Tag Archive for: public safety unions

What Do Public Safety Unions Stand For?

In a special election earlier this week, Brian Dahle defeated Kevin Kiley in the race to become the next California State Senator representing District One, which sprawls north from the foothills east of Sacramento all the way to the Oregon border.

Both candidates were Republican members of the State Assembly, competing in one of the few safe Republican districts left in California. If you study their legislative voting records, all but the most committed conservative wonks would consider these men to offer pretty much the same positions on most issues. But you wouldn’t know it from reading their campaign flyers.

In a dirtier than average campaign, Dahle alleged that Kiley worked directly for Kamala Harris, referring to him as a “former staffer” of hers. That flimsy truth is based on the fact that Kiley was a deputy attorney general for the state when Harris happened to be attorney general. In other flyers, Dahle accused Kiley of making it “easier for illegal immigrant criminals to remain in the U.S.,” being “funded by the same liberals who financed Nancy Pelosi Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton,” refusing to “support legislation to hold PG&E accountable for the wildfires,” authoring “legislation making it difficult for victims who are dying from asbestos poisoning to collect damages,” and going “AWOL on welfare fraud.”

You get the idea. While Kiley tried to hit back, for every flyer he mailed, voters often received two flyers from Dahle. Some voters got more than twenty flyers supporting Dahle, more than half of them offering up dirt on Kiley. And who endorsed Brian Dahle, and, presumably, paid for much of the expenses to support his candidacy? Here, from his campaign website’s endorsement page, are the organizations at the top of that list:

“California Professional Firefighters, California State Firefighters Association, Cal Fire Firefighters Local 2881, Redding Firefighters, Sacramento Area Firefighters, Nevada County Professional Firefighters, California Highway Patrolmen Association, Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC), California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA).”

Which begs the question: Public safety unions played a decisive role in getting Brian Dahle elected to California’s state senate. What is Brian Dahle going to do for them?

What do Public Safety Unions Stand For?

You can argue that politics in a democracy are always dirty, and both sides do it all the time. But it should still bother anyone paying attention when our role models, our teachers, police and firefighters, not only engage in politics, but often take the low road to accomplish their political objectives. Politicians who stand up to these unions are demonized.

Remember the “Chuck Reed is a Bad Person” bumper stickers appearing on cars throughout the San Jose area back in 2012, when then Mayor Reed tried to reform that city’s pensions? Remember the “Screw Arnold” bumper stickers appearing on cars all over California back in 2005, when then Governor Schwarzenegger tried to stop automatic union dues deductions from government paychecks?

Kevin Kiley is just the latest casualty.

Is spreading dirty, disparaging half-truths to destroy political rivals how people should behave who we count on to protect us from criminals, rescue us from burning buildings, and teach our children? It’s hard to forget how public union representatives talked about Gov. Schwarzenegger back in 2005 – openly on television and radio. It was ugly and personal. They didn’t sound like heroes, to put it mildly.

Even more important than the tone and the tactics of public sector unions is the political agenda they support. What do they believe in? Is protecting their pay and pensions their most important priority? Is that compatible with their pledge “to protect and to serve,” if it bankrupts our cities? And what about other issues of vital importance to our future?

Back in January 2019, how did it serve the public for International Association of Fire Fighters president Harold Schaitberger to lead 1,600 firefighters in solidarity with striking teachers in Los Angeles? Was his membership asked, or have they even thought about what unions have done to California’s public schools? Are they actually against charter schools, which often are the only hope for underprivileged children in California’s inner cities to get a quality education? Do they understand that pension and benefit costs are by far the main reason California’s public schools are in financial trouble?

And what about police unions in California? When you step back beyond issues of pay, benefits, officer safety and officer effectiveness – all compelling issues – what is their stance on the epic issues of our time? Does it represent what their members think? What do the members really believe is in the best interests of the public they serve, and are their leaders embracing those principles?

Two Conservative Pledges for Public Sector Unions

If members of public sector unions are committed liberals, they’ll probably find the political agenda of their unions to be quite in line with their personal sentiments. But what if they’re not liberals? And what about politicians who run for office and seek the endorsement of these unions? What political ideology should they mutually support? What political platform should they mutually endorse?

When candidates seek the endorsement of public sector unions, it is common for them to complete a candidate questionnaire. The questions posed are fairly predictable. The teachers union may want to know the candidate’s position on, for example, charter schools or school vouchers. A public safety union may want to know the candidate’s position on the impact of recent criminal justice reforms.

But why shouldn’t the candidates question these unions? Why shouldn’t a candidate, or a political party, for that matter, reject union money and reject union endorsements if they don’t score high enough on a questionnaire of their own? Or, before taking union money or accepting union endorsements, why not ask these union leaders to sign a pledge?

Presented below are two conservative pledges that might be presented to leaders and members of public sector unions. The first one might actually be considered bipartisan, but it might also be considered one that would only have value in a perfect world. It calls for political neutrality on the part of public sector unions, which is a fantasy. The second one, offered for the real world, presents a conservative agenda that union members may embrace wholly or in part. It is a conservative alternative to the liberal agenda that currently attracts nearly all public sector union spending.

THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SERVANT PLEDGE – FOR A PERFECT WORLD

(1) Americans First: We recognize that the interests of the American citizens we serve come first; before the interests of the government, government employees, or non-citizens.

(2) Citizens Before Government: We understand that sometimes government policies benefit ourselves and our union more than they benefit the general public, and we will always put the public interest before the interests of ourselves or our unions.

(3) Shared Sacrifice: During times of economic hardship or declining budgets, we are willing to make reasonable sacrifices, proportionate to what the general public is enduring.

(4) Same Rules: We do not expect our union to protect us if we have engaged in behavior on the job – through incompetence, negligence, or criminality – that would get us fired in the private sector, and we expect our union to refrain from protecting bad behavior of any kind.

(5) Same Benefits: We realize that our pension benefits far exceed private sector norms, that they are financially unsustainable and unfair to taxpayers. Consequently, for work we have not yet performed, we support reductions to our pension benefit accruals to pre-1999 multipliers.

(6) Political Neutrality: As public servants our calling is to be nonpartisan and politically neutral, and we expect our unions to limit their activities to collective bargaining.

THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SERVANT PLEDGE – FOR THE REAL WORLD

Preamble: We accept that public sector union activity, all of it, is inherently political. We therefore choose to embrace political positions that support the best interests of American citizens, and recognize our voice is needed to help win the war to preserve our culture, our national identity, our national independence, our prosperity, our freedom, and our ability to compete in the world. To that end, here in California, we will use all our influence to support candidates, legislation, and citizen initiatives to achieve the following political goals:

(1) More Infrastructure: We support comprehensive upgrades and expansion of California’s infrastructure. To that end, we support streamlining of the permitting process, and innovative public/private financing including allocating at least 10 percent of all public employee pension fund assets to fund revenue bonds. Infrastructure priorities include smart roads, upgraded rail, pipeline, airport, and seaport assets; natural gas and nuclear power plants; hospitals, mental health facilities, prisons; desalination plants, off-stream reservoirs, aquifer storage, sewage reuse, and aqueduct upgrades.

(2) Practical Environmentalism: We support a complete overhaul of California’s excessive environmentalist legislation, especially with respect to forest management, wildlife management, water management, air quality management, land development, and renewable energy mandates. For example, we support a requirement that all renewable energy producers guarantee uninterrupted, year-round energy, and work those costs into whatever contracts they negotiate with public utilities.

(3) Deregulate Land Development: We realize that a major cause of unaffordable housing and homelessness are excessive environmentalist regulations – accordingly, we support repeal of CEQA which ties up all construction projects with needless requirements that either overreach or are duplicative with existing federal law. We support repeal of SB 375 which attempts to restrict all new development into existing cities. We agree that expanding California’s urban footprint is an essential prerequisite to bringing down the price of housing and we support legislation to further that goal.

(4) Restore Law and Order: We demand a ballot initiative to repeal Prop 47 which downgraded property crimes and drug offenses, making it impossible to engage in “broken windows” policing. We demand a ballot initiative to repeal Prop. 57, which released thousands of criminals back onto California’s streets. We demand legislative repeal of AB 953, which needlessly bureaucratized police work and made it harder to make arrests based on objective criteria.

(5) School Choice and Teacher Accountability: We support private sector nonprofit and for-profit organizations competing with traditional public schools. We support charter schools, home schooling, school vouchers, and tuition deductibility. We believe teacher tenure should not be granted, if at all, until after at least five years of classroom observation. We believe incompetent teachers should be swiftly fired at the discretion of principals, and we believe competence, not seniority, should govern what teachers are dismissed during layoffs.

(6) Anti-Discrimination: We recognize that individual hard work and merit is the traditional path to success in America, and therefore we reject and oppose all forms of discrimination based on group classifications – including race, gender, income, religion, national origin, age, ableism, etc. We reject and oppose any form of affirmative action or quotas in hiring, layoffs, firing, promotion, college admissions, contract awards, or any similar competitive activity. To lower tuition costs and restore a level playing field to academia, we support eliminating the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” bureaucracies in every public institution of higher learning.

(7) Sensible Immigration Policies: We support immigration reform that emphasizes admittance based on merit over chain migration and the visa lottery. We demand an end to birthright citizenship based on birth tourism. We demand strict enforcement of citizenship verification requirements for employers. We demand reform of asylum laws to prevent further abuse. We demand the right for members of law enforcement to work with ICE officials to keep violent criminals in custody.

Conservative Members of Unions Have Choices

Ever since the Janus decision made it possible for public sector union members to vote with their feet, these unions have become more accountable. If they support candidates and legislation that offends their members, those members can quit.

Conservatives who wish they lived in a perfect world may push for political neutrality from public sector unions. Conservatives who live in the real world might consider more assertive engagement with public sector unions. Demand they pursue political objectives that serve the public, and represent the opinions of their members.

As it is, conservatives, especially in California, are getting nothing from the most powerful special interest in the state, public sector unions. But now more than ever, post-Janus, California’s conservatives can ignite conservative insurgencies within these unions. They should seize this opportunity. They have nothing to lose.

This article originally appeared on the website California Globe.

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Why Are Public Safety Unions Supporting Teachers Unions?

During the Los Angeles teachers strike earlier this year, an article in the ultra-left publication The Nation offered an excellent glimpse into the mentality of strikers and their supporters. The article begins by describing a scene in front of an LAUSD middle school on day three of the strike. A truck driver has arrived to make a delivery to the school, and the picket line won’t budge. Police have been called.

What happens next? According to The Nation, “The line holds. The police don’t make good on their threats to cite or arrest teachers, and the truck and police cars drive off. One of the officers even gets on his radio before he leaves and says, ‘Don’t let them come between us. We support you!'”

It would take an expert to determine whether this conduct falls within the boundaries of normal police discretion or constitutes a minor act of civil disobedience in solidarity with the strikers, but it doesn’t take an expert to determine whose side this officer was on. “We support you.”

Police, along with the firefighters who on January 19th actually marched by the hundreds through downtown Los Angeles to support the teachers strike, can be applauded for wanting to support teachers and students. They can be applauded for doing what they think is right, especially if they think they are helping the next generation of Americans get a quality public education. But what if everything the teachers union is trying to do is wrong?

For starters, funding for traditional public schools is not undermined by the presence of charter schools. Public schools receive public revenues based on enrollment, and public school classrooms, according to one of the union’s own stated grievances, are bursting. There are more students than the system can handle, so charters siphoning off some of these students cannot possibly be the reason for inadequate operating revenue. What about funds for capital improvements?

In November 2018 California’s voters approved over $15 billion in local school improvement bonds. In November 2016, voters approved over $24 billion in local school improvement bonds; June 2016, $6.2 billion; November 2014, $11 billion. There should be no shortage of funds to upgrade public schools, because the success rate for local school improvement bonds in California is over 90 percent, and tens of billions have been allocated over just the past few years. We should be asking where, if we’ve allocated nearly $60 billion over just the past five years to maintain and upgrade schools in an era of stable enrollment, did all that money go?

With respect to operating revenue, the biggest reason for deficits is the crushing burden of funding retirement benefits. The reason the teachers union opposes charters is because it leaves a smaller pool of LAUSD traditional school students, i.e., less revenue, to pay down their unfunded liability for retirement benefits – nearly $7.0 billion for pensions, and nearly $15 billion for pensions.

At the very least, the teachers union should tell the truth: We want more students so we will have more revenue because we demanded and received retirement benefits that were excessively generous and financially unsustainable. Better yet, they could “negotiate” lower benefit formulas and higher personal contributions through payroll withholding.

Instead, the teachers union wants to kill charter schools, and the police and firefighter unions are helping them. But all these unions ought to recognize that their retirement benefits are not more important than providing quality education. And at least police and fire unions have not destroyed the effectiveness of their organizations. Can the teachers union make that claim?

No. They can’t. The teachers unions in California are the worst thing that’s ever happened to public education. Set aside for a moment their leftist agenda that they use every opportunity to bring into the classroom, or their economic demands that reflect innumeracy and greed in equal measure. Just refer to the 2014 Vergara vs. California case for a defining example of just how much damage these unions are doing to California’s public schools.

The plaintiffs in this case sued to modify three work rules, (1) a longer period before granting tenure, (2) changing layoff criteria from seniority to merit, and (3) streamlined dismissal policies for incompetent teachers. These plaintiffs argued the existing work rules had a disproportionately negative impact on minority communities, and proved it – view the closing arguments by the plaintiff’s attorney in this case to see for yourself. But a California State Appellate Court reversed the lower court’s ruling, and the California Supreme Court refused to take the case. To put it mildly, California’s public schools continue to suffer.

Instead of embracing reforms such as proposed in the Vergara case, the teachers union is trying to unionize charter schools. And instead of agreeing to retirement benefits reform, the LAUSD teachers union went on strike. Post strike, the financial challenges facing LAUSD are worse than ever.

To cope? More money, of course. The LAUSD school board has called for a new parcel tax in Los Angeles, Measure EE, to address their budget deficits. As reported by Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, the board is calling for a special election with “the intention to keep voter turnout very low.” Needless to say, in low turnout elections, the union’s ballot harvesting machine virtually assures that this new tax will pass.

Blaming charter schools for financial challenges facing traditional public schools is a huge deception, and it’s working. According to polling conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California, while California’s voters support, by a narrow margin, charter schools, a majority of them have “concerns about the fiscal impacts [of charters] on traditional public schools.” Spreading this deception allows the teachers union to deflect growing evidence that charters – at least the non-unionized ones – are doing a better job at educating at-risk youth. Thankfully, not everyone is listening to these unions.

Three branches of the NAACP in California have now filed resolutions with their state board opposing a moratorium on charter schools. They have correctly observed that the academic performance of African American students is significantly better in charter schools. Hopefully the momentum of this grassroots support for charters from members of the African American community will be an eye opener. As it is, union controlled school districts from Los Angeles to Oakland are declaring a moratorium on new charter schools, and some are pushing for a statewide ban.

Anyone wanting more insight into the mentality and strategy of the teachers union in California should carefully read the pro-union article in The Nation. Consider this quote from the UTLA president: “the union can’t just have a small bargaining team that meets with the district when a contract is up. It has to be in constant contact with membership, through an ongoing process of identifying and developing leaders. Teachers are elected as leaders at the school or chapter level; then those chapters are grouped into clusters that have their own leaders, all of them in regular contact with the union leadership.”

Get it? Union commissars in every school. Not one per school. Many. If you want to know what sort of coercive group-think culture this breeds, read “Standing Up to Goliath,” by veteran public school teacher Rebecca Friedrichs.

How about this, from a LAUSD history teacher: “She sees the union’s focus on racial justice not merely as a feel-good sound bite but as a reflection of the reality faced by so many of their students: undocumented students, students who are harassed by police in their neighborhoods only to run into school police (LAUSD has its own police force) in the schools, and students being gentrified out of their homes. She organizes with Students Deserve, a grassroots group that has been inspired by Black Lives Matter’s divest/invest framework and is part of what she says is a different way of thinking about a labor-community alliance.”

“Focus on ‘racial justice’.” “Harassed by police.” “Inspired by Black Lives Matter.” What sort of history might one expect these impressionable young students to be studying in her classroom? Do you support this sort of biased education?

Police, and their unions, ought to ask themselves: Who is more likely to help them improve their relationship with disadvantaged communities? Is it history teachers who are inspired by Black Lives Matter, the teachers union, the far-left wing of the NAACP, or journalists at media outlets like The Nation?

Or is it the rebellious branches of the NAACP who have looked at the data, and support charter schools? At the least, police and firefighter unions might stay neutral on these conflicts. The LAPPL might use their resources to fight for things affecting their ability to do their jobs. Litigate and overturn Jones vs. the City of Los Angeles, or launch a ballot initiative to reverse Prop. 47.

The teachers unions are not your friends.

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