As a teacher, I have never once attended anything during the summer that was required. Not at all.

You'll get down-voted (not loaded) because it's a dumb opinion. You haven't provided any way for teachers to advocate for their interests in ways that matter. If teachers were paid what they needed already, and supported in the classroom, and not given bullshit work, they wouldn't need to strike in the first place. Nearly all strikes can be avoided.

Trying to use children as human shields in a negotiation is gross.

>If government is going to change the law to permit teachers to strike, it should only be during the summer or other, ‘non-teaching’ working days (e.g. professional development).

Then it isn't a strike. Teachers are already free to gather and complain during the summer. There's no point.

>Most importantly, the government should change the laws to force school districts and local governments to come to the table during negotiations in good faith.

That is already legally required.

>I’m not saying it’s the teachers fault, but allowing strikes could further weaken people’s faith in their reliability.

Then your comment would be more popular.

Dems aren't great, but they're still miles better that the GQP. It's the difference between vanilla ice cream with a shit-flavored swirl vs a cup of actual disease-laden shit. We can press the Dems to be better without, "both sides,"-ing our way into Fascism.

So they should have gone to school anyway, but instead of teaching their curricula, they should have taught something else? That's almost worse, FYI. And it wouldn't work unless everyone did it. I know it seems odd, but going on strike was the better thing to do.

They have had tremendous public support for decades. All that, "tough on crime," BS gives the police unions a ton of leverage.

[deleted]

What better way to teach a concept than through example?

This is a fine example of how governments cannot GIVE rights, they can only choose to honor or subvert the rights you already have for just being a person.

Police unions have no public support and they do whatever they want.

That’s the thing, we need reliable public transport like most of Europe and Asia. More than happy to leave the car at home for everything except vacations and grocery trips.

I honestly don't mind paying tolls. I live in Bellingham, and it costs about $2 one way to use I-90 from 495 to downtown Boston. There's always Route 9 or I-95/93 as toll free routes for me

Unions generally do campaign for elected officials. However, that's not a magic wand. The person might not get elected, and they are also not all-powerful.

The ability to strike is a rarely-used tool that is only done when the union feels they have no alternative. It isn't used willy-nilly, or they'd quickly lose all public support, and without public support they have nothing.

Serious question, can't they just campaign for elected officials who will change things in their favor? Teacher strikes are hard on families. Wouldn't the healthier option be to rely on democratic means of change? Or fixing whatever is impeding democracy from working?

Scanning through the arguments and flip remarks and everything else I don’t see the correct answer which is that most interstate highways were built with federal money, like 90% federal funding, very easy for the states to build those projects with that kind of support. But the turnpikes and thruways and similar toll roads in the Northeast were built before the interstate program was begun. The states needed to float bonds to raise the cash to build the roads and then pay the bonds back over the years, which is what always happens with capital projects; they’re always funded by bond issues and the state or city has to pay the bonds back over time. So the Mass Turnpike, New York State Thruway, Ohio Turnpike, Pennsylvania Turnpike, New Jersey turnpike, Connecticut Turnpike, Maine turnpike – all built prior to the interstate program and financed with bonds and most of them, Connecticut excepted, still collect tolls.

Fun fact: The interstate highway program design standards prohibit service areas on the interstates. But the toll roads built by the states including the mass pike, naturally thought service areas were a nice amenity and they all have service areas. I’m not sure why the interstates built under the federal program don’t have them but they mostly all don’t.

I-95, 91, 495, 93 were built with federal interstate trust fund money so no tolls. Mass also built Route 128, 3 and 24 without the interstate funding and without tolls either. I’ve got nothing to explain that one.

Sure- but teachers aren’t trying to negotiate their individual contracts, but their CBAs. That, combined with that this labor action is across the union, not just those teachers without professionals status, means those YoY contracts aren’t really material to that.

So teachers unions are pushing for a law/policy (striking rights) that they don’t actually want? They’re negotiating in bad faith! (/s kinda)

I think you and I agree that state government should take specific action so that unions have more leverage in negotiation. You would be okay with permitting strikes, it’s what this specific law would permit. It’s fine to say you could compromise from that, but you can’t say you don’t what what the law would give you. I personally think striking would cause far more harm than good to public education in this state broadly and that law makers need to take that into account when giving teachers unions the greater leverage they should have.

have you ever been to texas? the toll roads are insane. it’s not a MA thing

>You realize in mass teacher contracts go for multiple years and automatically extend if no new contract is ratified, so there isn’t a period when teachers aren’t cover by a contract right?

It's a little more nuanced than that. While the contract between the union and the district lasts for multiple years, individual teacher's contracts are year to year. One of the guarantees of professional status (aka tenure) is that the district has to offer you a contract for the next school year. This is why non professional status teachers (who haven't finished 3 years employment) can be non-renewed at the end of each year without reason.

​

>One example could be an arbitration process. No new contract by x date? Forced arbitration run by the state.

And you've just struck on the reason for pushing the bill allowing for strikes. Ask for the ability to strike, settle for forced arbitration. No district would willingly add it to their existing contracts (since it cedes power that they currently "have"), so you backdoor the state into requiring it as a compromise.

These are literally teachers, the children aren’t made up. They are the students.

Yep. Right around the time of the 2008 recession, a handful of school committees got it in their head (on the advice of their legal counsel) that the fact that teacher strikes are illegal means that they could refuse to negotiate in good faith. It has since expanded to being a statewide issue.

Yup… I work in a school near Clinton and we were put on warning that this may happen this week. Happened yesterday to a bunch of schools and again today. The worst part is because it’s being called in in a certain way we have to go into complete lockdown. Close the window curtains, barricade the door, shut off the lights and hide until they can prove it’s fake. Hopefully they stop this soon

>However, a teacher for example, is given their summer pay as a lump sum at the end of the year instead of being distributed through their working hours. In practice this means that teachers who leave before the school year's end lose 25% of their yearly pay. This would be similar to if you quit your job, 25% of your pay was held as a punishment. No private employer would get away with this.

​

Umm... not even close. The pay you get is for 185 work days. If you leave during the year, you will be paid for the number of days you worked. If the amount you were paid doesn't cover all of the days you worked, the difference will be added to your last check.

The "summer pay" you speak of is the district paying out the balance owed on your contract if you decided (or the district required) your pay to be split into 26 checks instead of 21. The only reason why it's doled out in a balloon payment is because the year-to-year contracts expire on June 30 (before the start of the next fiscal year on July 1), so they can't have any remaining obligations on their books.

You realize in mass teacher contracts go for multiple years and automatically extend if no new contract is ratified, so there isn’t a period when teachers aren’t cover by a contract right? Districts meet various federal and state requirement for grants, PD, and other items during the summer. A summer strike still causes pain for the district, admittedly not as much as during the school year.

Yes- I fully see how strikes are intend to get districts to the table to negotiate, specifically by inconveniencing them. I’m saying that the entity that inflicts that inconvenience and the nature of that convenience should not be a closure of schools, but rather other mechanisms as caused by the state law/reg I’m advocating be out in place.

One example could be an arbitration process. No new contract by x date? Forced arbitration run by the state. To extend the example, look how baseball handles their arbitration, each party (player and team) puts in what they think the pay should be for the next season. The arbitrator, using formulae decided by CBA (in this case it would be state law), determines what the number should be, and picks which ever is closer the player or the teams number. No splitting the difference so no incentive for one side to cook their number, and it frequently incentivizes teams/players to come to agreement before arbitration.

>If it is a safety issue, call OSHA. There is no need for a union.

Fun fact, public schools are not subject to OSHA regulation unless they're vocational schools. (I learned about this one during my laboratory safety training)

​

>If it is about compensation, put forth legislation to fund a pay raise. There is no need for a union.

The contracts are between the unions and the municipality, since they are municipal employees. The state just can't pass legislation saying "hey Boston, you need to give your teachers a 4% raise this year.

​

>A public employee using the government boot to step on the necks of the taxpayers until they get better individual compensation is a selfish tactic.

And the school committees and select boards refusing to negotiate in good faith (or at all, recently) because the employees can't strike is perfectly ok in your eyes, though?

I didn't say EVs once. I said that the gas tax is going to dwindle down within a few decades.

[deleted]