Dear Governor Walker

Dear Governor Walker,

I have been following with interest the growing protests in your state
as you attempt to strip unions of their collective bargaining rights.
It's interesting in part because of the culture around it.

I regularly discuss education issues with teachers in the U.S. The
ones from Wisconsin are generally among the best-read, best-trained,
and best-supported. They offer a quality education to their students
which is unfortunately not the norm in the United States. Part of the
reason they can offer that education to their students is the support
of their union. It's interesting to note that the five states where
collective bargaining is illegal are also quite far down in the
rankings when it comes to the quality of their public education, while
the states with strong unions are near the top of the rankings.

When a workplace has good management, the purpose of the union is to
work smoothly to address issues the management, from their different
perspective, may not see the same way as the workers themselves. But
when management is uncaring, cavalier, or just plain incompetent, the
role of the union is vital to the ability of the workers to do their
jobs. They can focus on teaching because they know that if something
goes wrong, it's not them against the school board hierarchy. A
teacher's working conditions are a student's learning conditions; do
you really want your state's children taught by angry, disillusioned
people who are looking to retrain and change careers as soon as
possible?

I sympathise with your budget issues. Everyone has them. Perhaps
asking the people who have good jobs to pay a little bit more would
alleviate that, better than asking the people who are just barely
getting by to take a 10% pay cut.

You're not doing what's right. You're attacking educators because you
have an ideological beef with unions, and in the process you are
undermining the public education on which the children of your state
rely.

The world is watching. Take their (in my opinion, overly generous)
concessions and leave them the right to bargain collectively.

Sincerely,

Velvetpage
Teacher
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada