The difference between a contract on Wall Street and a contract in Elgin.
When it was suggested that the AIG bonus babies’ multi-million dollar performance contracts were crazy, the pundits and the friends of Wall Street like Obama advisor Larry Summers cried foul. “Can’t break a contract,” they cried.
Oh yes. The sacred nature of a contract.
Unless it’s a teacher’s contract.
The teachers in Elgin school district u-46 have a contract. But several hundred teachers have been handed their walking papers for next year. The board of education now says that if the teachers want their jobs back then the union has to rip up the contract and take a pay cut.
District Spokesman Tony Sanders said Superintendent Jose Torres raised the issue of pay cuts in an e-mail to union leaders last week, but no official talks developed.
Elgin Teachers Association President Tim Davis said his 2,400-member union would be “concerned about the precedent of reopening (our) contract.”
Even in 2003, when U-46 was $40 million in the red and laid off 600 teachers, such a move was never made.
“It would be complicated,” said Dave Neal, the Uniserv Director for U-46′s transportation union, education assistants union, service workers union and secretarial union.
“A lot of things are predicated on that,” he said. “And frankly the groups that I work with were all very modest in their salary gains anyhow, tying increases to the cost of living … there’s not much room to back up.”
By modest, I’m guessing it wasn’t in the 2 to 3 million dollar range. Haven’t heard any moral outrage on this from Larry Summers yet.
