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Kansas legislators are moving to implement commonsense education reforms to attract and retain better teachers. Currently under the union negotiated system, layoffs occur based on seniority instead of quality.  The Heritage Foundation’s James Sherk explains :

The pain of union control is illustrated by Bria Klotz, a former sixth-grade teacher in Lawrence, Kansas. She won statewide recognition for her excellence in the classroom. She nonetheless got laid off when Lawrence Public Schools had to make cuts.

Why did she lose out? Her union contract called for seniority-based layoffs, so she was among the first to go. The winners? The more senior union members who got ironclad job security from the contract.

Thanks to Kansas’ right to work law, teachers are no longer forced to pay dues to the Kansas National Education Association. As Sherk points out, many teachers choose not to be a part of the union.

In many of Kansas’s largest school districts—including Wichita and Topeka—not one current teacher voted for Kansas National Education Association (KNEA) representation.

There’s a catch though. All teachers still have to abide by union contracts. Sherk continues:

Kansas legislators are considering changing this. Kansas HB 2027 overhauls collective bargaining in public schools. The bill has attracted attention for limiting what unions can negotiate. Among other changes, it lets districts set teacher evaluation standards without union interference.

Another significant provision has attracted much less attention. The bill requires unions to stand for re-election every two years. Teachers unhappy with their union could vote it out. Even better, the bill also lets teachers negotiate individual contracts. Anyone who loses under the KNEA contract could negotiate a better deal separately.

Predictably, the KNEA has called the bill a “war on teachers.” But what teachers does the bill harm? Certainly not teachers like Klotz.

Kansas’ proposed reform is not a silver bullet for education and reforms should not stop there. But it is an innovative idea and offers another avenue for education improvement to policy makers and will ultimately help students by bringing back quality teachers.

Should teachers be allowed to negotiate their contracts individually?

Today’s Morning Bell draws on research by The Heritage Foundation’s James Sherk to debunk five liberal myths about the minimum wage:

• Myth 1: Huge numbers of Americans earn the minimum wage.
  Fact: Just 2.9 percent of all workers in the United States earn the minimum wage.
• Myth 2: It’s the “working poor” who earn the minimum wage.
  Fact: More than half of minimum-wage workers are between the ages of 16 and 24, and they work part-time.
• Myth 3: Minimum-wage workers are trapped in poverty.
  Fact: The average family income of a minimum-wage worker is more than $53,000 a year.
• Myth 4: Minimum wage workers often hold these jobs for life.
  Fact: Minimum-wage earners don’t stay in those jobs forever.
• Myth 5: Many of those earning minimum wage are single parents.
  Fact: Very few single parents are working full-time in minimum-wage jobs.

Continue Reading »

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The only concrete proposal President Obama mentioned in his fifth State of the Union address on Tuesday was an increase in the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.00 an hour. Unfortunately, this solution is counterproductive and does little to address the problem of poverty.

While this simple-sounding plan is appealing, it simply won’t work, Heritage Foundation expert James Sherk explains:

Labor economists have repeatedly studied the effects of minimum wage increases. They find no correlation between higher minimum wages and lower poverty. Raising the minimum wage to $9 an hour as the President suggests simply would not reduce poverty.

Here are four reasons increasing the minimum wage won’t resolve poverty: Continue Reading »

Just 11.3 percent of workers today belong to a union, continuing Big Labor’s long decline. In the private sector, only 6.6 percent of workers pay union dues.

Much of this decline reflects America’s antiquated labor laws, which ”do not meet the needs of modern American workers,” according to Heritage Foundation labor expert James Sherk.

Continue Reading »

Heritage Foundation economist James Sherk explains labor unions’ continued decline on National Review online:

Unions have two problems. First, unions make the companies they organize more sluggish and less competitive. They constantly have to organize new members to replace those at declining unionized firms. Second, they have not changed to appeal to modern workers. That makes organizing those new members challenging.

Why do you think unions have lost power?

Year after year The Heritage Foundation continues to make an impact in the fight for conservative principles. This year, Heritage’s expert policy analysts testified before Congress 34 times and distributed more than 1,100 policy reports on Capitol Hill. Below is the list of the top 10 most read research papers of the year: Continue Reading »

Michigan’s enactment of right-to-work legislation this week is a major win for the conservative movement. Predictably, the established labor unions are lashing out at the laws and calling them unfair “right-to-freeload” measures.

But as Heritage Foundation labor expert James Sherk writes in the Detroit News, the unions have it wrong. Unions are free to negotiate only on behalf of their members, so workers who don’t join their colleagues in a union aren’t necessarily “freeloading”: Continue Reading »

The “fiscal cliff” is coming. It’s a man-made disaster that’s ready to explode. But what exactly does it entail?

The fiscal cliff is a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that start to take effect January 1. President Obama and Congress will need to act quickly to avoid at least some parts of the fiscal cliff.

Heritage Foundation experts Romina Boccia, James Sherk, Katie Tubb offer more detail and specific recommendations on the four main parts of the fiscal cliff: Continue Reading »

Twinkies, Ho Ho’s, Dingdongs and CupCakes might soon become a thing of the past due to a Baker Union strike. According to the Hostess website, “Hostess Brands, Inc. has been forced by a Bakers Union strike to shut down all operations”.

The Hostess factories are just one high profile example of unions wielding their power and intervening in the free market. In addition to a lack of Twinkies and Wonderbread, union strikes are causing upsets in other industries as well. Heritage’s Amy Payne explains,

A union-backed group is planning to stage protests at Wal-Mart stores on Black Friday. And unionized workers with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are planning a protest at Los Angeles International Airport tomorrow—one of the busiest travel days of the year.

At the core of this problem is the restrictive nature of union voting and membership. Once a union is formed, employees rarely have a choice whether to opt into the union or cast a vote for leadership. Unions remain certified indefinitely and do not have to stand for re-election causing new workers to accept the current union representation. And only 7 percent of private sector union members vote to belong to their union.

Heritage Labor expert James Sherk further explains the long term impacts of union strikes,

Companies like Hostess need to be nimble, but unions make it difficult to respond to a changing marketplace. This makes unionized firms less competitive. So unionized firms invest less, create fewer jobs, and earn less than comparable non-union firms.

While unions try to avoid bankrupting their firms, the companies grow more slowly—and shrink more rapidly—than their non-union competitors. Over time, they eventually go under. What happened to Hostess has happened across the entire economy.

This is one reason why union membership keeps falling: Unions cannot recruit enough new members to replace the ones they keep losing. In 2012, union membership hit another record low, falling 0.5 points to 11.2 percent. In the private sector, just 6.6 percent of workers belong to a union.

And the problem isn’t going away any time soon. President Obama has been a long time ally of union leaders and made a point of taking one of his first meetings after re-election with union leaders who spent heavily in the past election.

What do you think about the closure of the Hostess factory and union power? 

Over the weekend, The Heritage Foundation’s James Sherk was featured on Fox Business’s Willis Report to discuss the connection between Hostess’s collapse and its union affiliation.

With 18,500 workers losing their jobs, taxpayers can expect about a $400 million increase in taxes if the workers file for unemployment.

Click here to watch the clip.