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GlyphGryph posted:Regardless, the current death row situation where people spend decades imprisoned with the constant threat of a painful death lingering over them before succumbing is pretty bad! At least I'm sure we can agree on that. Abolishing the death penalty would neatly solve this problem, wouldn't it? The only alternative I can see to address your concern would be abolishing the right to due process to eliminate the emotional roller coaster of the right to an appeal.
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Jun 30, 2015 11:59
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Riso posted:The whole supposed point of the death penalty, deterrence, is completely negated by making prisoners wait for over ten years for their executions. There are a hell of a lot of former death row inmates who have been exonerated more than 10 years after their conviction. There are an astonishing number of innocent people that waited 30 years or more to be exonerated. Even if we assume that killing people within 10 years is more humane than allowing death row inmates to exhaust their legal recourse prior to being killed by the state (however long that takes), one consequence is killing quite a lot of innocent people who otherwise would have been exonerated and released.
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Jun 30, 2015 12:04
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The court granted cert to Friedrichs v CA Teachers Assoc. Everyone ready for a 5-4 decision that bans public sector unions?
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Jun 30, 2015 14:47
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Litany Unheard posted:The court granted cert to Friedrichs v CA Teachers Assoc. Which would ban police unions and part of the prison guard unions too, right?
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Jun 30, 2015 14:58
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Can someone summarize that case?
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Jun 30, 2015 15:04
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Dameius posted:Which would ban police unions and part of the prison guard unions too, right? Banning prison guard unions actually sounds like an excellent idea.
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Jun 30, 2015 15:07
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Dameius posted:Which would ban police unions and part of the prison guard unions too, right? I would imagine that because many prisons are outsourced to private companies, prison guards themselves aren't necessarily agents of the state so this wouldn't necessarily directly apply. Additionally, it doesn't look like they are trying to ban unions. (Not directly, although the collapse of unions is a sought after side-effect). Petitioners want to eliminate the mandated fees associated with state-employee unions. Edit: I take back what I said about the prison guards. I may be reading it wrong, but it seems like the petitioner's argument is that because the unions of state employees engage in negotiation with the state itself, any negotiation or representation is automatically speech in the public interest (political speech) which should be given the highest 1st amendment protection. Thus, forcing members to pay union dues is forcing them to support specifically political speech they might object to. If that's true I guess one could argue that any union (public or private) that negotiates with any government agency would be participating in "speech in the public interest." So outsourced prison guards could fall under that. Edit 2: Even if all of that is true. This would just eliminate mandated union fees. Police and Prison Guard unions seem very good at what they do, and I would expect nearly all police would continue to voluntarily pay for their services and protection. Capt. Sticl fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Jun 30, 2015 |
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Jun 30, 2015 15:15
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Public servant unions (teachers and police, mainly) are something I'm always torn about. On one hand, all people deserve a voice for better pay and benefits, which police and teachers could certainly use. On the other hand, unions have a directive to protect their members from getting fired or demoted, and in the case of public servants, the result of this can be public harm. In most labor, the worst outcome of this is you can't fire the guy who just isn't very productive. Oh well, nobody's life is ruined, company loses a little profit, no big deal. But with teachers, say you have budget strapped school districts who need to lay off teachers (an unfortunate reality i wish wasn't so), and because of union seniority rules they have to keep the 50 year veterans, some of whom are provably bad teachers who don't care anymore (or never did and got the job when it was one of the 3 handful of jobs a woman could conceivably get), and lay off the really good younger teachers. (I'm not saying there are not good old teachers or bad young teachers, but using seniority as the ONLY factor for hiring and firing means the oldest teachers are going to get thru even when they're bad). Of course ideally they wouldn't be budget strapped and this would never be an issue, but it is, and the result is because of labor politics you have children suffering in their education, and to me the quality of their education is paramount. So on teacher unions I'm a little on the fence. In some cases they place the interests of their members over the children and that is upsetting to me. Obviously the stakes are even higher with not being able to fire bad cops, and the FoP is a piece of loving poo poo who is embarrassingly predictable every time there's the most blatant example of bad policing. Anyway what is the argument in the case itself?
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Jun 30, 2015 15:15
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alnilam posted:Public servant unions (teachers and police, mainly) are something I'm always torn about. On one hand, all people deserve a voice for better pay and benefits, which police and teachers could certainly use. The reasons that people want to fire teachers are normally not 'we are cash-strapped'.
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Jun 30, 2015 15:29
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alnilam posted:On the other hand, unions have a directive to protect their members from getting fired or demoted, and in the case of public servants, the result of this can be public harm. This is a tragic misconception of the ideals behind union representation. Unions are against arbitrary firings or poorly documented firings, not firings in general. If a lack of documented disciplinary or performance issues constitutes some insurmountable barrier then perhaps it's not the union's fault the employee can't be drummed out. poo poo like the FOP and cop unions in general are basically gangs of hoodlums who do in fact prevent consequence for misbehavior, but AFSCME isn't kicking back and cackling as they tell the boss they can't fire the careless guy who undoubtedly is always causing your personal inconvenience at the DMV or tax collector's office.
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Jun 30, 2015 15:31
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Obdicut posted:The reasons that people want to fire teachers are normally not 'we are cash-strapped'. It sometimes is in poorer districts / cities? It certainly is where i live. Talking about layoffs and indefinite furloughs here, not firing.
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Jun 30, 2015 15:31
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alnilam posted:It sometimes is in poorer districts / cities? It certainly is where i live. Talking about layoffs and indefinite furloughs here, not firing. If you look at the actual discourse on the national stage about why we should get rid of teacher's unions, it's to get rid of bad teachers, not to make it easier to lay off teachers during budget crunches. Normally, there is actually a mechanism by which teachers can be laid off during actual times of budgetary need.
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Jun 30, 2015 15:32
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FAUXTON posted:This is a tragic misconception of the ideals behind union representation. Unions are against arbitrary firings or poorly documented firings, not firings in general. If a lack of documented disciplinary or performance issues constitutes some insurmountable barrier then perhaps it's not the union's fault the employee can't be drummed out. I guess maybe this was just an issue where i live. There was a big fight between the teachers union and the school district about what criteria to use when laying off/furloughing/un-furloughing, and the union refused to allow anything but seniority. It resulted in real harm to the quality of education in some cases. I know a lot of people on both sides of this fight as well as people who work locally in studying education policy so I'm not making this up. Sorry if i over-extrapolated though, maybe its a special case :/
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Jun 30, 2015 15:35
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lovely unions are lovely, but unions are not inherently lovely. A public sector union that bases their hiring/firing negotiations exclusively on seniority would be pretty lovely, but then plenty of actual corporations do this too and there are actually some good reasons for doing so to a certain extent. I think Unions face the same sort of problem that many industries do in that they tend towards natural monopolies (or complete nonexistence) to a high barrier of entry combined with a return per person based on how many people actually sign up. They suffer the same problems as any other organization - short sightedness, poor planning, the cold unfeeling nature of reality, and active opposition - and all of these can lead to them being pretty terrible, but they're still often better than having nothing at all. For public sector unions, they tend to at worst exacerbate problems that already exist since rather than create new ones, though. If the union is doing lovely things, it's usually because the bureaucracy who would otherwise be in charge is okay with them doing lovely things, and if the union didn't exist there would still be lots of lovely things going on. It's also important to remember that Unions are democratic, and do tend to reflect the values of their workforce... GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Jun 30, 2015 |
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Jun 30, 2015 15:40
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GlyphGryph posted:lovely unions are lovely, but unions are not inherently lovely. Good point, and i agree that unions can be lovely just like any organization, and that it doesn't mean they're all lovely. Unfortunately most people who hate unions point to a few examples of them doing bad stuff as why they should be all banned. Which i guess i just did with the teacher's union considering my local one did some lovely stuff lately. Well, i didn't say ban them, but i did extrapolate.
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Jun 30, 2015 15:43
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Obdicut posted:If you look at the actual discourse on the national stage about why we should get rid of teacher's unions, it's to get rid of bad teachers, not to make it easier to lay off teachers during budget crunches. Normally, there is actually a mechanism by which teachers can be laid off during actual times of budgetary need. The discourse is bullshit, and isn't why they want to get rid of them. It's just the most palatable reasoning they can offer. Getting rid of the unions would remove the seniority mechanism for layoffs, and also remove any sort of robust process around firing teachers. Sadly, much like in the private sector, administrators are lazy fuckers and if it takes actual effort to remove bad teachers, most won't. The effort is a bit too high, but part of the reason it's like that is to prevent administrators with personal grudges from being able to end a career. In the private sector you can be at the mercy of this, but generally there are other places to go, and you aren't walking away from retirement/etc. But really it's all about removing a major funding source for progressive causes as well as the largest voice for public schooling.
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Jun 30, 2015 16:02
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Pervis posted:The discourse is bullshit, and isn't why they want to get rid of them. It's just the most palatable reasoning they can offer. Getting rid of the unions would remove the seniority mechanism for layoffs, and also remove any sort of robust process around firing teachers. Sadly, much like in the private sector, administrators are lazy fuckers and if it takes actual effort to remove bad teachers, most won't. The effort is a bit too high, but part of the reason it's like that is to prevent administrators with personal grudges from being able to end a career. In the private sector you can be at the mercy of this, but generally there are other places to go, and you aren't walking away from retirement/etc. I wasn't saying it's actually about getting rid of bad teachers.
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Jun 30, 2015 16:08
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alnilam posted:Of course ideally they wouldn't be budget strapped and this would never be an issue, but it is, and the result is because of labor politics you have children suffering in their education, and to me the quality of their education is paramount. So on teacher unions I'm a little on the fence. In some cases they place the interests of their members over the children and that is upsetting to me. Firing a teacher helps no one, increasing the education budget helps everyone. I hope they keep doing what they're doing. Edit: Can this case end up giving us national right to work or is it a bit more narrow than that?
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Jun 30, 2015 16:11
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alnilam posted:So on teacher unions I'm a little on the fence. In some cases they place the interests of their members over the children and that is upsetting to me. Would you say the union is to blame for conditions that put the welfare of children and the welfare of teachers at odds with each other?
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Jun 30, 2015 16:13
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Obdicut posted:If you look at the actual discourse on the national stage about why we should get rid of teacher's unions, it's to get rid of bad teachers, not to make it easier to lay off teachers during budget crunches. Normally, there is actually a mechanism by which teachers can be laid off during actual times of budgetary need. lol if you actually believe this
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Jun 30, 2015 16:19
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duz posted:Firing a teacher helps no one, increasing the education budget helps everyone. I hope they keep doing what they're doing. The logic of the argument would only apply to public sector unions (it argues that public sector unions, by necessity, lobby the government and compelling them to fund the public sector union requires them to speak politically in violation of the 1st Amendment). Private companies can't violate the 1st Amendment by requiring union dues from their employees.
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Jun 30, 2015 16:22
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VitalSigns posted:Would you say the union is to blame for conditions that put the welfare of children and the welfare of teachers at odds with each other? No. Do I think the FoP is to blame for the vast societal issues that result in judicial persecution of minorities? No. But i can still criticize them for shielding those who cause harm in this way, while simultaneously advocating for comprehensive reform of the justice system. You can support short term fixes/patch jobs and long term change at the same time. Unless you're an accelerationist. Anyway we've already established that the issue I'm taking about is probably mostly a local one and I mostly support teachers unions and think they've done mostly good. But that doesn't mean i can't criticize them for doing bad in a particular case, even if they're not to blame for the circumstances that led to the situation in which they did bad.
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Jun 30, 2015 16:31
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joeburz posted:lol if you actually believe this Which part?
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Jun 30, 2015 16:32
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Scrub-Niggurath posted:Heck, why stop there? Imagine the legal fees that could be saved by the American taxpayers if we just skipped the whole 'trial by jury' nonsense and skipped straight to the execution! Police already do that for black people.
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Jun 30, 2015 18:04
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Obdicut posted:Which part? The rhetoric about bad teachers is just cover for destroying a political enemy of the right, and one that in particular lobbies hard against private/charter for-profit schools, which is a big issue for the right. VVV They're human beings so of course there's some lovely ones and some bad ones. Despite the propaganda it is possible to fire a bad teacher. Family Values fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jun 30, 2015 |
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Jun 30, 2015 19:20
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Family Values posted:The rhetoric about bad teachers is just cover for destroying a political enemy of the right, and one that in particular lobbies hard against private/charter for-profit schools, which is a big issue for the right. Not that there aren't lovely and/or stupid teachers.
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Jun 30, 2015 19:23
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My folks are union, and when a coworker was fired the union would go to bat for them and, 90% of the time, get that worker their job back. How? Because management NEVER put in the time or effort to build up the necessary documentation to fire that person. Hell, half the time they were just trying to get rid of people they didn't like personally. It's very possible to fire bad employees if management wants to. But it's apparently easier to just undercut public support for unions by making up stories about evil, lazy teachers getting rich off of your tax dollars.
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Jun 30, 2015 20:20
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Litany Unheard posted:My folks are union, and when a coworker was fired the union would go to bat for them and, 90% of the time, get that worker their job back. How? Because management NEVER put in the time or effort to build up the necessary documentation to fire that person. Hell, half the time they were just trying to get rid of people they didn't like personally. It's very possible to fire bad employees if management wants to. But it's apparently easier to just undercut public support for unions by making up stories about evil, lazy teachers getting rich off of your tax dollars. Yeah, the main purpose of a union is to prevent arbitrary action by management and enforce a system of due process. Bad workers can still be fired, but management has to put more effort into it. Hence, unions are evil and must be destroyed.
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Jun 30, 2015 20:27
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I was flipping through the court decision on executions and was surprised to find that the court required the plaintiffs to present an alternate method of execution? Like, it's not enough just to say "this is a hosed up way to die," you have to finish with "so kill me using this." What possible reasoning does that precedent have? Is it really up to inmates to propose humane methods of execution when they are presented with one that interferes with their constitutional rights? Am I a goddamn idiot or what?
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Jun 30, 2015 20:44
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Okay I definitely now realize that I brought up a specific, single local instance, and I agree with most of the things being said about teacher unions itt. Here, the union absolutely was preventing furlough/layoff decisions (not firing!) from being based on anything but seniority, with the alternative being a combination of seniority + a teacher rating system. The multi-factor rating system in question was developed (long before the budget issues) by the district and union together. According to teacher surveys, everyone considered the rating system to be very fair and good. I think over 90% of the district's teachers received a "doin just fine" rating. However, during the furloughs, a number of teachers who received a "needs serious improvement" rating got to keep their jobs while younger, highly-rated teachers were furloughed indefinitely. That's what I'm upset about here and it's a specific intsance of a teacher's union doing something bad IMO, because of wanting to protect their members over the quality of education. The real Bad Thing here was the poo poo governor cutting education funding, but they could have done better to make the best of a bad situation. The FoP definitely is a piece of poo poo though, but honestly a bad cop keeping their job probably has more to do with the department itself, where everyone covers for each other. The FoP is just the vocal mouthpiece for it.
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Jun 30, 2015 20:45
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alnilam posted:Okay I definitely now realize that I brought up a specific, single local instance, and I agree with most of the things being said about teacher unions itt. One of the tricks that school districts are using is to replace older teachers with younger, cheaper teachers from programs like Teach for America that cost practically nothing. The union wants to prevent the districts from even considering this kind of thing as a possibility. Metrics could easily be designed to pick off the "most expensive" teachers for each furlough cycle.
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Jun 30, 2015 20:50
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hobbesmaster posted:One of the tricks that school districts are using is to replace older teachers with younger, cheaper teachers from programs like Teach for America that cost practically nothing. The union wants to prevent the districts from even considering this kind of thing as a possibility. Metrics could easily be designed to pick off the "most expensive" teachers for each furlough cycle. If two teachers can't be distinguished in outcomes, why not keep the cheaper one (and maybe be able to have more teachers)? If they can be distinguished in outcomes, then why not use that comparison metric in determining who to keep? If more senior teachers are better teachers, there should be a way to demonstrate that, and then it would be clear what the tradeoff is (cheaper vs better), as with most budget-driven decisions.
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Jun 30, 2015 20:53
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Dr Cheeto posted:I was flipping through the court decision on executions and was surprised to find that the court required the plaintiffs to present an alternate method of execution? Like, it's not enough just to say "this is a hosed up way to die," you have to finish with "so kill me using this." What possible reasoning does that precedent have? Is it really up to inmates to propose humane methods of execution when they are presented with one that interferes with their constitutional rights? No, read Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissent, she rightly calls it indefensible. It is a morally corrupt position that's basically Republicans.txt.
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Jun 30, 2015 20:53
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Dr Cheeto posted:I was flipping through the court decision on executions and was surprised to find that the court required the plaintiffs to present an alternate method of execution? Like, it's not enough just to say "this is a hosed up way to die," you have to finish with "so kill me using this." What possible reasoning does that precedent have? Is it really up to inmates to propose humane methods of execution when they are presented with one that interferes with their constitutional rights? Yeah, that struck me as complete idiocy as well. The issue is whether or not the particular method currently under scrutiny is cruel or unusual. It's up to the folks that want to do the executing to come up with a method that passes muster. Capital punishment needn't be necessarily cruel or unusual punishment in the abstract, but if no actual method can be found to carry it out that isn't deemed cruel or unusual, well tough luck. It's the sort of argument a teenager on the internet would make. It's not something I expected to hear coming from the Supreme Court.
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Jun 30, 2015 20:53
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Subjunctive posted:If two teachers can't be distinguished in outcomes, why not keep the cheaper one (and maybe be able to have more teachers)? If they can be distinguished in outcomes, then why not use that comparison metric in determining who to keep? If more senior teachers are better teachers, there should be a way to demonstrate that, and then it would be clear what the tradeoff is (cheaper vs better), as with most budget-driven decisions. But which metric. One chosen by the administration? Congrats now any sufficiently skilled consultant can fire any teacher you want.
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Jun 30, 2015 20:54
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hobbesmaster posted:But which metric. One chosen by the administration? Congrats now any sufficiently skilled consultant can fire any teacher you want. In this case, the metric was developed by the teachers, but I can see your point in other cases.
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Jun 30, 2015 20:55
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Family Values posted:The rhetoric about bad teachers is just cover for destroying a political enemy of the right, and one that in particular lobbies hard against private/charter for-profit schools, which is a big issue for the right. You're wrong. Of course, there are people who push it for that reason, but you're mistaking why some people push it with why people agree with it. The issue resonates with people because (1) it does have truth to it and (2) people care about their kids and will be somewhat irrational at times about them. I mean, it is inherent in any system to make it harder to fire people for arbitrary reasons that it will also make it harder to fire them for good reasons. You can't get around that, and you're being dishonest if you try to ignore it. Hell, people see it happen all the time with police, where police who did something clearly wrong take a long time to fire and sometimes are not successfully fired. You simply can't get around that issue, you can only argue that the tradeoff made is a good one. I mean, when you're saying "it is possible" to fire a bad teacher, you're not actually doing yourself any favors because everyone knows the difference between something being "possible" and it being workable. What people are generally worried about is when it is too hard to fire a bad teacher or it takes too long, such that bad teachers remain much longer than they should. Now, there's generally other issues involved - namely, paying teachers like poo poo, underfunding the schools in general, or the student population being disadvantaged in the first place - that people sometimes want to ignore in favor of putting all the problems on the teacher. But you have to actually understand what the problem is instead of this sort of dumb "no, see, it's all just rightest propaganda" that will get you ignored and slotted in as a spouter of mindless propaganda yourself. hobbesmaster posted:But which metric. One chosen by the administration? Congrats now any sufficiently skilled consultant can fire any teacher you want. Some metric that doesn't change per teacher and was agreed upon and justified in advance, obviously, which makes this concern vanish (not that it existed in the first place). Nobody is actually concerned that administrations will rejigger metrics to get rid of people they hate every year except paranoids.
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Jun 30, 2015 21:00
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Dr Cheeto posted:I was flipping through the court decision on executions and was surprised to find that the court required the plaintiffs to present an alternate method of execution? Like, it's not enough just to say "this is a hosed up way to die," you have to finish with "so kill me using this." What possible reasoning does that precedent have? Is it really up to inmates to propose humane methods of execution when they are presented with one that interferes with their constitutional rights? This method of dying is terrible so please grant me death by Snu Snu.
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Jun 30, 2015 21:03
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hobbesmaster posted:But which metric. One chosen by the administration? Congrats now any sufficiently skilled consultant can fire any teacher you want. by what metric are senior teachers better? if they want to bias towards more senior ones (rather than f.e. random selection), then they must have a reason for it. you could use the same metric to grant pay raises!
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Jun 30, 2015 21:10
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evilweasel posted:Some metric that doesn't change per teacher and was agreed upon and justified in advance, obviously, which makes this concern vanish (not that it existed in the first place). Nobody is actually concerned that administrations will rejigger metrics to get rid of people they hate every year except paranoids. the bigger problem with metrics is how the hell do you measure them in an objective fashion? Frequently the answer is "how many students passed/what was their average acheivement level" which creates perverse incentives for teachers to do whatever it takes to avoid teaching the students that need it most
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Jun 30, 2015 21:13
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