They convinced the School District to give them a lusty pay raise, which they said finally elevated them past the social status of West Virginia coal miners.

 

      Just when it looked as if they had won a pastry-sweet deal, the unionists balked. This time it was over the School District’s refusal to pay retiree health benefits to teachers hired after July 1. The District’s  explanation, increasingly common among employers, is that the proposition has grown too expensive. Every sane company in America will testify to the veracity of that statement.

      Unionists would have us believe the welfare of their families is inextricably tied to the well-being of teachers hired after July 1, that Culver City will be plastered with a cheapskate reputation and be unable to hire desirable teachers.

      They tell us they will leap out of a careening aircraft to save a fellow unionist whom they never have met.

      It is very generous of unionists to subscribe to this philosophy, even if I don’t believe one breath of it.

Modern unionists and modern academics, to coin a grouping, sup the same dreamy concoction. They became divorced from the realities of our world years ago. The two cohorts lead parallel lives, deep in the fantasy-ridden bowels of Disneyland.

      Let us engage in a miniature test. Supposedly, the noble ladies and gentlemen of the Teachers Union will forego luxuries, undreamed-of comforts — and a five percent pay raise — for their families to stand foursquare for the rights of nameless, blank-faced future co-workers. What if these  future co-workers turn out to be charlatans, pedophiles or even lousy educators?

      How can they surrender proffered riches out of a bizarre, un-natural fealty to unmet strangers while former teachers, with whom they do have relationships, languish on skinny, limited incomes?

 
Here Comes the Groom

 

      For those wretches among us who have been to the altar more than once or twice, we have been slugged over the keppe a few times with the (sometimes true) accusation that we care more about strangers than we do about those who love us.

      If the leaders of the Teachers Union cared as much about financially struggling retired teachers as they do about strangers in the bloom of life, I could empathize with them.

      Have any Teachers Union leaders checked out contract settlements for other unions? Because of exorbitant health care costs, new hires won’t receive the cushy treatment of spoiled unionists.

Realities change, boys.

      Last week at the Democratic Club meeting, Teachers Union President Dave Mielke asserted critically that Geoff Maleman is earning $45,000 a year as the part-time publicist for the School District.

Somewhere inside the iron mindset of union leaders is the notion that everyone should be paid the same wage, that we who are ambitious should take home the same paycheck as you who believe that rest and slow pacing leads to long life.

      As for Mr. Maleman, may I note that he is about one-sixth of my age, that I would be thrilled to earn one-sixth of his annual income, and I don’t because, deeply as I dig, I find I possess only one-sixth of the talent he is gifted with.

      Mr. Maleman is the wrong person to pick on.

      World-class at his trade, he probably is worth the salary of the two highest paid, most productive fulltime teachers. He draws a huge swath of favorable attention to the School District. In the months that Mr. Maleman was off the payroll, the District disappeared.

      At last week’s conclave, Asst. Supt. David El Fattal announced that two teachers made more than $100,000 last year and ten percent of teachers were paid more than $80,000.

      The pay scale in Culver City ranges from  $38,000 to $74,000. Teachers only have to buy some of their clothes from the 99-Cent Store.

 
Wave Goodbye to Reality

 

      The School District is not going to recede into intellectual default if teachers hired after July 1 don’t receive retiree health benefits. This is equivalent to pledging that you are not going to drive if you have to pay more than $2.50 for a gallon of gas.

      I am amused by the ostensibly pious but entirely suspicious morality of the most strident unionists.

      They double their fists, they clear their throats and they raise their arms as high as they can reach without suffering detachment. With a thundering jolt, they pound their beefy clutches onto the unyielding mahogany of the table, all the while bellowing, “By Jove, we aren’t going to accept this insult.”

      Like tearful little girls, the four intimidated walls quaver in unison.

      When the unionists finally gain the pay raise they say they have been denied for four or five years, they find something else wrong with the proffered contract.

      It is a classic lesson in union shell-game posturing.

      Remember a few months ago when Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger and other celebrities sympathetically marched with teachers before the start of school every morning?

      Now they have the money they say they desperately deserve, and they don’t know what to do. How can you live and work without berating your employer?

      Following months of jagged-ended complaints by teachers that they would have to put their grammar-school-aged children to work in bloody factories every day at four a.m., starting Friday, the prospect of peace was too frightening.

      Retroactive to a year and a half ago, the Teachers Union has been offered a cumulative five percent boost.