School Committee member Dave McGeney has proposed the elimination of the $1.2 Million dollars in raises that the City and Union agreed to for FY 2010.
The Lynn Item: Peabody school board proposes waiving $1.2M in teachers' raises
The Salem News: Peabody unions asked to help cut expenses
Now one could be an optimist and say that in these hard economic times we all need to pull together and share the burdens for the common good...
or just as likely one might say that the City has dragged their heels and treated the teachers with utter contempt for three plus long years by not agreeing to a contract... to ask these people to give it up after this long hard fight is ridiculous...
So what will the outcome be? Well I see this as a lose-lose situation for the teachers AND the citizens. The teachers are constantly hammered because the public expects teachers to simply be happy to have the honor of teaching today's youths (and tomorrow's leaders) and believes that substandard pay for high credentials is completely warranted. And at the same time, the teachers are more than happy to screw over their own people (think younger, newer teachers) for the benefit of the older teachers.
It saddens me greatly to see the way the general public looks down at teachers who each and every day do a very difficult job - perhaps the most important job for the future of our City and Country... and yet at the same time the actions of the teachers union(s) does nothing but reinforce these attitudes by behaving greedily and NOT in the best interest of the long-term viability of the public school teaching profession.
This will probably not be happening in Peabody anytime soon. My bet is the unions would rather have many fewer teachers making more money instead of more teachers making less money. But time will tell.
Farewell Dark City....
11 years ago
14 comments:
HOw about the greedy city cops giving up that 9/11 pay to allow for more services too? I saw 3 police doing a detail on Lowell street all standing next to each other for 3 hours. I know this because I drove by them several times, they didn't move. How much does that cost the taxpayer?
WASTE WASTE WASTE
OG says..
how about "what took us so long to ask?" once again we are late to the altar !!!!
The 9/11 pay will not do anything for us. We are looking at about 20,000 of pay if 9/11 is taken out. What we need to do is freeze all raises until things turn around. Union/non-union raises need to be frozen. We do not need to save 20k we need to save millions. The Police and Fire can not walk off the job. They can picket until it is time for their shift. Freeze the pay let them picket and give it to them when we can afford to do so. It is not like we are saying no you can't have it ever, we are simply saying no you can not have it now.
The Teachers are another story, they can walk and will. Two years ago they did it in another city Quincy I think. A judge order them back to work. Again we are not saying never we are say not now. If 2010 brings change we will get it back to you then.
Teachers are not allowed to strike here in Massachusetts. If they d they are subject to legal remedy. They CAN strike, and have as you pointed out, but their leaders will soon be behind bars and usually very hefty fines follow suit...
Of course this all all usually forgotten with a quick resolution to the matter.
I actually disagree that the only thing to do is freeze their pay and then pay them later "when we have the money."
That day WAS here up until about 12 months ago when all this financial trouble started to hit the mainstream. So when we had the money... we chose not to spend it on the teachers. Now you are saying that the teachers should trust the City to pay them when it is in better fiscal shape.
When would that be? Won't we ALWAYS be in some fiscal restraint or another? Won't we be saying... "Yes the teachers might deserve a raise, but there are new books to buy and a new grandstand to build and new uniforms to alter and new computer monitors to buy and..." And the list will NEVER stop.
How about a better idea? If the City needs to float a loan on the backs of its workers... there should be a payoff.
The teachers contract calls for the following raises:
2007-08: 2% retroactive
2008-09: 4%
2009-10: 3%
2010-11: 3%
So if you want to take this money away from them, which is what you are doing by the way, you need to somehow compensate them for this loss. So maybe we need to build it into the budget to pay them some sort of interest on this money that is being taken from them.
The calculations look like this in real dollars based on a FY 2007 average Peabody salary of $57,000
Year Salary.... %.. increase
2007 $57,000.00
2008 $58,140.00 2% $1,140.00
2009 $60,465.60 4% $2,325.60
2010 $62,279.57 3% $1,813.97
2011 $64,147.96 3% $1,868.39
That is an increase of 11.14% (or $7,147.96) over the four years of the contract.
Now... if you are going to want me to give you my money because you need to use it for other things... I am going to charge you for that privilege.
So maybe we need to NOT pay the 4% increase this year... and instead give then the 4% next year... and an additional 2% as a payment for the use of their money to pay for our school system.
That is of course ludicrous and no one here would stand for such an action from our employer... but somehow we all assume that city workers are LESS than true employees and thus deserve less than their full share of employee rights.
Pay freezes right now are a way of life both private and public sector. Read the papers and watch the news the state is furloughing people and freezing pay rates.
Many private sector jobs are not only getting pay freezes. The CEO's, CFO's, Presidents and VP's are taking pay cuts to prevent layoff's.
What makes City Employee's any diffirent?
OG says.....
do any of you find it a bit twisted, odd and ironic that McGeney is now the spokesman asking the teachers to give up their raises when he in fact was the lead representative of our SC during contract negotiations with the teachers? am I missing something here? but PI is right...we will never give anything back to the teachers 'when times are better' because times are not going to EVER get good enough to do that! I heard today that it may take the state until 2014 to get back to 2008 funding levels....we are in the black hole folks...don't be fooled when they tell you that you can pay more for gas now because the economy is showing signs of life...we still have dark days ahead here in Dark City (and elsewhere!!)
just one question...
Why aren't proposals such as this being discussed about the other city departments, like say...the public works?
They just got a comined 9 percent raise.
Is diamond Dave the only one with stones? Or is it because the mayor could care less about the kids in this city and told him to do this?
YOU decide!!!!!
What's missing from this discussion is that the signed union settlements are LEGAL CONTRACTS. The city is legally obligated to pay what was agreed to. McGeney is the worst kind of opportunist, grandstanding scum if he thinks that he can re-do what was already done, under the umbrella of "tough times."
Unfortunately, Labor v Management is a classic symbolic clash in American politics. Recall that there were major strikes in the 1930s, even when times were tough. People can only be pushed so far.
OG says...
known "tough times" and a realization that we were heading into troubled waters were known issues when this contract was being negotiated and finally signed back in December....all the leadership and grandstanding should have occurred then and not now....OG says leave the contract alone and lay off those who we must due to fiscal constraints....that's the way the union wants it anyway.
pay raises....I wish, we just had to take a 10% pay CUT over here in the private sector. Are there any applications open for these city jobs? I want one.
Attention:
This is the last time I will repost your comments.
In the future you will simply be deleted.
I have been more than fair. Grow up.
MODIFIED COMMENTS FOLLOW
(they were removed)
Anonymous said...
It looks like [KD] won't be running after all. Too bad. It would have given us all a bit of laughter in an otherwise gloomy year.
May 15, 2009 8:44 AM
Thanks PI. I was sooooo sick of seeing that childish reference to Mr Doucette. Some people just can't get out of the grammar school playground. Maybe this clown will disappear for good.
Well the options are to make this a place where comments are moderated - and that leads to stagnation and boredom, or to ask people to be a little bit more adult in their behavior and let the comments just happen.
Notice I didn't change the intent of his posting... simply I would like the name calling to cease.
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