I was not at the recent Board meeting of the Lake County School District Board, but heard many teachers showed up to support their demands to "makeup" automatic step increases. These are basically a hidden increase that is normally automatic for many government agencies. You always hear about the annual wage hikes as a percent (like the 1.5% wage hike that was pushed through last year, even though we were in a recession), but there are also "step increases". You might say they are based on seniority, and higher paid teachers get significant increases.
But, two years ago, the School Board, in a moment of fiscal sanity, put a hold on the step increases to reflect the reality of a down market, and lower revenues. In the years I have been observing government activities, the unions almost always consider the amount on hold to be an IOU, and demand it be "made up" later. This is not reality. Corporations do not do that, unless they have strong unions who force them - then employess wonder why the products made by their company are not price competitive and their work is moved overseas.
In the past few weeks, I have attended some of the public bargaining sessions between the District Administration and the Unions, and the Unions keep asking for the make up payments, which would use up fewer available budget dollars, resulting in even larger layoffs for the next budget year. That is the way unions work - pressure the Board to make a committment for wages and benefits before reviewing the budget, thus grab a bigger share of available dollars, then let the Board reduce department budgets later when they review the budget. I do not believe the Board should even decide on wages until after approving departmental budgets (if legal - unions have pushed through rules to give notice of possible layoffs by a certain date, and use that as a reason to get their wages approved first.).
But, local government is a monopoly and workers cannot be easily outsourced to India, so they need to become realistic and the Board needs to prevent any talk of "make up" wages for prior down periods.
Get over it, unions, because taxpayers working in the private sector sure don't have any "make up" income provisions. Actually, the Board should be negotiating more strongly for GIVEBACKS just to retain current salaries in this down economy, such as requiring the ability to fire bad teachers within 6 weeks, not 18 months (which is what I was told, but not verified). Or require that employees contribute 15% to their health insurance, instead of getting ALL of it paid by the School District.
Taxpayers who think the economy is still "down", should watch which Board members try to approve excess wages and benefits, and who do not demand an employee contribution for health care, and remember which Board members are Fiscal RINOS (Republicans in Name Only) during the next elections (Brandeburg & Stivender). (Currently, employees receive 100% paid health care, unlike private workers who may have to pay 20%).
vj
Here is Bernt Petersen's WFTV Channel 9 article and video on the issue:
http://www.wftv.com/lakecounty/26823833/detail.html
http://www.wftv.com/lakecounty/26823833/detail.html
