>Opinion: Questioning the relevance of government-worker unions
Sunday, February 27, 2011
By MIKE KELLY
RECORD COLUMNIST
https://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/op-ed/kelly_022711.html
A NEW TEACHER in a Bergen County public school found herself in an uncomfortable setting a few years ago.Her school district was facing budget cuts, she said. School officials offered a compromise: If teachers would accept a one-year wage freeze, no teachers would be laid off.
The union representing teachers in the district rejected the proposal, claiming that school administrators were trying to hurt teachers. The union even accused the district of lying about the true state of school finances. The salary freeze was rejected. This new teacher got a pink slip.
“The friends I worked with didn’t care about saving my job,” this teacher said. “They cared only about themselves.”
Sound familiar?
You won’t hear this kind of story from the teachers unions. Nor will you hear it from the union supporters who have flooded the state capitol building in Wisconsin and talk as though public employees with their $80,000-a-year salaries are the 21st century equivalent of abused, dollar-a-day coal miners of the late 1800s.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/op-ed/kelly_022711.html
