Boiling the frog

[HiPointDem]

[Scootaloo]

1. That's pretty insulting.

It's the teachers' own fault! They were supposed to ____________* but they didn't!

(* - Insert magical silver bullet cure for everything here)

If only labor negotiations actually worked like in the movies, where you could get a plucky young Emilio Estevez to don his best suspenders and have a sing-in-the-streets rally that will really stick it to the bosses and force the bosses to grant every demand the union has!

[HiPointDem]

2. no it's not, it's the truth. weingarten has been giving away the store for years.

aft is a dictatorship and a company union.

[Reader Rabbit]

3. I think it's a good analogy.

The unions want to be seen as cooperative, since so many of these education "reforms" are coming from Democrats, who are traditionally allies. So the steps they have been taking seem to have the purpose of being seen as partners, rather than opponents. Sadly, every conciliation they agree to weakens their power and their ability to protect their own members.

My analogy would be that the unions are behaving like Neville Chamberlain. Rather than securing "peace in our time," they are only enabling the destruction of Europe/education.

But, of course, that analogy would be disregarded and ridiculed, due to Godwin's law.

[Scootaloo]

4. While discussing Neville Chamberlain...

You do know that his other choice would have been to declare war on Germany, right? In the middle of an economic slump, with next to nothing in Great Britain's own armed forces? Hindsight is of course 20/20, but at the time he really had no way to know that Hitler would give a big middle finger to the agreement, but it did encourage a focus on re-arming "just in case." What Chamberlain did might have been what made the war winnable; going on the offensive then and there would have resulted in Great Britain getting its ass kicked, and a very different outcome to WW2.

All the Chamberlain hate always makes me grit my teeth.

Anyway... The unions try to be cooperative because, frankly they have to work with these assholes. It's easy to overlook from the comfort of your chair, but most unions really are more prone to giving some bend, than stonewalling and escalating. It's why strikes and walkouts are considered last, desperate options.

[NYC_SKP]

5. K/R