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What this is saying is that workplaces where the employees have more power are more likely to be cautious about returning to work during a pandemic. That makes

• olliej 5y ago
  Yeah - given the option workers would rather not risk their health for minimal pay, in the absence of an option (or the ability to say no on mass) workers do not “choose” to return to on premise employment they are forced to.
• civilized 5y ago
  • rootusrootus 5y ago
    > Public sector employees don't get to suck up my tax dollars and then only work if they feel like it. Does your position on this extend to police unions?
    • nradov 5y ago
      Yes. All public employee unions including police should be decertified. If they want better pay or working conditions then they should ask their elected politicians just like any other citizen.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    • civilized 5y ago
      If someone wants to work out the logistics of "charter police" I'll hear them out, but right now the option doesn't exist.
      • Spooky23 5y ago
        They do actually! https://www.postandcourier.com/archives/s-c-s-hired-guns/article_172cbe74-5f67-5c93-aeb9-7cb117ab8270.html https://www.postandcourier.com/archives/s-c-s-hired-guns/art...
      • ethbr0 5y ago
        Private security?
        • HarryHirsch 5y ago
          Autodefensas against the Knights Templar^W^Wpolice of Brookside, AL? Count me in!
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    • StanislavPetrov 5y ago
      I'm not the op, but it certainly does for me. I'm a strong supporter of unions and a strong opponent of public sector unions. Private sector unions are a critical counterweight to the power that private employers have over their employees. Taxpayers are the employers of public sector employees, which makes public sector unions nothing but political lobbying organizations.
      • rootusrootus 5y ago
        I think that's a valid opinion. But I also appreciate that in some regards the public is the most fickle of employers, the most punitive, the most likely to use their power for evil. If we want to attract well qualified people to work for the public, we need to offer something -- at this time it isn't salary, for sure, so I guess it must be the stability provided by the union representation.
        • StanislavPetrov 5y ago
          Most public sector workers have benefits, pensions, paid time off and a variety of other means of compensation aside from their salaries - unlike many private sector workers. All of them have the opportunity to vote for the politicians who come up with the policies that govern their public sector jobs. They are also free to form their own associations, coalitions and lobbying groups to further influence whoever they want in their capacity as private citizens. But when it comes to collective bargaining and other, specific legislated rights we have legally granted unions, it is a bridge too far.
          • rootusrootus 5y ago
            I have indirect personal experience with what it's like to be a public employee. My own mother worked for the local community college for most of her career. She went for many years without any raise, instead the politicians improved the retirement perks. So she stuck with it. Just before it was time for her to retire, the voters made a serious attempt to destroy the retirement system for public employees, nevermind all the promises made over the years in lieu of actual cost-of-living increases. Luckily, they failed to destroy her retirement. With her pension along with social security she is comfortable enough. Nobody's ever going to call her wealthy, not even close, but voters would have stripped her of that pension and made her scrape by on social security. It's easy to hate on public employees, but I don't think they automatically deserve fewer protections than private company employees enjoy.
    • cplusplusfellow 5y ago
      Why would you assume it doesn’t?
      • rootusrootus 5y ago
        It was a question. The literal opposite of an assumption.
      • Wiseacre 5y ago
        It was a question not an assumption. And it pointed out the hypocritical attitude about unions.
        • gweinberg 5y ago
          Obviously if it as a question it didn't point out anything. That you think it does indicates it looked like a rhetorical question, not a real one.
    • sgustard 5y ago
      Police are an interesting counterpoint, since police are one of the most vaccine-resistent groups. I'd like to see a similar study: do we see the stronger the police union, the lower the vaccination rate? Is there any argument outside the union that refusing the vaccine provides any benefit to the public, or only harm?
  • mdoms 5y ago
    Private schools exist.
    • loudtieblahblah 5y ago
      they do, but i pay taxes for public schools then have to pay extra for private school, ontop of that tax. i actually send my kid to private. for alot of reasons. it costs me 16k a year. itd be super nice if i could redirect the tax money intended for my child to the school of my choice.
      • swasheck 5y ago
        i hear this argument a lot (see what i did there?) and it makes some sense. however, i’d like for people to step back and consider education as something more than a commodity. an educated society seems like a healthier society across all dimensions.
      • RHSeeger 5y ago
        But you're not paying taxes to send your children to school. You're paying taxes so we, as a society, can educate our children. The way we do that is public schools. The money you pay for school taxes is in no way tied to your children, or even whether or not you have children. People who don't have children also pay taxes because, as noted, we're funding for society to educate all children. I am 100% against the idea of parents being able to redirect the money they pay in school taxes to private schools. There are a number of things that should be communally paid for, with everyone contributing whether they need it right now or not; education is one of those things in my opinion. Police, Fire Departments, etc are also in that category; you _can_ have them be individually contracted, but it's a bad idea.
        • loudtieblahblah 5y ago
          between conservative revisionists, woke indoctrinators, bored resource officers looking to make minor situations a legal issue, politicians pushing standardized tests then making schools essentially teach to the test (which i could rant for hours about), all the bad teachers who sit aroubd collecting paychecks bc its too hard to fire them, our schools are a f-ing dumpster fire. i want to believe in the public instituion.. but its been ripped up by conservatives, liberals, unions, beaucrats of all kinds, crime, over the top fear responses to crime, and system that acts more out of the protecting itself from legal liability than by a system actually good for kids - with moronic zero tolerance polices and policies that punishes self defense. its a lost cause. and the public funds should follow the kid. if public schools cant compete and have to close ? then good. schools are rotten from the inside out and are beyond fixing. school boards are ran by motivated, bored assholes with too much free time on their hands and unhealthy obsessions with trendy political agendas. This will force public schools to compete with what parents actually want for their kids. If public schools can't attract the funds with making moronic policy, then it's gutted. If they respond to parental demand, then they stay alive and vital. But as it stands, most parents are pretty helpless against shitty policy. Schools choice adds some democracy into the situation where beucracy, unions and politicians have eroded it. I'm done being invested in the noble idea of the institution. Reality is reality. And public schools are shit holes. I'm still advocating we educate all children. I just advocate that the money follows the kid and that the state and teachers union don't get a monopoly control of it.
  • amatecha 5y ago
    "suck up your tax dollars"? Ask any public education worker you might know, just how much they get paid. They are grossly underpaid for the societally-important work they do. Further, they absolutely did not take on the job knowing they were going to be risking catching a wildly-infectious deadly disease. Also, no one's talking about "only work when they feel like it", and your disingenuous reframing of not wanting to die from a preventable illness is insulting at best. There's little reason to force in-person teaching when infection rates are at sky-high levels. Them being paid by tax dollars doesn't mean they don't deserve a safe workplace. Think empathically about what you say before you post it next time.
    • civilized 5y ago
      Interesting how empathy only goes one way with you. Good luck with that. (Nevermind that COVID is no longer an unusual hazard to the fully vaccinated, and everyone has had the opportunity to be fully vaccinated for many months now.)
      • neetle 5y ago
        Honestly sounds like the pot calling the kettle black here. You're asking hundreds of people to put their health at risk so that ~2c of every tax dollar you pay isn't wasted. Assuming $100k in tax, you're only paying them $2k, or ~$40 a week. If you really value your daily coffee that much, just buy a coffee machine.
        • civilized 5y ago
          Completely made-up tax numbers aside, such strong opinions about the disposable income of strangers and what they should do with it! Sorry, I'm passing on this offer. Don't call back. Thanks.
          • profile53 5y ago
            Please be kind. The topic is worth debate but your comments are crossing a line and come across rather hostile. I’m not a mod, but as a friendly reminder regarding site rules: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
  • dang 5y ago
    You started a flamewar with this post and then hellishly perpetuated it, numerous times. We ban accounts that do that. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and not do anything of this sort on HN again, we'd appreciate it. It's also in your interest, since the primary effect of posting like this on the fair-minded, persuadable part of the audience is to completely discredit the view that you're arguing for. That's a very poor trade for a little venting, and it's particularly harmful if your view happens to be true (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=truth%20discredit%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). Edit: we've had to ask you this kind of thing more than once before. I don't want to ban you, but we need this to stop happening, so please stop doing it.
• dahdum 5y ago
  Unless teachers are somehow very different than the rest of us, regardless of the pandemic, a significant percentage have discovered they prefer to work from home. Those with powerful unions can drag the process of returning far longer than those without.
  • chii 5y ago
    > they prefer to work from home. that's probably true, but what about the students? The learning outcomes of a lesson over zoom seems to be not so good imho. The kids missing social aspects of school can't be good for them either. Their interests needs to be represented here, and seems like it's not.
    • ryandrake 5y ago
      Anecdote, sample size = 1, but my third grader constantly complains about return to physical school, now that she got a taste of School From Home. Everything she loves is online now, her friends, Roblox, Minecraft, and so on, so she just thinks it's pointless and unfair to have to sit in a classroom. "It's not fair that dad gets to work from home and I have to go to in person school!" I can't argue because her school performance and grades improved remarkably during the pandemic.
  • throwoutway 5y ago
    So are schools primarily an employment vehicle for teachers? I thought they should care about student outcomes more
  • jfengel 5y ago
    Most teachers don't seem to particularly like working from home. They became teachers because they like working with children. They can't do that as effectively at the other end of a screen. Most teachers I know want to get back to the classroom. They just don't want to risk their lives for it. They are often older and often have co-morbidities that put them at serious risk from COVID. So they're not dragging it out to escape work. Unlike "the rest of us", working from home isn't an opportunity to slack off without the boss watching. They often work even harder. They being cautious because they don't want to die.
• zephrx1111 5y ago
  No. It is saying service providers that control the market are more intended to provide poor services, or even deny their duties, no matter how badly the service receivers need.
• coolso 5y ago
  Are you sure it’s saying that and not “teachers were one of the demographics that did most of the screeching and admonishing on the internet about masks, vaccines, and mandates these past 2+ years, and refused to go back to work until the COVID and vaccine situation improved, but now that basically everyone is vaccinated and the risk to the vaccinated has been near-nil for over a year now, and everyone has been shopping and meeting and eating and living life in public for quite some time now, teachers would still rather stay at home and teach virtually (while not on their 3-month-long summer vacation) while simultaneously claiming they honestly want what’s best for the kids and that they’re not being paid enough for such difficult, demanding work.”