You could offer teachers a 401K contribution of $20,000 a year on top of their salary and the unions will still shoot it down.
Two reasons :
1> The union leaders can’t control pension money. They’d never have an opportunity to get their filthy hands on it. Their #1 source of “side income” would be lost. Pension funds are *the* reason why these scummy parasites LOVE being in charge of a union. The dues are nothing compared to the fees associated with managing a pension fund.
2> The teachers are trained to believe that the only path to retirement is through the union (via the taxpayers of course). I’ve discussed this MANY times with teachers ... each and every one turned into a screaming lunatic upon hearing about pension alternatives.
Taxpayers, in the long run, would be better off if we’d give teachers a crazy annual 401K contribution on top of their salary ... the salary is a one time charge that’s easy to budget.
The open-ended number of years a pension is drawn is impossible to budget/project. If the retirement money could be a fixed, annual cost, I think you’d see things shape up quickly.
Sorry ... 1> Can’t control 401K money ... :-)
“I’ve discussed this MANY times with teachers ... each and every one turned into a screaming lunatic upon hearing about pension alternatives.”
The hysteria in those conversations should convince the most stalwart defenders of public school teachers that they are in fact enemies of American taxpayers. Here in NJ they are an incestuous lot, marrying within their own ranks or some other public sector employees (cops refer to them as “holster-sniffers”); they are so far removed from the everyday drudgery of the taxpayers required to support them that they have lost public support (one of Governor Christie’s major accomplishments here - exposing them for the upper middle class parasites they are).
The debate ended in NJ when the Asbury Park Press released the salaries of every public school teacher in NJ years ago; you could look up their salaries and see that people crying poverty were being paid $85K annually for 180 days of work, 6.5 hours per day...and without getting results on top of that.