Tag Archives: jobs

A Teachers Union Struck Chicago

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The Chicago Teachers Union struck Chicago (closing out the children of the city from 11 days of education; although, that may have been a net benefit for the kids, given the lack of education the city’s public education institution provides), and it got everything it demanded.

  • A new joint class size council will be created to address overcrowding. The council will get weekly updated data and will have $35 million per year to address situations on a case-by-case basis
  • The contract will run for 5 years, giving the board time to implement some of the massive changes in staff
  • Pay raises: 3.0% for the 2019-20, 2020-21, and 2021-22 school years; 3.5% for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school year
  • Freezes health insurance premiums through 2022
  • A net zero increase in the amount of Board-authorized charter schools over the contract’s lifespan
  • The Joint Teacher Evaluation Committee—made of five union members and five Board members—will provide annual recommendations to the chief talent officer and CTU president on how to improve teacher evaluations. Student growth scores will make up 30% of an evaluation’s summative rating
  • Hundreds more union positions: librarians, social workers, and psychologists.

More money, more union jobs (more dues money), less cost, and especially less competition from those embarrassingly successful charter schools.

Rik Moran thinks Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot abjectly surrendered to the union.  I think she’s in cahoots with it.  The 11-day strike just provided a fresh layer of snow to cover that Chicago dirt.

A Strike “Template”

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That’s what the UAW hopes to use its bludgeon of GM as when the union turns to Ford and Fiat Chrysler.

The United Auto Workers will use the agreement at GM as a template that is expected to reach similar terms on wages and benefits in separate contract talks with Ford Motor Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles….

However, there’s no reason for Ford or Fiat Chrysler to succumb to this.  These are three separate companies, with separate goals, revenue streams, and cost structures; there should be three separate contracts with the UAW.

There’s also no reason for Ford or Fiat Chrysler to succumb to UAW’s move just because the union wants a common contract. What’s good for GM is not what’s good for Ford or Fiat Chrysler, especially since GM gave away so much of their farm, not just to end a strike, but to agree to higher costs solely to try to inflict those increased costs on their rivals. GM is well aware of the UAW’s auto industry “negotiating” pattern.

There’s also no reason for Ford or Fiat Chrysler to succumb to UAW’s move because the union’s anti-GM strike has drastically drawn down its strike fund and reduced its ability to pay its striking union members. UAW can’t hack, or can’t so easily hack, a prolonged strike against either company, much less both of them. The UAW also needs to consider the effects of its strike(s) on surrounding businesses: suppliers, suppliers of the suppliers, other businesses that serve the workers of those suppliers with recreation, restaurants, theaters, and the like.

Update: Since I wrote this, Ford has acceded to UAW demands, and they did so quickly.

PRC Personal Savings Rate

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James Areddy had an extensive article on this in a recent Wall Street Journal.  It seems that the personal savings rate of People’s Republic of China’s citizens peaked around 2010 and has been trailing off ever since.  Areddy posited a number of reasons for this, and why it’s likely to continue.  Chief among them is the usual suspect of an increasingly less poor, if not increasingly prosperous, population wishing to live better rather than save more.  Another major reason seems to be the PRC’s one-child policy, lately relaxed legally, but not socially.  With fewer kids in the family, there’s less reason for parents to save against those kids’ future.

I see another reason, though, for the continuation of the fall-off in savings rate, and that continuation running to disastrously low levels, from a national economic perspective.  This is the aging of the PRC’s population.

That aging is driven by a couple of things. One is that folks get old before they die (duh), and today’s PRC population being healthier than yesterday’s, these folks are living longer.  The bookend to this is the shrinking—across generations—of the population of working age citizens.  This stems from that one-child policy, emplaced explicitly to shrink a population that had severe trouble feeding and housing itself and from the continued social lack of desire for more than one child in a family, and from the desire to live better materially today, now that folks are better off (or at least not so bad off).

With fewer folks working relatively to aging and retiring, this means there’ll be less public money to pay for old folks’ retirement (and retired) needs, so the old folks will need to spend their savings even faster than might be the case otherwise.

Another feedback loop likely is inflation.  This will accelerate the fall-off in personal savings. This inflation will be driven by that same shrinking labor force, this time reducing production output—the availability of goods and services—even as spending increases across all age demographics: a classic case of (relatively) too many yuan chasing (relatively) too few goods.

‘Twas a Famous Victory

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The UAW is touting its strike resolution with GM as a victory and a model to be used against [sic] Ford and Fiat-Chrysler. A letter writer to The Wall Street Journal has pointed out some other aspects of the union’s most famous victory.

For every GM employee at an assembly plant, there are at least 30 working at suppliers providing parts, materials, and services to those plants.
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During the strike almost all the tier suppliers were forced to shut down or seriously curtail their operations, meaning layoffs (union and nonunion alike). Many of those employees must seek other employment….
…
the [suppliers’] employees who do go back to their jobs will simply go back to work with accrued lost wages and benefits incurred during the layoffs. Those suppliers will also have to go out, recruit and train new employees to replace those who left and don’t return, adding to their costs.

But, hey, UAW management got theirs.

A City’s Attack on Privacy

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You’re aware of the Chicago Teachers Union strike against the city, demanding a ton more money—a 15% pay raise over the next three years (against Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s meek counteroffer of 16% over five years).  Here is another part of Lightfoot’s offer to the union [emphasis added].

1-5.8 Bargaining Unit Employee Information. The BOARD shall provide the UNION on at least a monthly basis, and on a weekly basis for the months of August, September, and October, a list of all current employees in the bargaining unit, which shall include each employee’s first and last name, shift, job title, department, work location, home address, all telephone numbers (including cell phone number if available), personal and work email addresses, date of birth, seniority date, base hourly pay rate (if available), language preference (if available), identification number/payroll code/job number, salary, status as a member or non-member, UNION dues, and COPE payment.

Nor can any school district employee, whether union member or not, opt out of this information grab.

Chicago is no place to live with a city administration that has no respect for its citizens’ personal information, their privacy, a city administration that considers such bits of information to be nothing more than bargaining chips.