[abcnews] Rhode Island District Fires All 74 of Its High School Teachers

Oh, oh, I guess Major's assumptions were wildly off base.

 

This is an interesting thread and a good example of how conservative nostrums get into the mainstream as generally accepted wisdom without much thought. It is all so simple; and all so focus group tested to be appealing on an emotional level. You have lazy teachers and (gasp) their unions. All you need is a good dose of Father knows best tough love and voila education underacheivement is solved without spending any more of the tax payer's money on education or support for low income families. We can afford Reagan-Bush tax cuts to the well off and unfunded trillions dollar wars. What is their not to like?

 

Did you even read the thread? If so, you'd recognize you have no clue what you're talking about or what I was saying.

 

BTW, for those fans of commission based pay schedules for teachers, . do the fairly numerous countries that do a better job educating their students rely on such a schedule to solve their need for an educated populace? If not, what does this say about the assumption that such a pay schedule would solve our problem on the cheap?

I submit that this largely erroneous idea is largely a response to the fact that teacher's unions consiting of folks who actually deal daily with social problems tend to be politically at odds with conservative politicans and conservative think tanks funded primarily by incredibly wealthy individuals.

 

Well I did read your response: Of course, you have no idea how much of this is already accounted for when looking at the performance of the school. And you have no idea what other steps were taken outside of the restructuring plan. For all we know, there's another school in the same district that gets the same level of students and performs substantially better, for example.

Sorry for responding somewhat in kind.

 

Hey guess what? The teachers are back.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/16/rhode.island.teachers.rehired/index.html?hpt=T2

 

Looks like they reached a deal. This is a pretty cool business law case, for the most part.

The legal theory is that if you unionize and collective bargain, you still must have risk so that the other side (in this case the district) doesn't totally lose at the bargaining table.

The corporate, or in this case district, resolution was to fire everybody. This is protected by law and is the counterbalance to collective bargaining advantages.

If I remember all the way back to my business law classes, I believe it was an airline flight attendant case that is most often quoted. I totally forget the case name and what airline, however.

The gist of it was that the union went on strike. They were warned that if they went on strike the airline would fire them. They went on strike anyways and were 100% fired. They sued. The airline won. Basically the court ruled that if you form a union and collective bargain, the only recourse that the management can maintain to offer balance was firing everyone. So usually, a company could not operate if they fired everyone, but in this case they could. It shocked the union, but basically, you take on the risk of getting fired if you strike, the company can fire you legally. They just have to fire ALL of you.

So basically the law puts risk on you if you strike (rightly so). A lot of unions fail to mention this risk to their members.


This case is different, and they were fired at the bargaining table. I would have, from a legal and scholarly perspective, liked to see how this would have played in court, since I don't think the teachers actually went on strike, and how the law would have played out. I assume, but don't know, that the districts decision would have held up, they have every right to fire all their employees, especially with "cause" since the districts record was so bad.

On top of this, you have federally mandated plans. I wonder if they have ever been challenged in court. I also wonder what would happen if a district came up with a solution that worked that was NOT on the federally approved/mandated plan, yet everyone agreed upon. My guess it would stand, but I don't know.

 

In the early 1980s, Reagan fired over 10,000 air traffic controllers who went on strike and refused to go back to work.

 

I stand corrected. Could have sworn there was actually a flight attendant one though, that was purely corporate, but I can't find/remember it.

 

correct and that was allowed because there are certain cases where workers are needed and supposedly aren't allowed to strike.

The idea of being fired for striking doesn't hold up for every industry as far as I know.

 

There may have been one. I just thought you may have been thinking about the ATC firings.