In exchange for giving up bargaining rights, Illinois gets bupkis in R2T first found.
March 29, 2010
The IEA led the charge for Race to the Top money. They even signed on enthusiastically to legislation that gave away local bargaining rights when it comes to teacher evaluation.
Today in return Illinois got bupkis. Nothing. Delaware and Tennessee were first round winners.
The winners beat out: Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and South Carolina.
What with losing on the two-tier pension vote, the IEA leadership is on quite a legislative roll.
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Expect things to get worse. Last week on Chicago Tonight, two days in a row, three “experts” on teacher pensions (two extremely conservative, none union representatives) all discussed what good and much needed pension reform legislation was passed. But the kicker was that they all said that this was finished until after the election. THEN, THEY EXPECT THE LEGISLATORS TO GO AFTER CURRENT TEACHERS PENSIONS! Don’t let the constitution fool you, they can do anything they want.
In addition, another fight is developing on the health insurance front. Active teachers might think that they will have Health Insurance options they will be able to purchase when they retire. We need to be diligent about this because although the Constitution guarantees our pensions (at least for now), it does not guarantee us the right to purchase health insurance. They can drop that at any time. I haven’t heard any talk about that from the IEA.
What is the IEA doing? Well, it is an election year in IEA, so I am sure there will be a lot of grand ideas. Cinda Kickna posted an idea that each teacher find three friends and educate them about our pensions and let them know teachers don’t get Social Security. Now Cinda is a nice person, but as a union member, I would expect a little more advocacy and action from the association. They are still trying to be nice! I would expect the other candidates have the same sort of folksy, go get ‘em advice.
Don’t think for one minute that in this economy people want teachers to continue getting their pensions in the current status quo. Why? They are in financial dire straights, and most of them did not have unions or negotiators who set up good pension plans for them. They are jealous. Instead of wishing us well, and demanding the same benefits for them, most people would rather take from the teachers instead of trying to negotiate the same benefits. They really don’t care about funding through taxes. How could they? They have their own mess to deal with in this economy.