Providence, Rhode Island Mayor Angel Taveras: a serious man for a serious time

Red ink should cause Providence schools to rethink seniority policy

     Kudos to Providence Mayor Angel Taveras for having the courage to deal with the city’s budget deficit and the twisted concept of teacher seniority, all in one bold stroke.

      The city is facing a $100 million deficit. Financial problems like that don’t go away on their own, and they are not fixed by politicians who worry about pleasing the public employee labor unions that finance their campaigns.

      They are fixed by courageous leaders like Taveras, who don’t base their decisions on public opinion polls, and don’t bend to the wishes of a few hundred special interest protesters in the street.

      Employees in any field make as much as their employers can afford to pay them. Obviously the Providence Teachers Union, through years of increased financial demands, has priced many of its members out of their jobs. The city may not be able to reinstate the highest paid educators, so younger teachers, who make less money due to their lack of seniority, will be more likely to be retained.

      If the union wants to see all of the teachers retained, it should negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with enough salary and benefit concessions to allow the city to keep everybody working. So far we see no sign of that happening.

      That’s not surprising. Teachers unions are famous for “eating their young” at layoff time. Despite their claims of solidarity and concern for their union brothers and sisters, older teachers frequently reject salary and benefit concessions, even when that means younger colleagues get laid off.

      The trashing of the seniority concept may not be such a bad thing. Retaining teachers based on seniority does not guarantee that the best teachers will be back in the classroom. It only guarantees that the oldest will be back. The fact is that many younger teachers, who make less money, are among the hardest-working and most motivated teachers on staff.

      Student learning should be the top consideration, and that requires the presence of the best teachers, not the oldest and most expensive.

      For decades, public schools have been forced to spend far too much money on union labor, and now a new group of courageous leaders like Angel Taveras and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker are putting an end to the free spending.

      If the unions want to keep all of their members employed, they had better base their salary and benefit demands on the realities of the economic climate. Otherwise some people will lose their jobs.