• Nuclear War
• Total Surrender
• Recommended State Department policy

The understanding of the joke is that whatever policy or ideas elected officials want to enact, it is the government employees—the bureaucrats—who have to carry it out. Too often, the bureaucrats carry it out in a manner that benefits them, not the elected officials or the public. (I care more about the latter.)

The City of St. Louis is experiencing a problem like that right now, with its efforts to combine its three 911 systems into one. Consolidating 911 centers should be one of the low-hanging fruits for service sharing among local governments. There are numerous examples of it benefitting communities in Missouri. Unfortunately, while many efforts have succeeded, a few have been stalled due to resistance from local bureaucrats.

The problems in St. Louis are all the more confusing because this effort is entirely within the same city government. In theory, it should be easier to implement service sharing in one government rather than sharing 911 services across different governments (which isn’t really that hard, either.) But, shockingly, the various city employee unions have thus far been able to stall the reform efforts. The mayor’s plans to consolidate and improve the 911 system have been blocked, thus far, by the unions representing the dispatchers who are currently within different departments. From the article:

One union represents police dispatchers, and another represents EMS and fire dispatchers. The unions have demanded bargaining over any dispatcher cross-training. Uncertainty about which union would represent a combined dispatcher position slowed attempts by Mayor Tishaura Jones and her former public safety director, Dan Isom, to allow dispatchers to handle all types of emergency calls.

The unions complained Jones and Isom’s plans for consolidation were made without consulting them and that the changes in job duties were clearly something that should be covered in contract negotiations. [emphasis mine]

Missouri attempted major public-sector union reforms a few years ago. While some reforms were passed into law, a lawsuit unfortunately led to the reforms being overturned by the Missouri Supreme Court.

St. Louis has public sector unions delaying improvements to a system that would improve the city’s currently terrible 911 system and spend tax dollars more efficiently. But hey, fiefdoms have to be protected, right?

FDR was right about public sector unions. They shouldn’t exist.

The post Looking For Bureaucratic Efficiencies in All the Wrong Places appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Let’s think about this for a minute. What would encourage a business or a school to completely rethink how they are doing things? In business, it would likely be profit. If they could make more money, especially in the long-run, a business owner might be inclined to reorganize and restructure. Notice, two things here: First, this new model would have to be profitable and, second, it would have to be profitable for years to come. Neither of these is true for schools when it comes to COVID-19.

In Missouri and many other states, public school districts face very little financial pressure to make adjustments right now. They are not being penalized when students leave because the financial structures are set up to protect them from these sorts of dips in enrollment. Every student could leave a district and it would be guaranteed the same level of funding that it received last year. Moreover, few parents even have the option to leave a school. Not every child in Missouri has a viable alternative to their assigned public school.

Moreover, public school leaders are doubtful that COVID-19 will continue to shape our school lives for years to come. They are probably right about that. Vaccines are quickly rolling out and, hopefully, the fears of the coronavirus will soon be behind us. As educators often say, “This too shall pass.” Why would a school district, with no financial incentive, make radical adjustments to its schools when they will likely go back to usual next year? The short answer is, it wouldn’t.

So what is the lesson we should learn from all of this? There are plenty. We could talk about how school funding could be changed so that it follows students, or we could talk about how collective bargaining agreements need to have emergency clauses. But the main lesson, I think, is much simpler—students need educational options. Every child, in every school district, should have at least one viable alternative to their assigned public school. Just because school districts cannot adapt to meet the needs of all students, it doesn’t mean our state policy shouldn’t.

The post In-Person Learning during the Pandemic (Part 2 of 2) appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Make no mistake—people across Missouri are losing their jobs, and state income tax revenue is going to decline as a result. The timing of Missouri’s fiscal year may obscure the crisis to some extent this year, but next year will be tough. Public school districts are going to take a hit. Education is one of the very few areas of the Missouri budget that can be cut, and it will be. School districts and the legislature should be planning now.

But before we get to what districts should be doing, we need to acknowledge that we won’t have firm numbers on how many students are being educated by each district for several years. For per-student funding purposes, Missouri law allows districts to use their current enrollment or the enrollment from either of the two previous years to calculate state public education spending. Obviously, districts will want to use the highest possible number. But this year in particular students are moving around—opting for microschools, private schools, or homeschooling. There is some evidence that enrollment in the MOCAP public virtual education program is way up. At some point, we need to figure out where every student is being educated this year. It may be hard to take attendance on Zoom, but legislators cannot make informed decisions about the public education budget without solid enrollment numbers.

In the meantime, districts need to up their fiscal game, and here are a few suggestions:

• Reduce administrative costs. According to the most recent federal data (from the 2016–2017 school year), Missouri spent almost $350 million on district administrators, school boards, and their support staff. It may be time to reconsider having 520 school districts in a state with 114 counties.
• Consider how noninstructional services are provided. Could transportation or food services costs be reduced through competitive contracting? Could districts work together to share resources?
• Reconsider collective bargaining agreements and employee benefits. Step-and-ladder pay schedules, coupled with expensive pension obligations, make it very difficult for districts to reduce expenditures when their revenue declines. Salaries and promotions should be flexible, and retirement plans should be transportable 401(k) accounts.
• Delay or forego capital projects. These projects commit funds for the long term and reduce flexibility during economic downturns.

The state legislature could be doing its part as well. The current Missouri school funding formula has too many outdated “hold harmless” clauses that distort the distribution of state public education funds and, in some cases, send state funds to wealthy districts that would not normally qualify. According to the Forward through Ferguson “Still Separate, Still Unequal” project, in 2017–18, almost half of the 29 school districts in St. Louis County received hold harmless funding, including $578 in state funding per student in Ladue and $562 per student in Clayton. In addition, nearly half of the school districts in the state use property values from 15 years ago to figure out how much their local contribution of public education dollars should be, regardless of how property values have risen or fallen. That needs to change.

Finally, this year has made it clear that it’s time for public education funding to follow the child. Missouri parents who in the past gave little thought to school choice are discovering what it means to have no choice but a bad choice, and those who can afford to do so are taking matters into their own hands. Parents across the state are paying for tutors, pod coaches, private school tuition, and childcare. Meanwhile, their children are still being counted in the enrollment numbers of the schools they attended last year. It is only fair to give all parents access to a portion of their state education funding so they can spend it on options that work for their children. In several other states, governors have used stimulus funds to give parents quick access to scholarships to pay for these much-needed options. Missouri should do the same and make such scholarships a permanent option going forward.

The storm that was 2020 is going to linger for a few years, and policymakers in Missouri should be taking steps right now to weather it.

The post Belt-tightening Time in Public Education appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But while the ruling is disappointing, it isn’t altogether unexpected, either. As I wrote in a paper on the subject of government union reform published earlier this year, “ongoing statutory tweaks and court interventions—driven by interests on both sides of the government–labor debate—seem likely to shape how, and whether, reforms are implemented for years to come.” Government unions weren’t going to give up their power easily even in the face of changes to the law, and it seemed reasonably clear after the lawsuit was filed that an adverse ruling was certainly on the table.

That doesn’t mean reform efforts will or should come to an end as litigation on such matters makes its way through the judicial system. In fact, there was plenty for the state still to do even before the Court’s decision on HB 1413, especially ensuring collective bargaining agreements are catalogued by state regulators, and we observed as much in the paper:

Whatever HB 1413’s eventual disposition, any oversight regime that cannot identify all the subjects of that oversight will fail to meaningfully execute its mission. Without effective oversight, the likelihood of patently illegal contract provisions rises. That’s bad for taxpayers and government workers, but it’s also bad for the rule of law.

Currently the legislature is hearing bills dealing with “paycheck protection” reforms, which we’ve talked about before and were part of HB 1413. But as the legislature takes stock of the government union landscape as it moves toward the completion of its legislative year in May, policymakers should also take a hard look at whether the state can effectively oversee any of the reforms that it’s contemplating and whether it has delegated sufficient power and resources to officials to ensure the will of the legislature is being carried out. Changing the law is fine, but a law that can’t be or isn’t enforced will be ignored.

The post On Government Union Reforms, Present and Future appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The post Testimony: Senate Bill 701, Paycheck Protection, and Collective Bargaining Agreements appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Click on the link below to download the entire report, or click here to read it online.

The post Missouri at the Crossroads: Government Union Laws and the Path to Successful Enforcement appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

A new paper from James N. Foster, Jr., Brian C. Hey, and Allison J. Hartnett provides context to the controversy over HB 1413 with a historical overview of public-sector union law in Missouri.

To read the entire essay, click on the link below.

The post New Public-Sector Labor Law in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

When?Janus vs. AFSCME?was decided earlier this summer, its immediate effect was on the 22 states that allowed government unions to collect agency fees from workers. Thanks to?Janus, those government workers can no longer be compelled to support a union as a condition of employment. But fortunately, workers in Missouri had those rights already by statute, namely Missouri Revised Statute §105.510. That section makes clear a number of things, but relevant to the agency fee discussion?is this?(emphasis mine): 

For instance, Crystal City in Jefferson County appears to have amended an existing agreement on March 26 of this year to add a provision requiring employees to pay and become union members, to pay the union the amount of union dues but not be a member, or be fired.?Page 13:

Meanwhile in a contract agreed to this past June, the City of Grandview also included in its contract with Grandview Firefighters, Local No. 42, a provision compelling non–union members to support the union’s activities through a “modified agency shop.” Page 2 of the agreement: 

The post Agency Fees in Government Aren’t Allowed in Missouri, But That Didn’t Stop Some Local Governments appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

One big problem, however, is that many of these agreements are effectively unknown to the public, and to date there hasn’t been a concerted effort to gather these local agreements and their variations, including memoranda of understanding and other, less-formalized agreements between labor organizations and government. Hundreds of these agreements could be out there, and yet research in this area is surprisingly sparse.

That’s where the Show-Me CBAs Project comes in. By gathering these bargaining agreements, we hope to make it easier for the public to see what their elected representatives have committed taxpayers to in the past, In addition, the Project can also make compliance with HB 1413 an easier undertaking both for government workers and for government regulators charged with implementing HB 1413’s reforms. This project is ongoing, and to date, the Institute has already gathered over a hundred bargaining records, available here. But more are on the way. Stay tuned.

The post Introducing the Show-Me CBAs Project appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I was, after all, a male entering elementary school teaching. There was a chance that I’d give a child a hug or have them sit on my lap and someone would leap to the wrong conclusion. Before I knew it, I’d be falsely charged with some crime. Or, heaven forbid, a student would get hurt while under my supervision and I’d be sued for negligence. Still more likely was that I could be discriminated against, harassed, or targeted by a reckless administrator. Whatever the situation, the message was clear—I needed to join a union for the protection it offered. A union, I was told, would watch out for my interests; it would have my back.

My professors, whom I believe were well intentioned and likely just following the advice they had received, prodded and pushed me to join a student chapter. So, I did. Having spoken with many teachers over the years, I’m fairly confident this is the number one recruitment strategy of teachers’ unions in the state. If I was ever told that a union would help me grow professionally or become a better teacher, it was only an afterthought.

When I began teaching first grade in southwest Missouri, I went from student membership to a full-fledged membership. Over the next two years, however, I began to realize that my beliefs were not in line with the union’s agenda. I supported limited government, individual responsibility, and free-markets. The union, I discovered, did not.

At the same time, I also began to realize that the fear that led me to join a union was based on erroneous information. Lawsuits against teachers are not that common. In a 2009 article in the Journal of School Leadership, Diane Holben, Perry Zirkel, and Grace Caskie noted, “Empirical research on school litigation frequency suggests a decreasing, rather than increasing, basis for fear of litigation, contrary to the common conception.” The likelihood of a teacher getting sued independent of the school is miniscule, and the school district wins these cases nearly 90 percent of the time. Even if I was worried about lawsuits, I found I could get liability insurance through other means. The union wasn’t the only option for watching my back.

Fortunately, I was a public-school teacher in Missouri, where I had the right to work without joining a union. This meant I could not be compelled to join the union or forced to pay dues to support collective bargaining. It also meant that I did not have to financially support causes that violated my conscience. All workers should be so lucky.

The post Teachers’ Union Recruitment Thrives on Fear appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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• A dubious commission to study charter schools
• Public-sector collective bargaining
• Missouri’s charter school environment
• Regulation of short-term rentals
• Medicaid costs
• Municipal spending transparency

Click on the link below to read more.

The post Show-Me Institute’s March 2018 Newsletter appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

That isn’t to say the issue doesn’t crop up from time to time. In 2013 non-union officers in Kansas City had their employment threatened by the union when they refused to cough up money for the union’s activities. And while that incident is an exception to the Missouri rule, it’s an episode that supporters of good government in Missouri have to keep in mind as they survey the policy landscape post-Janus. 

Indeed, Janus brings with it the opportunity to reassess public policies that generally provide considerable latitude to government unions. Most states have a laws on the subject that are literally to the left of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, since Roosevelt himself was highly skeptical of collective bargaining and traditional unionization among government workers. Not only does the risk persist that a union could elect members into government to negotiate them sweetheart contracts, but the prospect of a company’s failure that faces private labor negotiations hardly ever truly attaches to a government agency—if economic conditions go sideways, taxes can be raised, services can be reduced, or some combination of the two could take place to protect the government union’s interests.

Point being, government unions have been given a wide berth to operate over the last half-century, and it is overdue that the latitude they’ve been granted was reviewed—in light not only of the law and the Constitution, as will happen in Janus, but of good policy as well. Government union members, non-union government employees, and taxpayers certainly deserve better than the status quo.

The post In Janus, A National Reexamination of Government Unions appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

THE SOLUTION: Open collective bargaining.

Open collective bargaining would allow the public to attend meetings where government bodies are negotiating collective bargaining agreements with unions to ensure that tax dollars are being spent wisely. Openness in public affairs empowers citizens to hold their government representatives accountable. The public is directly affected by policies set during collective bargaining; citizens therefore have a right to be present during such meetings. An open collective bargaining rule would not prohibit the public agency from discussing and formulating its bargaining positions in executive session.

WHO ELSE DOES IT? Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, and Texas all require contract negotiations to be open.

THE OPPORTUNITY: A transparent negotiating process will enable the public to hold government accountable in its dealings with public employee unions and help ensure that the agreements reached between the two parties are in the interest of everyone instead of just a select group of employees.

KEY POINTS

• Open collective bargaining gives citizens the opportunity to attend union negotiations with government bodies and help ensure that tax dollars are spent responsibly.
• Missouri’s Sunshine Law allows government bodies to close meetings to the public if they relate to a negotiated contract, even though there is no compelling reason why negotiations between a union and a public body should be held in secret.
• Government unions can make campaign contributions and support candidates that they will potentially bargain with after election. This advantage makes it especially important that the public be aware of how the government and public employee unions interact.

SHOW-ME INSTITUTE RESOURCES

Policy Study: A Primer on Government Labor Relations in Missouri

Video: Government Unions: Restoring Accountability

For a printable version of this article, click on the link below. You can also view the entire 2018 Missouri Blueprint online.

The post 2018 Blueprint: Open Collective Bargaining appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Certificate of Need: Missouri’s Certificate of Need (CON) law restricts health care competition by requiring health care providers to get state approval before entering new markets or expanding services offered in existing facilities. This restriction hampers innovative start-ups and market newcomers that would provide Missourians care and puts upward pressure on healthcare prices. Read more about certificate of need.

Charter Schools: Demand for charter schools in Missouri is at an all-time high. Unfortunately, charter schools are functionally limited to the Kansas City and Saint Louis School Districts. Tens of thousands of students are denied the opportunity for a better education. Read more about charter schools.

Course Access: All across Missouri, students do not have access to higher-level coursework such as AP courses, calculus, or physics. Read more about expanding course access.

Earned Income Tax Credit: State spending is on the rise in Missouri, led by a growth in public welfare dollars. Public welfare spending now accounts for more than 26% of total spending and 34% of spending growth. The growth in public welfare shares of total spending has eclipsed the growth of all other general expenditure functions. Read more about earned income tax credits.

Economic Development: Excessive use of economic development subsidies has hollowed out municipal tax bases and diverted tax revenue to specific developers. In the past 15 years, Saint Louis City alone has allocated $709 million away from municipal services through tax increment financing (TIF) and tax abatement. Studies from across the country indicate that these subsidies fail to generate promised jobs and growth. Read more about reforming economic development.

Education Savings Accounts (ESAs): Missouri students are underperforming. On the 2015 NAEP exam, only 31 percent of Missouri 8th-graders were found proficient in Math and only 36 percent were found proficient in English. For the Class of 2016, only 22 percent of Missouri ACT test-takers scored “college-ready” in all four tested subjects. Many students are trapped in failing schools via residential assignment and have no opportunity to pursue a better education. Read about introducing ESAs in Missouri.

Higher Education: The University of Missouri system, and higher education in the United States in general, are at a crossroads. Tuition is rising, resulting in over $1 trillion in student loan debt nationwide. At the same time, students who fail to secure a high-income job face serious financial consequences. As schools struggle with this, a rising tide of anti–free speech policy is sweeping across the higher education landscape. Read about reforming higher education.

Individual Income Tax Reform: Missouri’s economy has been stalled for almost two decades, as startup growth has slowed and entrepreneurs and taxpayers are leaving the state. Missouri is shrinking relative to other states and economies, ranking 48th out of 50 states in real GDP growth between 1997 and 2015. Individual income taxes are destructive to the state’s economic growth, productivity, and income, encouraging taxpayers to move their work or investments out of Missouri. This not only lowers economic output for the state, but also destabilizes revenue for state and local governments. Read more about reforming the individual income tax.

Open Collective Bargaining: Under current Sunshine Law in Missouri, government bodies may close meetings, records, and votes relating to contract negotiations until the contract is executed or rejected. This lack of transparency in negotiations between government unions and government officials can lead to contractual agreements that aren’t in the public’s best interest. Read more about open collective bargaining.

Prevailing Wage and Project Labor Agreements: State law governs what many government contractors must pay workers to get a government project, and it can also govern what kinds of workers contractors can use on that job. These restrictions often mean that large union contractors from big cities get jobs, to the detriment of smaller companies, local laborers, minority laborers, and taxpayers. Read more about prevailing wage and project labor agreements.

Public Pension Reform: Defined benefit (DB) pension plans promise employees annual payments for life upon retirement, but if a public plan does not have enough money to make these payments, taxpayers are legally bound to fund the difference. Pension plans can come up short if they fail to make sufficient contributions or overestimate their investment returns. Nationwide, state and local public pension funds are underfunded by more than $1 trillion dollars. Read about public pension reform.

Public Union Recertification: Once a government union comes to power, it can stay in power indefinitely. No further elections are scheduled and no term limits are imposed. This means workers can do little to ensure their union truly represents their interests and is held accountable. Read about public union recertification.

Right to Work: Many workers in Missouri can be forced to join unions. That is unfair not only to the employees disempowered by the law, but also to employers who have to operate under it. Read more about introducing right to work in Missouri. Governor Eric Greitens signed right to work legislation into law on February 6, 2017.

Tax Credit Reform: The state of Missouri uses public money to subsidize the private projects of special interests, often in the name of “economic development.” Practically, that means less money for public needs and greater difficulty in later reducing taxes for all taxpayers. Read about reforming tax credits.

Transportation: The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) will likely face funding shortfalls in the near future. The state will need to generate new revenue in fair and economically sound ways. Read more about Missouri’s transportation infrastructure.

The post 2017 Blueprint: Moving Missouri Forward appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Certificate of Need: Missouri’s Certificate of Need (CON) law restricts health care competition by requiring health care providers to get state approval before entering new markets or expanding services offered in existing facilities. This restriction hampers innovative start-ups and market newcomers that would provide Missourians care and puts upward pressure on healthcare prices. Read our policy recommendations for certificate of need.

Charter Schools: Demand for charter schools in Missouri is at an all-time high. Unfortunately, charter schools are functionally limited to the Kansas City and Saint Louis School Districts. Tens of thousands of students are denied the opportunity for a better education. Read our policy recommendations for charter schools.

Course Access: All across Missouri, students do not have access to higher-level coursework such as AP courses, calculus, or physics. Read our policy recommendations to expand course access.

Earned Income Tax Credit: State spending is on the rise in Missouri, led by a growth in public welfare dollars. Public welfare spending now accounts for more than 26% of total spending and 34% of spending growth. The growth in public welfare shares of total spending has eclipsed the growth of all other general expenditure functions. Read our policy recommendations to reign in the costs of earned income tax credits.

Economic Development: Excessive use of economic development subsidies has hollowed out municipal tax bases and diverted tax revenue to specific developers. In the past 15 years, Saint Louis City alone has allocated $709 million away from municipal services through tax increment financing (TIF) and tax abatement. Studies from across the country indicate that these subsidies fail to generate promised jobs and growth. Read our policy recommendations to reform economic development.

Education Savings Accounts (ESAs): Missouri students are underperforming. On the 2015 NAEP exam, only 31 percent of Missouri 8th-graders were found proficient in Math and only 36 percent were found proficient in English. For the Class of 2016, only 22 percent of Missouri ACT test-takers scored “college-ready” in all four tested subjects. Many students are trapped in failing schools via residential assignment and have no opportunity to pursue a better education. Read our policy recommendations for ESAs in Missouri.

Higher Education: The University of Missouri system, and higher education in the United States in general, are at a crossroads. Tuition is rising, resulting in over $1 trillion in student loan debt nationwide. At the same time, students who fail to secure a high-income job face serious financial consequences. As schools struggle with this, a rising tide of anti–free speech policy is sweeping across the higher education landscape. Read our policy recommendations to reform higher education.

Individual Income Tax Reform: Missouri’s economy has been stalled for almost two decades, as startup growth has slowed and entrepreneurs and taxpayers are leaving the state. Missouri is shrinking relative to other states and economies, ranking 48th out of 50 states in real GDP growth between 1997 2015. Individual income taxes are destructive to the state’s economic growth, productivity, and income, encouraging taxpayers to move their work or investments out of Missouri. This not only lowers economic output for the state, but also destabilizes revenue for state and local governments. Read our policy reforms for the individual income tax.

Open Collective Bargaining: Under current Sunshine Law in Missouri, government bodies may close meetings, records, and votes relating to contract negotiations until the contract is executed or rejected. This lack of transparency in negotiations between government unions and government officials can lead to contractual agreements that aren’t in the public’s best interest. Read our policy recommendations for open collective bargaining.

Prevailing Wage and Project Labor Agreements: Construction contracts dictate what potential contractors must pay workers to get the job, and what kinds of workers the contractors can employ. That often means that large union contractors from big cities get jobs, to the detriment of smaller companies, local laborers, minority laborers, and taxpayers.

Public Pension Reform: Defined benefit (DB) pension plans promise employees annual payments for life upon retirement, but if a public plan does not have enough money to make these payments, taxpayers are legally bound to fund the difference. Pension plans can come up short if they fail to make sufficient contributions or overestimate their investment returns. Nationwide, state and local public pension funds are underfunded by more than $1 trillion dollars. Read our recommendations to reform public pension reform.

Public Union Recertification: Once a government union comes to power, it can stay in power indefinitely. No further elections are scheduled and no term limits are imposed. This means workers can do little to ensure their union truly represents their interests and is held accountable. Read our policy recommendations for public union recertification.

Right to Work: Many workers in Missouri can be forced to join unions. That is unfair not only to the employees disempowered by the law, but also to employers who have to operate under it. Read our recommendations for introducing right to work in Missouri.

Tax Credit Reform: The state of Missouri uses public money to subsidize the private projects of special interests, often in the name of “economic development.” Practically, that means less money for public needs and greater difficulty in later reducing taxes for all taxpayers. Read our recommended reforms for tax credits.

Transportation: The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) will likely face funding shortfalls in the near future. The state will need to generate new revenue in fair and economically sound ways. Read our recommendations for Missouri's transportation infrastructure.

The post 2017 Blueprint: Moving Missouri Forward appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

It’s not that I’m anti-union—I’m simply anti–bad ideas.

I grew up in a union household.  My dad was a union carpenter until the day he retired.  The union helped secure a good income for him, along with great benefits and a healthy pension. It also provided many wonderful memories for me. I can vividly recall the union picnics where the RC Cola flowed like wine and my brother and I cleaned up at all of the games. 

It wasn’t until later that I realized what a union was or why unions were formed. For my dad and other laborers working on rooftops, in factories, or in situations where working conditions were hazardous, unions provided a means for increasing safety and improving working conditions.  As I sit in my air-conditioned office, I see little in common between my father’s work environment and mine.  Moreover, I see little reason to believe unionization could cure any of the ills we see at UMSL.

It is no secret that times have been rough on our north St. Louis County campus.  Student enrollment is down and state appropriations for operating expenses have yet to rebound to pre-recession levels. These circumstances helped to create a multi-million-dollar budget shortfall that forced university officials to lay off dozens of staff and adjunct faculty members.

My colleagues who wish to organize point to this and a host of other issues as reasons for unionization. They argue that salaries for adjunct instructors are too low, salaries for non–tenure track professors are too low (and such professors don’t get tenure), faculty salaries are too low, and we haven’t been able to hire new faculty for two years because of a hiring freeze.  Regardless of whether these things are true, unionization is hardly the answer. 

Unionization doubles-down on rigid policies that will not work, and it stifles the type of creativity we need.  It would create more bureaucracy through collective-bargaining processes and stifle the entrepreneurial spirit by locking individuals into rigid pay structures. This system will not help us, because faculty members and adjuncts are not widgets; we are not interchangeable.  The various members who make up the faculty and adjunct ranks at the university are unique professionals with varying skill sets.  We are professionals and our individual interests can hardly be represented by a single bargaining entity.

Don’t get me wrong: we do need to rally together as faculty—we need to rally in support of innovation. We need to organize in favor of creativity and efficiency.  The problems we face at UMSL are not unique.  Throughout the country institutions of higher learning are experiencing the same crisis.  While we complain about our salaries, college tuition costs continue to rise faster than costs for medical care. Meanwhile, technology is creating competitors we never dreamed of.  We cannot continue to do business the same way and expect the same—let alone better—results. 

Despite the challenges we face, many great things are happening at UMSL.  The campus itself is being rejuvenated with new buildings at every corner. The new Recreation and Wellness Center is top notch.  The Science Learning Building and Anheuser-Bush Hall will provide wonderful learning opportunities, and the new Optometry Patient Care Center will allow us to serve our community better than ever before. 

All of this construction has brought new life to campus. Our challenge is to do the same thing for our programs.  Unionization can’t do that, but we can. 

The post Unionization-the Wrong Solution for UMSL Faculty appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The irony is that a straightforward reading of the Takings Clause should actually protect individual employees from having their paychecks bitten into without consent. These lawsuits use the reverse argument—requiring the Court to believe that the paychecks of employees are fundamentally union property to begin with, and that nonunion employees are “taking” money away from them by withholding their support.

In the past the Supreme Court has found that "unions have no constitutional entitlement to the fees of non-member employees," so the odds of success in these lawsuits do not appear high. But even if the law wasn't in favor of the rights of individual workers, the idea that unions have a constitutional right to the paychecks of laborers who reject them seems not only undemocratic but also, frankly, immoral.

Workers – whether union members and not – deserve better than that.

The post Unions’ Orwellian “Takings Clause” Argument appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There are cases for both sides. Graduate students are Mizzou students working toward a post-graduate degree, such as a Master’s or PhD. Many graduate students also receive a stipend so they can focus on their scholarly duties. In addition, many grad students assist the university in teaching undergraduate students. If grad students are employees, this stipend is pay for the teaching assistance they provide.

If grad students successfully redefine themselves as employees, then they can unionize and collectively bargain. Through collective bargaining and the threat of collectively withholding labor, grad students might be able to force the university to pay them a larger stipend. If their effort is successful, this will be the first time that graduate students at a public university in Missouri have unionized.

Successful grad student unionization could turn out to be another headache for a university that’s already laying people off to cope with declining enrollment. This could affect everyone; Mizzou is a government institution, and taxpayers ultimately foot the bill.

The post Group of Mizzou Graduate Students Attempting to Unionize appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In California, where unions such as SEIU and Unite Here successfully pushed through a $15-dollar minimum wage law, the very same unions are seeing a backlash after workers discover they’re left out of the deal. It turns out these unions also pushed through exemptions to the minimum wage for unionized workers. Now businesses have a choice of paying $15 an hour for a nonunion worker or about $10 an hour for a union worker. A clear incentive to buy union labor.

Needless to say, workers feel betrayed. Alicia Yale, 42, a waitress at a hotel in Los Angeles and a mother of two children, is critical of the union’s policy.

"Why is it more of a benefit to be in a union? The union isn't really doing anything for us," she told the LA Times. "It's completely upside-down. They want to pay us less than the minimum wage… We should get the raise just like everybody else does."

From a union executive’s position, advocating lower wages for union workers may make a lot of sense. True, your members get paid less, but if the end result is more union workers, that will translate to more union dues.

Here in Missouri, union money is still going to the $15 minimum wage campaign. One of their slogans is “$15 and a union.” Union workers who are part of their campaign might want to ask their union’s executives for some clarification: “Will I be cut out of this deal, like union members in California were?”

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