Teachers' union owns your legislator

There's a movement in Pennsylvania to ban teacher strikes.

Pennsylvania leads the nation in teacher walkouts. Pennsylvania has recorded twice as many teacher strikes as any other state since 2000. Three school districts in Pennsylvania are on strike this week.

Thirty-seven states have already outlawed teacher strikes. The rationale is similar to laws preventing police officers and firefighters from walking off the job. These are essential public services. Since the government mandates a minimum number of days for students to attend school, why should teachers be allowed to disrupt the education system?

After years of lobbying lawmakers, a grassroots organization called Stop Teacher Strikes Inc. has persuaded a few courageous lawmakers to introduce a bill to ban teacher strikes in Pennsylvania.

Opposition to the ban is coming from the powerful teachers' union, which contributes hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds to politicians to keep them voting the way the union wants.

We already know where Gov. Ed Rendell stands on the issue. Rendell, who received $500,000 from the Pennsylvania State Education Association's PAC for his re-election bid last year, said through a spokesman that a teacher strike ban is a "radical response." In other words, the governor is owned by the teachers' union.

So far, 25 state lawmakers have added their names to the teacher ban bill introduced by Rep. Todd Rock, a Republican from Franklin County. All 25 co-sponsors are Republicans, which says a lot about how much control unions have over the Democratic Party. That leaves another 228 lawmakers sitting on the fence (many of them counting the money they've received from the teachers' union.)

It's time for Pennsylvania residents to remind their elected lawmakers that they represent the people, not the unions.

Stop Teacher Strikes Inc. has posted the names of all 253 Pennsylvania legislators on its Web site and how much money the lawmakers have received from the state's largest teachers' union, the Pennsylvania State Education Association.

"What we're trying to do is rally the public," Stop Teacher Strikes Inc. founder Simon Campbell told The Associated Press.

Pennsylvania's 116,000 public school teachers are already among the highest paid in the nation (average salary of $54,027 in the 2005-06 school year, the most recent figure available). Under the current system, they can walk out on their jobs when they don't get their way and get paid for the time they walk the picket line because school districts are forced by the state to keep students in school for 180 days.

Regardless of how long teachers are on strike, the days will be made up. The only people inconvenienced are students and parents, who often have to make costly day care alternatives when their kids are forced to stay home by a teacher strike.

Rep. Rock's bill would force teachers to forfeit two days' pay for each day of a strike, fine individuals $5,000 for inciting a strike, and require nonbinding arbitration to resolve contract disputes within a certain time frame.

In other words, teachers will get hit where it hurts, in the pocketbook.

An actual ban on teacher strikes requires a change to the Pennsylvania Constitution.

Constitutional amendments must be approved by lawmakers in two consecutive legislative sessions and by voters in a referendum. That's a long and complicated process, but it's actually a good thing because changing the Constitution does not require the governor's approval.

Clearly Rendell dances to the teachers' union tune and would never side with Pennsylvania taxpayers on banning teacher strikes.

The Associated Press reviewed strike records over the past seven years and found that of the nearly 140 teacher strikes that occurred nationally between 2000 and 2007, 60 percent took place in Pennsylvania.

Much of the research about teacher strikes has been conducted by the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy in Pittsburgh, which opposes strikes by public-sector unions in "vital sectors" such as mass transit and education, institute president Jake Haulk told the AP.

"The only way you get (support for a ban) is a massive uprising on the part of the taxpayers who say, 'Enough is enough,'" Haulk said. "That hasn't happened yet."

The teachers' union has used the threat of strikes and the willingness to walk off the job as bargaining tools to hold the state's 501 school districts hostage to its demands. School districts don't have much leverage in the bargaining process, which is one reason property taxes are so high. The teachers get pay raises and top-of-the-line benefits, including lifetime pensions, all paid by the Pennsylvania taxpayer.

It's time to level the playing field by taking away the teachers' ability to strike.

Let your state lawmaker know that your vote is what keeps him or her on the job, not the payoff money they get from the teachers' union.