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Will teachers strike?
Topic Started: Mar 20 2011, 10:48 PM (3,360 Views)
cecelia
Advanced Member
[ *  *  * ]
Little me
Apr 3 2011, 02:45 PM
From a friend who is a teacher. Feel bad about the thought of picketing. It's Illegal. What am I showing my kids if I do so? After all, everyone has taken cuts and hits, it's only fair.

I have good friends! :)
Feel bad about the thought of picketing. It's Illegal.
It is?
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Little me
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I'm sorry, I meant the hinting of Teachers "striking" per Iris Salter. My friend would not be in favor of, nor feel it would be right. Is that clear now Cecelia. The point was that my friend cares enough about the students and the purpose of the job. TO EDUCATE KIDS. We don't have the means any more in the public schools to keep up with you. Some see it and some don't. Good luck !!
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cecelia
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I care about kids. I never even hinted I would strike. I feel like you think I would.
Edited by cecelia, Apr 6 2011, 07:56 PM.
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Vanna White
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Many teachers would not go along with a strike even if Ms. Salters tries to call one. She needs to be very careful about the image she wants to portray and how a strike may effect public opinion.
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For4
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Vanna - I agree that there are many teachers that would not support a strike but I'm sad to say that I think there are enough that will to really screw life up for our seniors. I truly hope it does not come down to that - I think it could be the last straw in terms of tearing apart our community when it comes to our schools....and they thought the L.I was polarizing :( I found it particularly disgusting that Rob Freeman sounded almost rabid at the last BOE committee meeting - should teachers make the mistake and strike, I'm betting he'll be found on the picket line with them. What's a community to do when a BOE member supports an illegal activity like this? Makes Mr. Romick's acts of civil disobedience (LIE pa) seem down right benign.
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Ava
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So what? Who cares?
We all know who hired him and who he works for!
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LPS Reformer
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The schools exist to educate, not employ.
Vanna White
Apr 7 2011, 06:17 AM
Many teachers would not go along with a strike even if Ms. Salters tries to call one. She needs to be very careful about the image she wants to portray and how a strike may effect public opinion.
The image she would portray is this one:

Posted Image

It does, however, have the benefit of being accurate. ;)
“Child Abuse” means different things to different people....
----Randy Liepa 8/9/12
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LPS Reformer
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The schools exist to educate, not employ.
Current bill in the MI house to increase penalties for teachers who strike.

Link
“Child Abuse” means different things to different people....
----Randy Liepa 8/9/12
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Mrs.M
Veteran
I wouldn't mind a strike, the students may get a vacation with a better weather forecast. Whose idea was it to have a vacation before Easter?, this is definitely a first.

Thank goodness though 'the powers that be' didn't pick a week or two earlier; I saw a few districts already had their 'spring break'. I wonder if they're going to change Christmas vacation also.
I'd agree with you, but then we'd both be WRONG.
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Administrator
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Tough penalties for striking teachers considered
Associated Press
http://detnews.com/article/20110420/POLITICS02/104200410/1026/rss06

Lansing— Teachers would face tougher penalties for taking part in illegal strikes under legislation considered in the Republican-led Michigan House.

A proposal debated today in the House Education Committee calls for fines and suspension of licenses for teachers for at least two years if they participate in an illegal strike. Republicans say it would put teeth in a Michigan law that already makes teacher strikes illegal.


Democrats say the measures are punitive and unfairly single out teachers.

Text DETNEWS to 64636 to get breaking news alerts on your phone.
The House hearing comes as the Michigan Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, seeks approval from its members to "initiate crisis activities" up to and including a strike. Republican lawmakers consider it a strike threat.

Union leaders are upset about proposals they say undermine collective bargaining rights and proposed education funding cuts.



From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110420/POLITICS02/104200410/Tough-penalties-for-striking-teachers-considered#ixzz1KP4K61ca
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Bay City teachers union leader: The funding crisis is 'manufactured'
Published: Friday, April 22, 2011, 12:30 PM Updated: Saturday, April 23, 2011, 9:45 AM
By Brandon Howell | The Bay City Times The Bay City Times
http://www.mlive.com/news/bay-city/index.ssf/2011/04/bay_city_teacher_union_leader.html

BAY CITY — As proposed state budget cuts loom over public education in Michigan, some teachers unions are preparing for a fight.

That includes the Bay City Education Association, representing the district’s 450 teachers. The union recently voted to approve actions up to and including a strike, if necessary.

But union President Kevin Stapish said his group is willing to make concessions for the sake of the school district, as well.

Stapish said the association has agreed to increased prescription drug co-pays, higher health insurance deductibles and pay freezes three times over the past decade.

And further concessions are possible as the Bay City Education Association continues bargaining for a new labor agreement, which it hopes to have in place by June, he said.

Stapish recently answered some questions about the direction of his organization and the union’s outlook.


Bay City Education Association President Kevin Stapish
Q: How do you feel about proposed legislation that would require public employees, including teachers, to pay 20 percent of the cost of their health insurance?

A: It would be better to have those kinds of decisions locally negotiated. That’s what collective bargaining is all about. It’s about finding an agreement that both sides can find a benefit in.

We would certainly consider (paying 20 percent of our health insurance) if our administration proposed it. We rarely reject anything just out of hand.

Q: Some say that teachers are overcompensated since they get several months off every year. Others go further, saying teachers are essentially part-time employees. How would you characterize those beliefs?

A: It’s a very uninformed opinion of what teachers do. They need to understand that teachers are taking work home at night. They’re staying in the buildings late, grading papers, making lesson plans. They’re doing all sorts of work that’s critical and integral to the actual standing in front of students and teaching. That goes for weekends and for the months of June, July and August, as well.

Teaching now is a 12-month job because a teacher has to stay up with their education. All teachers now when they come out of college are required to get 18 hours of college credit in their first five years (at work) to maintain their certificate. And to maintain their professional certificate, teachers are required to get six hours of college credit every five years.

Q: Do you plan to do more with merit-based pay or merit-based salary schedules as opposed to tenure?

A: Those things are already out there — having a portion of salaries tied to student achievement — and are being negotiated at our table in the district.

Q: How could you justify a teachers strike, given its illegality in Michigan?

A: There comes a time, I guess, when a group of people feels that what is being done to them is an attack and there is a time to stand up and say no.

Q: If a teachers strike were to happen, what would happen to probationary teachers — those without tenure? Wouldn’t they be fired?

A: Yes, they would. So if something like that were to happen, I personally wouldn’t be asking my nontenured teachers to participate.

Q: You’re on the record vehemently opposing Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposed budget, which calls for significant cuts to public education funding. If you were governor, what would you have budgeted for education?

A: I wonder if the people who voted Snyder in would say they voted him in to manufacture this (funding) crisis. If I were governor, I wouldn’t have taken $900 million from the School Aid Fund and transferred it to higher education. I wouldn’t have manufactured this funding crisis.

But I guess you can’t attack the unions in the way that they are unless there’s a funding crisis, and they found a way to manufacture one.

Q: But the results of the November election can be viewed as a referendum on the spending and debt situation throughout the country and state. In that regard, people voted for a serious change to government spending and budgeting. What would you have done differently?

A: I would have taken a look at the state sales tax and broadened it. The sales tax as we have it now is antiquated. Everyone talks about the fact that we’ve lost our manufacturing base. We don’t make things anymore, we’re a service industry. So why not extend the sales tax to services?

I’d stop giving tax breaks to corporations who say they need them because they’re going to create jobs, then never create those jobs. I don’t see any bang for that buck.

Q: What is your union prepared to concede in the coming school year?

A: It’s pretty clear that (Bay City schools’) board and administration are looking to reduce costs in compensation across the board. We agree that we’re going to have to make that sacrifice.

We’re going to have to do that in some way, be it wage cuts, reducing the cost of our health benefit. In some way, shape or form, we’ll be putting together a package, somehow, to reduce what we cost the district, therefore taking on more costs. Paying more for our health insurance, increasing our deductibles, paying for a portion of the premium is going to need to be done.

Related topics: Bay City Public Schools

http://www.mlive.com/news/bay-city/index.ssf/2011/04/bay_city_teacher_union_leader.html
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Penalties for Illegal Teacher Strikes
4/21/2011 4:30 PM

Paul Kersey, director of labor policy, testified before the Michigan House Education Committee April 20 on legislation involving penalties for illegal teacher strikes, according to the Gongwer Michigan Report.

The committee was considering House Bills 4465 and 4466. Kersey, who has written about this subject here, said in his testimony that teachers unions that conduct illegal strikes should lose their ability to bargain collectively in their particular school district for at least three years.

“Collective bargaining is a privilege, not a right,” Kersey told the committee. “An illegal strike is the ultimate abuse of that privilege.”

http://www.mackinac.org/14958

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Inside the Teachers Union ‘Work Stoppage’ Vote: A Teacher Speaks Out
By Tom Gantert | April 21, 2011
http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/14955

A Port Huron Public Schools teacher says the local teachers union violated its own bylaws when it recently conducted a vote on whether to authorize the Michigan Education Association to start crisis actions, including work stoppages. Tim Keller, who teaches adult education at the Harrison Center in Port Huron, said teachers filled out questionnaires at the April 12 meeting regarding what they would be willing to do. He said the ballots were taken away without counting them and teachers still don’t know the final tally.

A teachers strike is illegal in Michigan.

Kathleen Trongo, the Michigan Education Association’s Uniserv director for Port Huron, said all the union bylaws were followed. She said the ballots were counted on site and that union members will get a tally once the election is certified.

“We did follow our bylaws,” Trongo said.

Schools from around the state were voting on giving the state teachers union the ability to call for a work stoppage. The union has been a vocal critic of Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposed budget cuts to schools.

Keller said teachers received an email the day after the vote which stated that the “membership showed strong resolve in its support of the MEA Board of Directors.”

Keller said Port Huron Education Association President Chad Mannlein told him that the vote wasn’t about going on strike but was about the union finding out “who was with us” as they organize coalitions with other groups. Mannlein couldn’t be reached for comment.

Trungo said the questionnaires were voluntary and would not be shared with anyone outside the teachers union.

The questionnaire asked who would be willing to picket and make signs and do other tasks, Keller said.

“What they wanted to do is get a contact list of all the people who are willing to take radical measures,” Keller said.

http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/14955
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House Aims to Add Teeth to Teacher Strike Penalties
Lawmaker complains that teachers would be punished worse than pedophiles under the proposal and that "shooting" teachers is "next step"
By Tom Gantert | April 22, 2011
http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/14959

In 2006, teachers at the Detroit Public Schools went on an illegal strike for 16 days.

Keith Johnson, president of the Detroit Public School teachers’ union, said the penalty for that act was that the teachers had to make up the days without pay. No other penalties were imposed, Johnson said.

Putting more bite into the penalty for striking teachers is the impetus for two bills in the state House of Representatives. The proposals would make it easier to penalize teachers who illegally go on strike.

“There needs to be sanctions that are enforceable when teachers strike,” said state Rep. Rick Olson, R-Saline. “It’s been a problem where teachers in the past have been able to violate the law and nothing was done.”

Johnson said the law already allows for penalties against striking teachers.

“It’s unfortunate these Republicans have launched this relentless assault on teachers,” he said. “They are further demoralizing an already demoralized profession.”

House Bill 4465 and House Bill 4466 would suspend or revoke a teacher’s teaching certificate, and impose fines equal to one day’s pay for teachers and $5,000 per day for union representatives.

A key part of House Bill 4466, sponsored by Rep. Paul Scott, R-Grand Blanc, is that it allows a school district to consolidate the numerous employee hearings that are required to determine if a strike occurred. A stumbling block to the previous bill was that each teacher alleged to have participated in an illegal strike would be granted their own hearing.

Scott is the chair of the House Education Committee.

Rep. Bill Rogers, R-Brighton, is the sponsor of House Bill 4465. According to the Livingston Daily, the outgoing head of the Brighton MEA affiliate has publicly encouraged teachers to either seek the recall of Rogers or work to defeat him at the ballot box in 2012 if “he doesn’t withdraw all of his anti-teacher legislation.” Similar statements were made regarding Gov. Snyder.

“I stand with Governor Snyder and Chairman Rogers as the teachers’ union tries to remove them from office,” said Scott on his Facebook page Thursday morning. “Both are stand up men and true public servants. Putting community above self and political ambition.”

Paul Kersey, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s director of labor policy, said the existing law is costly and time consuming since each striking teacher is granted their own hearing.

“It’s time consuming, expensive and, in a large enough district, impractical and almost impossible,” Kersey said.

Local unions across the state have been voting on whether to grant the Michigan Education Association the authority to start crisis action, which includes work stoppages. Unlike most other districts statewide, Detroit teachers are not represented by the MEA. Their union is the Detroit Federation of Teachers – an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers.

Johnson is the DFT president. He says his union will not be striking.

“We have a collective bargaining agreement in effect until 2012,” he said.

The current law states that striking employees are fined an amount equal to one day’s pay and the bargaining representative would face a $5,000 per day fine for each strike day.

State Rep. Doug Geiss said pedophiles will face more penalties than teachers if the sanctions proposed in the two House bills become law.

"We're making teachers out to be felons,” Geiss, D-Taylor, was quoted in Michigan Information & Research Service. “Felons get less time. Pedophiles get less time then what we're talking about holding teachers to."

Geiss also said in MIRS: "At this point in time, I feel like, basically, the next step is to take teachers out back and shoot them if they don't follow the law.”

Geiss didn’t respond to a phone call and email left at his office.

Johnson said that the law was already changed after the Detroit teacher’s strike in 2006. He said the fine is now $250 per day on top of one day’s pay for striking employees.

But Mackinac Center experts pointed to the law that says there is no fine and that the law hasn’t been updated since 1994. When told the law's history stated that it hasn’t been changed since 1994, Johnson said he stood by his comments and would have the union’s attorneys look into it.

“Why are they focusing on something that happened six years ago?” Johnson asked. “You already have a very forceful form of remediation that is available to you that you haven’t even used yet.”

The 16-day strike in September 2006 was not the only work stoppage by the district’s teachers since the statewide ban on teacher strikes was signed into law. A Detroit walkout took place in 1999, and a case of “blackboard flu” also took place in March 2006.

After the Sept. 2006 strike had ended, the Detroit News reported that there were 25,000 fewer students in the classrooms than expected on the first day school was back in session.

http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/14959
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Ava
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So what? Who cares?
Quote:
 
I would have taken a look at the state sales tax and broadened it. The sales tax as we have it now is antiquated. Everyone talks about the fact that we’ve lost our manufacturing base. We don’t make things anymore, we’re a service industry. So why not extend the sales tax to services?


The sales tax as we have it now is antiquated?!?! Tax the people more!? Something is "antiquated" all right! Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! What is really sad is these people just don't get it. We can't afford to continue to fund your benefits anymore!
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LPS Reformer
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The schools exist to educate, not employ.
The MEA's idea of reform......

Raise Taxes.

Anyone Surprised?
“Child Abuse” means different things to different people....
----Randy Liepa 8/9/12
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Education Action Group says MEA needs to reveal strike vote
Published: Thursday, April 28, 2011, 6:51 PM Updated: Friday, April 29, 2011, 2:04 PM
By Dave Murray | The Grand Rapids Press MLive.com
http://www.mlive.com/education/index.ssf/2011/04/education_action_group_says_me.html


MEA President Iris Salters
Statewide teachers union leaders today heard from their local units about whether they would consider crisis activities up to – and including – a strike, but the union's president isn't revealing what was said.

That move is drawing fire from a union watchdog group that says the Michigan Education Association owes state residents an explanation before it potentially takes an action that would disrupt schools.

In a March letter to MEA local presidents, President Iris Salters asked local bargaining units to hold meetings to determine if their members will authorize "crisis activities, up to and including job action" in response to Gov. Rick Snyder's proposed budge and a series of bills before the state Legislature.

The letter advised employees that they could be fired for striking, but reads that "It is simply not possible to replace all or most school employees in the state…It is to, say the least, a time-consuming and expensive process for school districts."

The letter warns "There may be some inconvenience for your students,” and advises members to make plans to ensure their family's financial security, “including delaying major expenses and saving funds to cover your household expenses for as much as two months.”

Salters on Thursday issued a statement saying that the MEA Board of Directors met to see the results from votes in the 1,100 locals.

"MEA locals across the state conducted these votes and reported the results to the state association to help guide our decisions about a broad variety of potential crisis activities (not solely a work stoppage, which has drawn the most focus). Many of these crisis activities are already underway, such as rallies, protests, vigils, community discussions, and more.

"The results of these elections are for internal, strategic purposes and, as such, will not be released publicly. MEA members, as well as the majority of Michigan's voting public, oppose lawmakers' ongoing attacks on public education and the middle class and will not remain silent about our dissent."

The Muskegon-based Education Action Group's leaders issued a release calling the union brass “more far more zealous and radical than rank-and-file members,” and said the directors “could decide to call a strike while fibbing about the results of the membership vote.”

"At this point, there's no way we will ever know if the majority of MEA teachers are in favor of walking out on their students and the taxpayers of Michigan," EAG CEO Kyle Olson said in a release.

"A strike could be based solely on the will of a tiny group of radical union leaders in East Lansing, who could easily ignore the opinion of their members and impose their own agenda, without anybody ever knowing the difference.”

E-mail Dave Murray: dmurray@grpress.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ReporterDMurray


http://www.mlive.com/education/index.ssf/2011/04/education_action_group_says_me.html
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n73pm
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Will teachers strike?

I would NOT put it past the UNIONS to press the strike. They have lost all their CLASS throughout the years and they have not gotten it back yet. They need to take an etiquette class along with economics class. Teachers and their thuggish UNIONS are not worth all this money they are taking away from the students.

Like I keep saying....I can't afford to buy health insurance for myself but I have to buy it for these people? I DON'T THINK SO. They need to grow up and start buying their own lifestyle that they wish to become accustom to. Time to grow up or leave the party! Look for another line of work just like a lot of us had to do!
I support Global Warming cuz nothing grows in ice!
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DADDYOH10
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n73pm
May 1 2011, 09:36 PM
Will teachers strike?

I would NOT put it past the UNIONS to press the strike. They have lost all their CLASS throughout the years and they have not gotten it back yet. They need to take an etiquette class along with economics class. Teachers and their thuggish UNIONS are not worth all this money they are taking away from the students.

Like I keep saying....I can't afford to buy health insurance for myself but I have to buy it for these people? I DON'T THINK SO. They need to grow up and start buying their own lifestyle that they wish to become accustom to. Time to grow up or leave the party! Look for another line of work just like a lot of us had to do!
I USED TO BE A UNION MEMBER (UAW). NOW I AM "OUT TO PASTURE". I WISH SOME ONE HAD TOLD HENRY FORD THAT THEY WOULD TAKE CARE OF THE CASH NEEDED FOR MY HEALTH CARE. I COULD NOT AGREE MORE WITH YOU. "THUGISH" IS A NICE WORD....THE MAFIA COULD TAKE LESSONS FROM THE MEA SOME DAY, IF THEY PAY THEM ENOUGH MONEY
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