Turning around? Not in a no excuses school.
The rise of corporate education policy in the United States isn't a labor issue only because it attacks teachers and their unions. Education is how the nation shapes its future workers. Education scholar Joan Goodman details
how many charter schools are training children:
... these schools have developed very elaborate behavioral regimes that they insist all children follow, starting in kindergarten. Submission, obedience, and self-control are very large values. They want kids to submit. You can’t really do this kind of instruction if you don’t have very submissive children who are capable of high levels of inhibition and do whatever they’re told. [...]
In order to maximize academic accomplishment, no time can be wasted and anything that’s not academically targeted, that’s not geared to what the students have to know, is time wasted. So there is almost no opportunity for play, for relaxation, very little time for extra-curricular activities. The day is jammed with academics, especially math and reading because that’s what gets tested. The view of time and strict discipline are related, by the way; in order to get these kids to attend over very long hours—they have extended days and extended weeks—you have to be tough with the kids, really severe. They want these kids to understand that when authority speaks you have to follow because that’s basic to learning.
Submission to authority and tolerance for working long hours in a rigid environment. Doesn't that sound like a bad boss's dream?
Continue reading below the fold for more of the week's labor and education news.
A fair day's wage
- A win in Los Angeles:
The Council voted 12 to 3 to raise the minimum wage for workers at large hotels to $15.37 an hour by 2017, which is more than the national median wage for women ($15.10 in 2013). Mayor Eric Garcetti will sign the bill after it receives a confirming second vote next week.
The LA County AFL-CIO, UNITE HERE Local 11 (the LA area union of hospitality workers), and the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, which led the campaign, don’t intend to rest on their laurels and will push for an across-the-board minimum wage increase to $13.25 an hour, far above the national minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Mayor Garcetti strongly supports that bill, too.
- Tech executive brags he was able to hire women "relatively cheap" compared to men.
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- Amazon's Jeff Bezos is moving to put his mark on the Washington Post:
The Washington Post announced large cuts in retirement benefits on Tuesday, declaring that it would eliminate future retirement medical benefits and freeze defined-benefit pensions for nonunion employees.
The company also said that in negotiations that started Tuesday, it will seek to impose the same conditions on employees covered by the union — one of the first indications of how The Post’s new owner, Amazon.com founder Jeffrey P. Bezos, will manage relations with the staff of the news organization.
- Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth is strongly backing a minimum wage ordinance in Louisville, Kentucky.
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- New York City's TWU Local 100 is doing some great organizing, with bike share workers electing to join the union.
- Crappy work-life balance is a reason many people don't want to be promoted.
- Two symphony stories: The Nashville Symphony and its musicians have reached a labor agreement, while the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is canceling performances until November 8 because they do not yet have an agreement in place.
- What a scumbag:
A Seattle contractor has been sentenced to three months in jail and fined $10,000 for breaking prevailing wage laws and abusing employees by reporting them to immigration when they asked to be correctly paid. The contractor, Dathan Williams, had landed more than $1.1 million in contracts from the government before an investigation, which included the training of an undercover police officer as a drywall installer, took him down.
The investigation was part of a broader effort that followed complaints by local unions to the Kings County Prosecutor’s Office. Williams was found to be one of the most egregious offenders.
Williams paid workers a fraction of the prevailing wage required to win the government contracts, which allowed him to underbid his competitors. As part of his scheme he routinely hired undocumented immigrants who were easily exploitable. Two of his employees were even deported.
Education