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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?

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?

Late last year, while conservatives were still coming to terms with the re-election of President Obama, something remarkable happened in Michigan. A state that is synonymous with Big Labor enacted a right-to-work law.

Governor Rick Snyder (R-MI) and Republican lawmakers had just witnessed the overwhelming rejection of a union-backed measure at the ballot box in November. Fearing the state was losing jobs to states with more friendly business climates — and workers could also lose freedoms in the workplace — they moved swiftly to make Michigan the 24th right-to-work state in America.

Earlier this week, Heritage hosted Michigan businessman and entrepreneur Dick DeVos, a former candidate for governor and a Heritage member. I sat down with him to talk about how it happened and what lessons conservatives can take away from the victory as they make the case for freedom nationally and in states.

The interview runs about five minutes. It was produced and directed by Patrick Frank. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch more Heritage videos.

Cross-posted from The Foundry.

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 »

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.

James Sherk

In June, Heritage Foundation scholar James Sherk and Mercatus Center Scholar Todd Zywicki reported that “the Detroit auto bailout was, in fact, a UAW bailout.”

Their analysis earned praise on Capitol Hill. “Your paper with Zywicki on the auto bailout was excellent,” a senior House of Representatives legislative aide told Sherk. “Very on-point. It was very useful when we were preparing for the hearing” on the pensions of Delphi’s nonunion retirees.

Unions were originally created to give a voice to under-represented workers and to work in their members’ best interests.

Now though, many unions are doing just the opposite by refusing their members compensation for hard work. Not only do many union contracts set wage floors, they also establish pay ceilings. This prevents employers from offering wage increases without negotiating with the unions first.

Congress is now considering legislation that could improve this system. Heritage Foundation expert James Sherk and attorney Ryan O’Donnell explain: Continue Reading »

The so-called auto bailout was in fact a union bailout, Heritage Foundation expert James Sherk explains in this week’s Heritage Foundation podcast.

More specifically, it was a United Auto Workers bailout. Typically, when a company goes bankrupt the labor costs are lowered to a more competitive level. UAW worker wages were as high as $56 per hour in pay and benefits. The politically influential UAW solicited federal tax dollars rather than following the usual bankruptcy procedure of lowering wages. If they had simply lowered wages, taxpayers could have saved $26 billion.

This is especially unsettling considering President Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Candidate Obama ran on a platform of refusing to spend tax dollars on special interest groups. The UAW is a special interest group, and President Obama spent $26 billion on them.

Listen here to learn more about the how the “auto bailout” benefited big labor special interests.