Everyone will benefit if teacher unions’ “better angels” prevail in the pay freeze debate that is sweeping across the state.
Freezing teacher pay would not only help local schools weather the current budget crisis, but it would keep more teachers in the classroom – benefiting both students and the youngest teachers who would likely lose their jobs from budget cuts.
When times are tough and money is tight, school employees must be willing to do their part. In this case, a one-year wage freeze would save state taxpayers $400 million, according to Gov. Tom Corbett’s estimate.
We’re heartened to hear that Pennsylvania State Education Association President James Testerman is encouraging local union chapters to hammer out agreements, with pay freezes included, with their local school boards.
Testerman’s spirit of cooperation stands in stark contrast to the self-centered views of American Federation of Teachers-Pennsylvania President Ted Kirsch, who balks at asking members to do with less in a time of financial distress.
The national president of AFT, Randi Weingarten, has been preaching the virtues of union “ collaboration” with administrators and reformers. We wonder where she stands on this issue?
A typical school spends around 80 percent of its budget on labor costs. That means freezing teacher wages for a year or two is one of the few viable options school officials have to save money without cancelling academic services.
If Pennsylvania unions choose to not play nice with taxpayers, all one has to do is look at the situation in Waterford, Connecticut, where the local teachers union “voted to not vote” on a potential wage freeze.
As a result, Waterford Public Schools announced yesterday that 10 young teachers will lose their jobs at the end of the school year. The selfish “senior” teachers were willing to sacrifice the careers of their youngest colleagues, and create larger class sizes, simply because they didn’t want to accept a little less.
That will be Pennsylvania’s future if the teacher unions follow their darker impulses.
The fact is that a temporary wage freeze does little financial damage to teachers and their families, but it has the potential to be a great help to Pennsylvania’s school children and taxpayers.
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One Comment
A pay freeze would be beneficial IF the existing contract were extended to offset the freese – essentially this entails initiating a “pause” in the current contract. For example, if a contract were to expire in 2014 a pay freeze of one year should extend that contract to 2015 (with compensation increasing as previously agreed upon following the one year pay freeze). We all need to ask ourselves what we define as “fair”. Very few people speak of increasing teacher compensation during “booming” economic times when those of us in the private sector live more lavishly, yet a vast majority seem to support decreasing compensation for teachers when the “boom” becomes “bust”. Is it fair to keep teachers away from the feast and then ask them to share equally in the famine?