PeterWK's Periodical

Working Class Men's Wages Have Plummeted Over the Past 40 Years

By Kevin Drum

Emergency Manager 'inflates' numbers

By Eric T. Campbell
The Michigan Citizen”

DETROIT — Detroit Public Schools (DPS) emergency manager and Educational Achievement Authority (EAA) board chairman Roy Roberts is “inflating” his administrative success, according to a new study. Despite promises otherwise, the EM is directing more resources to his administration than the classroom.

Roberts has consistently criticized DPS bureaucracy, saying it directs only 55 percent of its revenue to the classroom. He further promised to increase that number to 95 percent in DPS and the state-mandated reform school district, the EAA.

A new report by the Detroit Data and Democracy Project contradicts Roberts’ numbers, indicating that Roberts has used differing formulas to support his claims.

The report, entitled “Emergency Manager Roy Roberts Pledges 95% of Funds to Classrooms: Ambition or Deceit?” was authored by Dr. Thomas C. Pedroni, Wayne State associate professor of Curriculum Studies and director of the Detroit Data and Democracy Project.

“Roberts greatly inflates his success in the area of classroom dollars and achieves the 90 percent figure by calling every expense category, except administration and debt service, ‘school based costs,’” the report states.

Using the same formula utilized by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), the one that Roberts uses to disparage DPS’ recent classroom expenditures of 55 percent, Roberts is actually putting even less into DPS classrooms.

Pedroni estimates that number to be 48.3 percent.

“Roberts was using a much more generous assessment for his own performance,” Pedroni told the Michigan Citizen. “And it’s not just that his numbers are wrong … remember this is the whole basis for his existence.”

Pedroni says that, in general, charter schools use the same tactics that Roberts employed. National studies conclude that charter schools dedicate more money to administration than to classrooms compared to public schools.

Roberts appeared before City Council July 17 to give his 2012 report on the state of DPS. During his statements, he announced that the DPS budget deficit is now only $72 million.

Detroit Board of Education President Lamar Lemmons says that number is also skewed to fit the appearance that Roberts has led the district out of financial despair.

Lemmons told the Michigan Citizen that DPS is really $272 million in debt if you include the long-term payments associated with the $200 million deficit elimination bond negotiated by Roberts in November 2011.

“You can show anything if you change the formula to get the results you want,” Lemmons told the Michigan Citizen. “He’s certainly done that before.”

To read Detroit Data and Democracy Project’s report on Robert’s classroom expenditures, visit https://sites.google.com/site/detroitdataanddemocracyproject/

Contact Eric T. Campbell at ericcampbell@michigancitizen.com

My union cards!

Today is apparently post your union card to facebook day, so I decided to post mine to tumblr too.  I’m staff at the UNTF, AFT Local 1855, but the AFT sent me a card (though it is valid as I am an associate UNTF member).  I am a member of the IWW as well.

UNIONS MAKE US STRONG!

Virtual Schools Not Passing the Test

By Emma Chadband

Children who enroll in a K12 Inc. cyberschool are more likely to fall behind in reading and math, move between schools or leave school altogether, according to a new study from the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) at the University of Colorado.

K12 Inc. is the nation’s largest virtual school company. It operates 48 full-time virtual schools in 2011-12, and provides services and support to dozens of other schools that offer online classes.

Some of the biggest problems the study found were K12 Inc. students’ low on-time graduation rates, math, and reading scores.

Math scores for K12 Inc.’s students are 14 to 36 percent lower than scores for students attending more “traditional schools” in the states in which the company operates schools. In grades 3 – 11, K12 Inc. students’ reading scores were between 2 and 11 percentage points below the state average.

The on-time graduation rate for K12 Inc. students is 49.1 percent, compared with a 79.4 percent on-time graduation rate for the states in which the company operates schools.

“Our in-depth look into K12 Inc. raises enormous red flags,” NEPC Director Kevin Welner said. The report’s findings were presented in Washington last week to a national meeting of the American Association of School Administrators, where the report’s lead author, Dr. Gary Miron, debated Dr. Susan Patrick, president and CEO of the International Association for K–12 Online Learning.

“Computer-assisted learning has tremendous potential,” said Miron. “But at present, our research shows that virtual schools such as those operated by K12 Inc. are not working effectively. States should not grow full-time virtual schools until they have evidence of success.”

The company’s schools usually operate on less public revenue than traditional schools, but they have “considerable cost savings,” according to a press release from NEPC. They devote minimal or no funds to operating costs including facilities and transportation, and they have more students per teacher and pay teachers less. Furthermore, the study found K12 Inc. spends half as much per student than charter schools overall spend on special education and a third of what districts spend, according to the press release.

“Part of K12’s problem seems to be that it skimps on special education spending and employs few instructors, despite having lower overhead than brick-and-mortar schools,” said Welner, who is also a professor of education policy at the University of Colorado.

K12 Inc. students are also very likely to change schools, which could lead to their low on-time graduation rates.

In light of shrinking education budgets, state governments have considered using online schools to cut costs in education. But this latest study echoes the growing body of evidence suggesting students do not learn as well in cyberschool environments.

A “more rigorous” study of student learning in Pennsylvania virtual charter schools conducted by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University found virtual-school students ended up with learning gains that were “significantly worse” than students in traditional charters and public schools. Audits and state evaluations in five different states have reported similar conclusions.

Related posts:

1. Virtual Schools are Multiplying, But Some Question their Educational Value
2. Must Reads – Virtual Schools
3. Virtual Schools Under Scrutiny
4. Test Scores Same at Wisconsin Public, Voucher Schools
5. Public Schools and Charter Schools: Who’s Leaving Kids Behind?

With Student Learning at Stake, Group Calls for Better Working Conditions for Adjuncts

The Chronicle of Higher Education
July 31, 2012

By Audrey Williams June

Academe needs a new model for the professoriate that better supports the

growing number of instructors who are off the tenure track, the

participants in a national project about the changing faculty have

concluded.

The participants, who represent a cross-section of academe and its

stakeholders, also said in a report being released this week that they

need to align to gather data that will paint a clearer picture of higher

education’s increasing reliance on contingent faculty.

A key reason for those two strategies to improve the jobs of contingent

faculty members is that their poor working conditions may harm student

learning, says the report, a “working document” produced by the Delphi

Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success.

The 49-page document, in part, details the challenges linked to the

rising number of contingent faculty, who now make up about 70 percent of

all instructors at the nation’s colleges and universities. But data that

quantify the effects of this shift in the make-up of the faculty and the

issues it creates aren’t readily available, the report says. Without

hard numbers, campus policy makers may be unaware of the extent of the

challenges they face.

“Everybody agreed that we lack good data tools to help inform policy

making at various levels as it relates to non-tenure-track faculty,”

says Adrianna Kezar, director of the project and an associate professor

of higher education at the University of Southern California.

“What we’re doing now is creating all of these data tools and resources

so that we can make people aware of the extent of the issue and then

have a series of best practices that have been put in place at various

institutions that we can point to that we know work.”

Participants in the Delphi project also agreed that the current

system—with tenure-stream faculty on the one hand, and full-timers and

part-timers who work off the tenure track on the other— “isn’t working,”

Ms. Kezar says. “We all thought, What is the new model of the faculty

that we need to have?”

The document reflects a year’s worth of work by more than 40 people,

including college presidents, higher-education researchers, leaders of

scholarly associations, faculty union leaders, and representatives of

organizations that represent faculty who are off the tenure track. The

report and the strategies it proposes emerged from discussions at a

recent meeting where most of the project’s participants gathered.

The participants will be pared down into two task forces to work on

advancing the project’s strategies in various ways.

For instance, they will need to develop a conceptual paper that details

what the future faculty should look like and how it could be adopted by

all types of institutions. And eventually, the project will need some

grant money to make pieces of both strategies a reality—such as setting

up models at individual institutions or university systems of how to

best support non-tenure-track faculty.

Ms. Kezar says she expects to post the document at the project’s Web

site [http://tinyurl.com/cw9ec9p] later this week. Other documents

related to the project’s current efforts will be posted over the next

six months.

NUHW-Machinists Alliance: What’s the Game Plan?

by Carl Finamore

It surprised many when the National Union of Healthcare Workers—a quintessential service sector union—announced in February its intent to affiliate with the Machinists, which has an extensive industrial union history.

Details are still under discussion, but an alliance would ultimately bring more than 9,000 NUHW members together with 720,000 IAM members.

The announcement came at an important juncture for NUHW, which was born in 2009 after the Service Employees drove out key activists and leaders from its 150,000-member United Healthcare Workers-West local in California during a battle over democracy and local autonomy.

NUHW ran against SEIU in 2010 in elections for 43,000 service and tech workers at California’s Kaiser Permanente hospitals and lost. But a labor board ruling last year confirmed that Kaiser had colluded with SEIU during the election, and the board ordered a re-run.

Now NUHW will enter the field with strong backing from a powerful AFL-CIO ally.

An interview with three principal players delves into the thinking behind the match.

Carl Finamore, former president of IAM Local Lodge 1781 in California, spoke with Gary Allen, IAM general vice president; Sal Rosselli, president of NUHW; and Don Crosatto, Western Territory IAM District 190 senior area director.

Labor Notes: Where did the idea to affiliate come from?

Don Crosatto: I was always very much aware of the dominant presence of SEIU-UHW in successful organizing, bargaining, and community coalition building in California. They had the gold-standard contract in the health industry, had very active steward participation, and were the fastest-growing union in California. Their record stood out. After they were kicked out of SEIU and formed NUHW, I saw that same leadership continuing to run impressive campaigns, but this time on a shoestring budget.

Stands to reason, I figured, that they would be thinking about linking up with an organization with resources.

Of course, some will think this relationship with the IAM is strange because we do not have much experience in health care. But NUHW has that part pretty well figured out; they do not need that from us.

They need to be part of a larger organization that values local autonomy and that does not micromanage from headquarters in Washington, D.C.

LN: How did the consultations develop?

DC: I knew former SEIU-UHW President Sal Rosselli for 20 years and asked if he wanted to talk with Gary about how we view local autonomy and democracy. There were intense discussions for a couple months that included our international president, R. Thomas Buffenbarger, and the international’s nine-member executive council, that ultimately led to a letter of intent to affiliate.

Gary Allen: The thing that moved me was blatant abuse by SEIU of basic union democracy against duly elected SEIU-UHW leaders over disagreements on bargaining priorities and organizing. Unfortunately, this was not a complete surprise. It’s my opinion that over the last several years, SEIU chose growth at all costs, negotiating future organizing access instead of bargaining standard-of-living increases for their members.

In the IAM, decisions about collective bargaining priorities are left to our members.

LN: What were the first reactions of the IAM?

DC: Health care is not one of our bread-and-butter industries and most of our leadership is not in California. So, most IAM leaders did not really know the players up close. However, we found our general philosophies are pretty much the same.

We both believe members should drive negotiations by selecting the bargaining committee, developing contract demands, and ratifying agreements. In addition, the IAM is not in the habit of forcing consolidations into mega-locals, with smaller locals giving up their independence as demanded so often by SEIU.

LN: What does the IAM think it will get out of this relationship?

GA: It would be disingenuous to say we are not interested in thousands of new members or that we do not appreciate the value of becoming a major player in the rapidly growing health care industry. But an even bigger benefit for the IAM is NUHW’s huge pool of organizing talent.

DC: We definitely hope their example and experience will energize our locals to organize more, which, frankly, we can use.

LN: How will NUHW benefit?

DC: Of course, NUHW needs resources to go after bigger targets like Kaiser.

But, as its name indicates, NUHW is a national health care union. Our organizing perspective is not about picking SEIU apart but about organizing vast areas of the unorganized.

SEIU is much bigger, but most of their members are concentrated in New York, Illinois, and California where, for example, they have 700,000 members.

SEIU is not present in large sections of this country. The IAM’s extensive geographic presence is an enormous advantage, especially in the South. We do not have tens of thousands of members in these states but we do have a presence. Instead of blowing in with a blizzard of purple shirts, our organizers get introduced by IAM members who not only lived and worked in that community but whose parents have also lived their whole lives in that community. Being introduced as a good guy by these deeply rooted local folks matters in small towns.

Sal Rosselli: With the IAM located in every state in the union and in every province of Canada, we have a tremendous opportunity to organize. Most hospital workers in this country are not in a union—a whopping 90 percent of them, or 9 million in all. It’s great that the IAM shares our vision and confidence about national organizing.

LN: How will this all affect the upcoming Kaiser NUHW/SEIU representation election involving 43,000 employees?

SR: Well, IAM resources will hopefully make it easier for us to communicate to the 10,000 folks we could not even reach last time.

But the Kaiser campaign this year is fundamentally different in two other huge ways.

First, Kaiser has shown its true colors. In the last election, we could not very effectively criticize Kaiser because the good relationship with the old SEIU-UHW built up over the years produced the best contracts in the industry. This was still fresh in everyone’s mind. Today, it’s the opposite. Kaiser is trying to jam through concessions despite their enormous profits. This has angered thousands of workers who previously trusted Kaiser.

Secondly, SEIU-UHW has changed. In 2010, we were a brand-new organization and it was difficult to explain our differences with SEIU. Not true today. SEIU has failed to pursue grievance complaints and, at the same time, caved to numerous concessions dictated by Kaiser and other hospitals.

By contrast, in the last year and half, NUHW has settled half a dozen contracts with no takeaways, proving by example that you can avoid concessions and even gain some improvements if you stand up to the employer.

Along with our new relationship with the IAM, these are things that, I believe, make a huge difference this time around.

———————————————————————————————

Click the link for more

Anheuser-Busch forces Teamster strike

Conn. governor joins locked out workers at HealthBridge

July 12 2012

tags: workers’ rights,

HARTFORD, Conn. - A week after nearly 700 nurses, nurse assistants and laundry, dietary and housekeeping staff began walking the picket lines at five HealthBridge nursing homes in a strike over unfair labor practices, Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman came out to join them.

The National Labor Relations Board issued a citation against the New Jersey based company when it unlawfully ended contract negotiations and unilaterally implemented its “last, best and final” offer.

The workers, members of 1199 New England, would each lose, on average, about $8,000 a year for six years through cuts in hours, increased health insurance premiums to more than $8,000 per year for many workers, and an end to retirement security after a lifetime of challenging and backbreaking work.

Malloy told the workers that the company is trying to set a new model of union busting in Connecticut and “we don’t want them to be that model.”

“Day after day for the last 16 years, I have worked to provide the best care possible to my residents,” said Eva Fal, an 1199 union member at Newington Health Care Center, where the governor joined the picket line. “I have never seen owners as profit-hungry as the owners of HealthBridge. They make millions and millions of dollars in profits each year - but they have the nerve to say that our pay and benefits aren’t ‘realistic’?” she exclaimed.

HealthBridge reported annual profits of $45.4 million in 2010. In addition, that year HealthBridge paid $234 million to subsidiaries and related companies of owners Daniel and Moshael Straus.

The union negotiated contracts with 50 other nursing homes in the state over the past two years with no problems. Only HealthBridge chose to try and force the 1199 caregivers out.

“These types of tactics are unacceptable,” said Malloy in a prepared statement. “They negatively impact the lives of the residents who live in these nursing homes and the residents’ families because the continuum of care gets interrupted.”

Family members of residents are also speaking out in support of the unionized workers, urging that good faith negotiations resume. State Rep. Patricia Billie Miller, D-Stamford walked the picket line in Stamford where her 83 year old father is being treated. She told the media, “I know that these workers care about the patients and I’ve witnessed that firsthand. I don’t know if the workers who are brought in will have the same relationship.”

In a 14-page decision, the NLRB said HealthBridge “failed and refused to bargain in good faith with the union.” This is the fifth complaint against the company. A trial will be held on September 10.

“By their outrageous, inhumane and unlawful actions, HealthBridge has given workers no other alternative,” said 1199 President David Pickus. “This for-profit, out-of-state corporation has demonstrated absolute contempt for the law, for their employees and for the nursing home residents who depend on them for care. But our members have declared loudly that they intend to defend themselves and their communities,” he said.

“One-percenters like the Straus brothers rake in millions each year off the backs of their caregivers and the Connecticut taxpayers who fund the Medicaid and Medicare programs they have used to make themselves rich. It’s time for HealthBridge to get out of our state and let a more caring and responsible operator run these homes in a way that promotes the well-being of caregivers and residents-not the Straus brothers,” Pickus concluded.

The company announced the massive concessions by sending an email at 11 pm on Saturday, June 16 informing 1199 that the implementation would begin on Sunday morning.

The nursing homes are Danbury Health Care Center, Long Ridge of Stamford, Newington Health Care Center, West River Health Care Center in Milford and Westport Health Care Center. Earlier this month, the State of Connecticut gave HealthBridge permission to close Wethersfield Health Care Center, which is part of the NLRB case.

Four previous NLRB complaints cited bad-faith bargaining and other illegal behavior by HealthBridge.

The company locked out workers at their Milford facility last Christmas. The workers were called back to their regular shifts and positions four months later, as a result of increasing pressure from residents, family members, community members and elected officials and citations from the Connecticut Department of Public Health and NLRB.

HealthBridge operates nine facilities in Connecticut, with dozens more under the HealthBridge and CareOne names in Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Photo: 1199NE

Unions make us strong!

Tom Morello has a message for Obama on Real Time with Bill Maher

Fellow Worker Tom Morello on Real Time.