot are tenured college professors at Ivy-League schools (free-market rules) and they are paupers compared to CEOs.

Large school budgets are unlikely to be solely caused by teacher salaries. I would guess the main budget items would be administrative encrustations and non-competitive contracts for building and maintenance. Another gravy train is school textbooks, which are terribly expensive for their content, consisting of mostly rehashed previous work.

(Quote)So not only does this kind of decision threaten unions for RNs, it threatens the labor rights of workers throughout the health care industry.

Never forget RN stands for Real Nice

-- Tell the truth don't be afraid-Danny Haszard Bangor Maine

To repeat, a large number of teachers are non-union in various states without collective bargaining rights, so your argument that the whole profession is organized is just not accurate. 

The only thing inaccurate is your repeatedly misconstruing what I state. I said the 'profession' is unionized...not organized. You have yet to name another profession where that is true.

Teachers are one of the more heavily unionized professions, but a higher percentage of professional baseball players and professional movie directors are in unions than are teachers.

Sigh. More tangents...and are we to believe that baseball players receive degrees from educational institutions in baseball?  How about movie directors do they also have licenses to direct movies?

You have simply misconstrued what was stated from the very initial post. Perhaps, if you focused on what was stated instead of retorting you would realize that.

For someone who makes an inaccurate factual statement, you sure do demand a lot. Better if you did your own research before inserting your foot in your mouth. USW is the United Steelworkers -- more accurately, the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union; PACE was the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union (which merged with the USWA to form the current USW); and OCAW was the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union (which merged with the UPIU to form PACE). Any more of your own homework you'd like me to do for you?

You said "pharmacists," and I can unequivocally state that pharmacists are most certainly represented by this Union. You are wrong. Again.

How about admitting you're wrong? While you're at it, you may want to rethink the whole "socially progressive" label you pasted on yourself. You're anything but.

One thing is for certain, the moniker you chose is appropriate.

I'll tell you that most teachers HATE those conferences, and would far rather be in the classroom. Going is not typically their idea, but that of an administrator or politician who wants to teach some new standard

Whether they desire to go is not the point. The point is that they are scheduled to go during the school year and not during their numerous vacation days and summers off.

First of all, teachers do not get the full time off that students do, since they ARE in inservices and going to continuing ed, etc.

Perhaps,a few go to in-service, but those again are not during xmas,and spring break.

Second of all, even this benefit does not make up for the difference in compensation between teachers and 'other professionals': MBAs graduating in 2005 with less then 3 years work experience can expect to earn a base salary of over $68k, plus signing bonuses, according to the wall street journal. For similarily situated teachers (i.e. master's degree), it's somewhere in the 30s- MAYBE fourties in some districts. As a matter of fact, NEA is seeking to establish a minimum salary of $40k- hardly an outrageous goal for people with post-graduate degrees.

Well I find it to be outrageous when you consider that teachers only work 8 months out the year, they are compensated extremely well.  40K for 8 months is a lot of money...5K a month and you figure if they worked a full year that would be about a 60K dollar job which is well above the median income for most Americans.  Teachers are paid exceptionally well based on them being on the public tax rolls.  I find these income arguments to be nothing more but whinning on their part as professionals. Considering they do not work a full year nor full 8 hour days and most professionals do as well as work 50-60 hours a week. Teachers need to focus on quality performance for the very well paid jobs they have.

Basically all professionals have occupational hazards and unpleasant work conditions at times.

Um, once again, no.  The lack of electives, etc., is directly related to the rise in the emphasis on testing.  The 'block scheduling' fad is also not beloved by most teachers.  Perhaps the teachers' unions didn't fight hard enough against it- there are some pedagogical benefitst to longer class times.

The lack of electives was not due to any emphasis on testing, it was due to total time in the day that teachers were willing to work. The language in the contracts was that teachers worked so many periods, and the NUMBER of  periods could not be negotiated. So the definition of periods was changed to extend the minutes since teachers would not work any more periods.

That change necessitated eliminating electives to be able to accomodate the longer periods and 'block scheduling.' Teachers could not even be persuaded to teach honors or AP courses because it meant 'extra work'.  I found that attitude shocking coming from educators who were demanding they be treated like professionals while asserting they were meeting the standards. Which of course is the minimum to qualify in any profession.

This is why I cannot see nurses unionizing being a benefit to healthcare or patients. When people have unions that enforce standards which set minimal levels of performance you wind up with a lot of sub-par performers, and that would not be good for healthcare.  Imagine a nurse, leaving in the middle of surgery because the hospital cannot pay them overtime when the surgery runs into complications.  Or how about an IV bag not being started for a patient because the next shift nurse has not been briefed due to a time demands on the prior shift pushing everything back.  There are just too many scenarios where this could be a nightmare. 

You make legitimate points about what's wrong with the educational system.  But the problem is neither teachers nor their unions, and getting rid of them will only exacerbate them by leaving the very people who actually do the work without a voice in determining policy.

Well I was never advocating for them to be eliminated. I was simply pointing out limitations and challenges of unionized employees.  I happen to believe that unions serve a very useful purpose.  Most Americans would not have health isurance if it was not for the UAW nor dental insurance or optical insurance. It was very hard for me to get glasses as a child because it was too expensive for our family and I had molars extracted due to the lack of dental insurance.It was less expensive to extract a tooth than to fill the cavity. By the time I was in HS our family had an optical and dental plan. 

So I am not advocating against them.

I stand by everything I wrote in the post to which this author responds. I will object to the statement made that I provided no research to back up my original assertions. I linked to two specific articles and made reference to yet another study which was discussed elsewhere in the TPM Café. I didn't feel it necessary to repeat myself to prove I do my homework. For anyone who's interested. The link to the study which stated that race and class were the most important variables in terms of student achievement was this: http://www.educationsector.org/analysis/analysis_show.htm?doc_id=378705#pdf

Persons will need to download the .pdf file to get the data and charts.

It strikes me rather strange one would preface an assertion that it is "not true" that smaller class sizes and 'better' teachers are in the suburbs" with the statement "I have only lived in the suburbs". Nor is stating what studies have demonstrated "over and over" the same as referencing those studies so that readers can check them for themselves.

To cut to the chase: that assertion is simply not true. Study after study prove the opposite. For example, see How Does Education in Urban Schools Compare To Suburban Schools? by Amy Golba at http://www.iusb.edu/~journal/1998/Paper5.html.   Suburbs have (a) lower population density and (b)higher property values, and schools, by and large are funded by property taxes. Q.E.D.

Finally, I'm challenged whether I can cite any examples of how unions have empowered professional decisions in teaching or healthcare. I explicitly stated I was no expert on health care issues. With regard to educational issues, I reply yes, I can, and I will. But only three. It strikes me that this is generous enough until some counter-examples are provided.

1. In his monograph research study The Incompetent Teacher: Managerial Responses, Edward M. Bridges says Most administrators spoke about the constructive role of unions in inducing incompetent teachers to resign. Some of these administrators referred to the union's assistance when discussing the process by which incompetent teachers were induced to resign. One of these administrators described the union's role in this process as follows: The union's role is critical in counseling a teacher out. Of the 5 per cent that get counseled out, 75 per cent are with the help of the union. I think this provides evidence that unions do not protect incompetent teachers, beyond their legal obligations to represent them. (Bridges, p. 91). The entire monograph is provided at http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2/content_storage_01/0000000b/80/26/06/99.pdf  on the website of the Educational Resources Information Center. (Registration required...free).

2. School Reform Proposals: The Research Evidence By Robert M. Carini Indiana University Bloomington. 10: Teacher Unions And Student Achievement, Carini's executive summary says While only 17 prominent studies have looked at the teacher union-achievement link, the evidence suggests that unionism raises achievement modestly for most students in public schools. These favorable patterns on unionism include higher math and verbal standardized test scores, and very possibly, an increased likelihood of high school graduation. Although most studies were conducted on high-school students, favorable union effects were also found at the elementary level. At the same time, a union presence was harmful for the very lowest- and highest-achieving students. Research to date is only suggestive as to why unions may improve achievement for most students. Two promising explanations include the possibility that unions standardize programs, instruction, and curricula in a way that benefits middle-range (most) students, and that unions “shock” schools into restructuring for greater effectiveness by improving connections and communication among district administrators, principals and teachers. I take note that Carini suggests possible negative effects at both ends of the spectrum--minor ones as the entire study suggests. The point remains: the studies show that most students benefit from unionized faculty. The study can be found here: http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/EPRU/documents/EPRU%202002-101/Chapter%2010-Carini-Final.htm

3. From Education Sector, Independent Analysis, innovative ideas, Teachers Unions as Agents of Reform An Interview with Brad Jupp by Sara Mead. In Denver, Colorado, the Teacher's Union, far from resisting performance based evaluation, actively campaigned for it. Read the interview here. http://www.educationsector.org/analysis/analysis_show.htm?doc_id=367110

I don't anticipate that any of this will have the slightest effect on the author who stimulated this response, but maybe someone reading this chain may find the documents interesting and useful. Thank you all for your patience. I'll be briefer next time. Mike

Whatever one thinks of unions they remain one of the important countervailing or counterbalancing powers that make for a healthy society.

Corporations have increased their power while unions have declined. That's a danger to our democracy and to our broad-based affluent society.

Even if I were angry at certain aspects of various unions I would still be a supporter of a strong union movement. Concentrations of power are dangerous. Lack of power by broad sectors of society is dangerous.

All decent minded people- especially all Democrats, liberals and progressives- should be for the right to belong to a union. This attempt to define registered nurses as supervisors is dangerous and a threat to our American way of life.

This isn't anything new. Nurses, most especially highly trained, including in specialized care are getting fewer and fewer in hospitals, especially public ones. When my husband was hospitalized at the end of May, he rarely if at all received care from an RN, mostly from LPN's and nurses aides. I believe he was accidently overdosed with a medication that caused him to be out of it for almost an entire week because of a mistake made by an aide, and I couldn't get the physician in charge to request a toxicology to find out what was in his system to cause this.

Also, on the oncology ward where he was, there were only 3 to 4 LPN's at a time with about the same number of aides to help them. The only RN was titled as a floor supervisor, and her hours were 8am to 4pm every day. There were serious problems with LPN's and aides who exhibited problems with speaking/reading english sufficiently enough in that it caused me a great deal of alarm when I couldn't be there.. so many times I caught mistakes being made, whereas anyone who could read the language would not have made those mistakes. His condition was such that he should not have been given certain medications because there were risks of interaction. The mistakes caused him to develop respiratory problems and he ended up in the MICU, and he passed away on June 14th.

I am so sorry. We sit here and talk about hypothetical patient care and you've lived it. My condolences.

It is implied in what you said - if nurses unionize, the unions (and thus nurses) will clamor for more UAP's:

No it was not implied. Here is the statement again with the operative phrase in bold text, it in no one infers 'thus the nurses'..point of fact it says the exact opposite:

 "Unions in health care, however do not enhance quality, if anything they result in sub-quality service, beacause they allow institutions to utilize uneducated and poorly trained 'medical aides' in place of nurses with degrees from 4 year programs. You get folks who are LPN's and hospital trained staff."

Reading that for content and without prejudice  it is very clear that I made no such suggestion, implied or otherwise. The statement was that unions result in hospitals (institutions) using poorly trained individuals as medical aides, you took that to mean it had to do with nursing unions demanding such which was  poor deductive reasoning.

 Unions have to negotiate with administrations (institutions) and when they do they must concede concessions to their demands to get what the nurses want. Often times, the demands made by the administration are not in the best interest of the patient but are solely cost driven to compensate for the expenses being demanded by the union on behalf of the nurses. So, I agree it is not the union's demands it is however their concessions  as part of the collective bargaining process with  the administrations demands that create those results.  It appears that you simply chose to focus on only one side of the issue without looking at it from BOTH perspectives.

Please cite an instance of a union of nurses has traded reduced RN staffing for increased UAP staffing - if that happened regularly, then I would concede your point, but I'm not aware of that happening.

I have not implied, infrerred nor stated such. Will you now concede that?

 This attempt to define registered nurses as supervisors is dangerous and a threat to our American way of life.

I strongly agree with everything in your post, except this. How is this dangerous and a threat to our American way of life?

 For anyone who's interested. The link to the study which stated that race and class were the most important variables in terms of student achievement was this:

Were you challenged on this?  I for one asserted that SES group has been  directly correlated with student performance since the inception of standardized tests. Which was to support the fact that teacher salaries do not correlate with student performance.

It strikes me rather strange one would preface an assertion that it is "not true" that smaller class sizes and 'better' teachers are in the suburbs" with the statement "I have only lived in the suburbs".

Is it strange or simply that you did not understand? Your post addressed urban vs. suburban school performance. I stated that I had only lived in the suburbs to qualify my remarks since I have no experience with urban schools. Generally, when suburban schools and urban schools are  compared, it is the suburban schools which are deemed to have 'better teachers' due to the work environment and better education due to 'smaller class size'.

Nor is stating what studies have demonstrated "over and over" the same as referencing those studies so that readers can check them for themselves.

I notice that you failed to challenge the veracity of the statement. Perhaps, you choose to spend time looking up studies for accepted facts, I do not.  Nevertheless, to appease you:

In the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress exam, while only 23% of public school eight graders reached the "proficient" level in mathematics, 32% of children in Catholic schools and 43% in other private schools scored at the proficient level. Even though they often spend far less than other public-sector counterparts, inner-city Catholic schools consistently succeed where public schools fail.

Between 1987 and 1993, Milwaukee's public schools increased their per-pupil expenditures by nealy a third (32%); during the same period, the predominantly black Messmer High School, an independent Catholic school, saw its per-pupil spending fall by percent. Although it spends only $4,622 per student (less than any public high school in the city), Messsmer has a 98 percent graduation rate. although 60 percent of Messmer's students come from single-parent households, 78% of its graduates go on to college' 

Michael E. Hartmann, "Sometimes So Simple, It's Sad" 1994

If I have misconstrued you it may be because you are aguing strenuously about something that mystifies me. The emphasis on (mainly) the teachers' union and a peculiar attention to a unionized profession being an issue is not on point, I'd say.

It is not clear what you are saying mystifies you. I agree that the teaching profession being a unionized profession was not on topic in terms of the original post. I  responded to the first post, which was about teachers. I did not anticiipate that folks would focus on that as opposed to nurses. I attribute that to the original poster Nathan, deciding to engage about schools and teachers unions rather than his original focus. After all, I also in that initial post, commented that physicians and pharmacists were not unionized, as well.

I am not persuaded that it is correct to say things like union work rules "necessitating" schedule compression. Surely administrators have some choice and could do what the work rules encourage, hire enough teachers.

Well of course, that is why it is called 'collective bargaining' and perhaps, if there was unlimited time without the threat of a strike being extended into the school year, perhaps better choices would be made. Costs are the primary issue in those teacher contracts, and it comes down to raising their salaries or shortening the total  time alloted spent teaching 'quid pro quo'. That is the dynamic that results in 'scheduling compressions'.

Bad neighborhoods make for bad schools when teachers have some choice about where thay work. Only outside intervention can alter that, either by forcing techers to go there (requiring higher salaries to entice them into that deal) or those schools offer a bonus to entice them there (requiring higher salaries, etc

I really have no experience with 'bad neighborhoos/badschools'. What I do know about are suburbs and public schools.  The challenges faced in those communities are not due to the 'working environment' being so bad teachers do not want to be there.  Rather, it is about teachers wanting higher salaries and being willing to strike to get them. That might be effective if teachers could demonstrate that their increase salaries would enhance the educational quality students receive and there simply are no studies to support that. Catholic schools, have demonstrated that by educating students very well even in 'bad neighborhoods' with 'bad schools'.

Private schools that cost less than the computed tax per pupil get a free ride because the public school exists. When your competition is free you can only charge so much. If public school evaporated, the extra money combined with demand would run school costs up to where the market could bear it.

I do not know that private schools cost less, in terms of fees, tuitions, book costs for parents. What I was noting was that they do not pay higher salaries  to their teachers (vs. public schoolds) and often do not have credentialed teachers in terms of what the state demands for certification. For the most part I do not see private schools as competing with public schools, simply because they do not take 'all comers' they get to pick and choose their student body. So, if anything the school performance overall tends to be skewed relative to public schools, who have kids from bkgrds across the spectrum with lots of diversity in terms of ability.

Let's complain about contemptuous CEO privileges and mountainous tax breaks for the very rich instead of kvetching over chump change that buys us a community-forming institution that has had at least some proud periods (including the union).

I am with you on this. I regret that my supporting my assertions caused such a tangent.  I would have hoped that Nathan would have chosen to re-focus on the topic he raised, instead he chose to support unions across the board without regard to their limitations. 

It also seems there are lots of folks who are in the 'teaching profession' at this site and/or related in some manner to a teacher personally and therefore any remarks which did not support teachers elicited an over reaction...similiar to Nathan's in terms of supporting 'all unions'.

sigh..I wonder sometimes if this site realizes just how much they oppose diverse views. I am a staunch democrat, yet it seems if you can see the limitations to unions, somehow this is a 'wrong-headed' view...I expect this myopic, no divergent views allowed from the right wing sites...but I did not anticipate it here.

We're apparenly talking past each other.

As to forcing overtime, supervisory personnel (in my understanding) have to accept shift extension that hourly employees would not. So defining a nurse as supervisory enables that.

I am still unhappy with your emphasis when discussing bargaining. Reducing staff levels may be an expected consequence of wage increases, but it is not a necessary consequence. Let us imagine that, following some publication of a book on the subject, or after a convention of nurses, they individually ask for higher wages. The result is the same, right? Hospital has to pay higher wages to hire, and cuts staff levels to compensate.

What you're really saying (intentionally or not) is higher wages for nurses mean lower staff levels. It doesn't have to, because the nurse's wages are a very small part of the overnight stay price. Typically, medical RNs cover something like 8 patients each, so multiply (let's pick a number) $25/hr times 24 to get $600 for the nurse, divided by 8 patients, to get $75/day/patient.

Obviously the $500-$1500 (or whatever) overnight fee is dominated by other costs. Even raising the hourly wage by $5 to $30 would mean $90/day/patient. So a large wage increase of $5/hr amounts to roughly one to three percent of the overnight cost.

I have no sympathy for administrators moaning about nurse wages. Cutting staff levels in "response" to wage concessions is dishonest.

Unionized nursing is not harmful. Whether it is helpful to nurses has not been tested in an extensive way.

Strikes me as a non-issue. While a contract is on force staying on to provide care would merely yield unscheduled-overtime pay or some such penalty.

If there was a contract dispute there does have to be a bottom line of non-service, but that would be scheduled, with enough time to arrange other temporary service.

In my (collectively-bargained) orchestra, we will leave a rehearsal that runs over, but not a show. That gets paid (or grieved if not).

Uh-uh. You still assert---"concessions made to unions in fact, decrease the quality of care." There is no causal relationship, only a correlation, if this happens, and I haven't seen the evidence that it even happens.

Contracts do not give the union power to manage the hospital. The higher salary of the administrator accompanies the job of ensuring quality. If he thinks he can't maintain quality he has to refuse the contract, and hire non-union staff.

My scenarios explicitly said no one would walk out on a case.

I have pointed out that I have been involved, through marriage, with non-union medical nursing for 20 yrs., so I'm not likely to belittle death. Also as pointed out, every hospital my wife worked at was non-union and had all the problems discussed--occasional errors, short staffing episodes, etc. And BTW, LPNs that are experienced are highly capable. The major difference is time on floor when leaving school. They never insert IVs, but are able to do the rest, and after a few years they're basically equal to a RN.

What is needed is simply enough experienced nurses. This requires only money, and as I pointed out, that's a small factor in health costs at a hospital.

So I see no harm in unions. I rest my case.

I rated this highly for the way in which WRB did a point-counterpoint analysis, earning him forgiveness for there being only one L in personnel. Hey, I was once a proofreader. :-)

At the same time, Tom, you make some reasonable points, but I think you are operating from a binary model of work relationships. "Professional" has several meanings, and one, often, is that a "professional" has an obligation to the ethics of the profession itself. If I go to my physician, pay the office fee, and demand a prescription for methylphenidate or vancomycin, the physician is acting properly if she refuses my request because she sees no medical benefit and potential for abuse.

Enron and some other corporate disasters may not have happened if their outside accountants had refused to sign an audit report that said there were no irregularities.

A nurse is within his rights to refuse an order, even from a supervising nurse, if he feels that order is unsafe for the patient. At that point, some type of mediation, usually from a physician, is in order. In like manner, it is generally accepted that a nurse can decline to participate in certain procedures, such as abortion, for reasons of personal ethics.

If the situation where the ethical conflict is rare, that usually means there will be no adverse action. If the same nurse went to work at an abortion clinic and raised the same concerns, there really would be no way to keep him employed.

Now, all of the "professions" I've just described have formal training and typically certification. There are also types of occupations that don't fit the model perfectly, but the nature of their responsibilities is such that certain job actions could jeopardize human life. Police. Firefighters. Air traffic controllers.

The stability of a society, I believe lies in recognizing that certain things don't neatly fall into a labor-management or pure market economics category. As WRB points out, maximizing profit and minimizing cost is not necessarily consistent with delivering quality health care.

I recently looked at the contract of a physician about to go on staff of a managed care organization, and there were various financial incentives for seeing the maximum number of patients per unit of time. Now, there certainly can be efficiencies. But what is the position of that physician should she see a series of patients with complex problems?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

[deleted duplicate]

In my apparently limited personal experience, I know of some nurses (wife and colleagues in a few hospitals). In none of those hospitals did LPNs set IVs or give injections. They were nonetheless proud of their experience and understanding. My wife started as an LPN and got her degree later.

Please do not misunderstand. I think there are LPN's that do outstanding work and have every right to be proud of their work but I also recognize their limitations particularly when it comes to clinical skills and assessments based on how they are trained vs. being educated. I am sure there are significant degrees of difference in terms of proficiency and performance, in music as well when it comes to someone who is considered the chair or conductor of the entire orchestra vs. the string or wind section. Isn't reading the notes of scale far less of an accomplishment than creating a melody from notes?

Total non sequitur. Administrators apply cold profit calculation and it's the union's fault?

No. I have reiterated this point consistently, yet you appear to come back to it repeatedly. I am unable to discern where the disconnect is. I have agreed with you that it is not a causal relationship. I have stated it is not the union's fault. I have explicitly noted that because concessions are a part of the collective bargaining process it does not mean it is the intent/objective/goal of the union.  I am at a loss for how to communicate that more clearly. For some reason you want to misconstrue this as the 'union's fault' despite my having also stated several times, that these are limitations and challenges of the collective bargaining process when there are unionized employees.  Nothing stated there implies or infers that it is unions 'fault' or intent.

When I say: This is the whole point of why I oppose the unions in health care. Administrators often trade quality health care for profitable health care."

That does not say it is the unions fault. It does say that the process does not improve the quality of  health care. Perhaps, the disconnect is that you are focused on 'benefits for the worker that the union can achieve' whereas I am focused on the 'best quality of health care for the patient'. Your focus on cost is not compatible with quality when it comes to health care. Surely, you have seen this with HMO's?  Bean counters, or administrators are focused on dollars and cents, not on using the most effective drug or diagnostic methods if there are ADEQUATE drugs or diagnostic tests which result in LOWER expenses.

That is simply not quality health care. During the collective bargaining process quality health care is not an issue, meeting the minimum standards of health care is the  cost-effective model for administrators.

The same calculation that cutting staff enhances profit applies whatever the staff cost is.

No, not quite. You do not have to cut staff to enhance profit necessarily in health care. What you can do is utilize a much higher percentage of staff who are not adequately trained or educated to do the job of the highly trained and educated. This cuts cost AND reduces the quality of health care.

For instance take the profession of pharmacy. You can hire two pharmacy techs for the cost of one pharmacist. Can those techs fill more prescriptions faster than one pharmacist,? You bet. So the manual labor of the task is now more proficient but what about accuracy, knowing contraindications, dosage strengths and adverse reactions to other medications the patient is taking? Is the technician educated to perform those functions? No. So while technically the pharmacy may be filling more prescriptions and thus making more money, it does not mean that the patient is being well served.

This is also pretty much the same scenario with an LPN vs. a BSN. That LPN simply does not have the same extensive training and education of the BSN to understand the functions they perform and what it means clinically but most especially when a problem is occurring or the flow rate needs to change on an IV.

Following the birth of my second child, I had a LPN  try to take my BP twice and then  ordered dopamine to raise my BP, luckily I knew enough to inquire what was occurring when I saw the new bag being added, I asked what is it for. When the LPN told me...I said...I have low pressure you have to listen for it longer...she said Oh, took, my BP again and found it! I basically have what is considered a child's BP and she had stopped listening when she did not hear it 110/90. She thought she had missed it. And when she was unable to find it in two more successive tries she felt it had bottomed out. It had not. My normal pressure is 100/80 as I am a small person. Was it reasonable to assume my pressure might have bottomed out subsequent to childbirth, yes? Did she take the right action to raise the BP, yes.  But a BSN, would have known that based on my body size and height that it was just as likely that I had normally low BP and she would have listened longer and may have even inquired ..'is your BP usually low"....at least that is what had happened to me on other occasions, prior to the cut back in nursing staff where aides and LPNs were doing more of the traditional nursing functions.

 BTW, HCB didn't notice that  you don't address the most basic point---nurse staffing costs can only represent a small part of bed charges.

Even though this is to HCB, let me say...no matter how small the cost may be in terms of total costs, the point is that quality care does cost.

The administrator is the guy in charge. That means in charge of everything. If there is short-staffing that's his fault, within the contraints imposed by a board of directors. To the extent that those restraints are damaging the board is responsible. 

OK, you have said this several times, my question is how does making it his fault, enhance the quality of health care? What happens to the administrator when the patient does not get their IV or they get the wrong IV or their breast biopsy is for the wrong patient and this is not discovered until AFTER her mastectomy?  How does blaming this on the administrator alter the quality of health care the patient receives? Who cares if a board is responsible if they excise your testicles and you learn they had the wrong tests results? 

I am not getting how you think being able to shift the blame from the unions and point to the administrator as somehow being at fault or to blame EXCUSES the very real health consequences that result from the collective bargaining process that is utilized by unions to obtain benefits and 'rights' for their members.

Sounds like you should be opposing for-profit hospitals, not unions.

No, it sounds like you should be questioning why you would support a process that does not enhance the quality of health care.

Those poor hospitals could run just fine if they didn't have to pay their nurses, I guess, even though the costs of nurse staff is a small fraction of overall costs. Somehow it's the only cost that matters. Maybe you have different numbers?

My point is simple. Unions do not enhance quality health care and educated and licensed health care professionals do not need unions when it comes to wages, 'rights' and benefits. They are free to practice where they earn the dollars they deem commensurate with their professional time and skills.

This is especially true for nurses and pharmacists given the long standing shortage in those health fields.