Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Adminstering Austerity

Lots of people like to blame teachers for the problems of our schools. Many times this blaming uses the size of their salaries and pensions as evidence for their perfidy. Indeed, the conviction that teachers and other public employees were raking it in lay behind the latest Republican efforts at the politics of resentment. No less a person than the very embodiment of the banality of evil was banally and inaccurately pointing to our brokeness as the justification for robbing teachers and other public employees of god knows how much money. Lots of folks argue that this was an attempt to destroy one of the last decent paying jobs for the American working class. They'd be right.

But it was also a continuation of the long-standing Neoliberal desire to transfer salary and wealth from the workers to the relatively parasitic managerial class. For today we read in the WSJ of administrators two of whom
 received an increase of $20,000 or more, and six received an increase of $10,000 or more. Two administrators also were promoted and received increases of $20,000 or more. Administrators receiving raises saw the increase as of January, and that base rate will be frozen for the 2011-12 school year.
So its layoffs, furloughs, and wage cuts for the workers while the administrators' salaries continue to go up. Let's hear it for austerity.

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