Facing huge public support for fixing New York’s corrosive, seniority-based teacher-layoff law, state AFL- CIO President Denis Hughes yesterday tried desperately to change the subject.
“This bill is a blatant assault on the principles of collective bargaining,” he huffed, referring to a measure the Senate may soon vote on to let city schoolkids keep their best teachers if budget-driven layoffs proceed.
“I want to make it abundantly clear to our elected officials that they cannot use the Wisconsin model of politics here in New York.”
Now, Hughes is a solid guy — but this is a silly argument.
For one thing, the unions never hesitate to suborn the Legislature when it suits their purposes. When the United Federation of Teachers wanted test scores excluded from tenure decisions back in 2008, for example, it didn’t bargain.
It got the lawmakers to do the job.
For another, teachers are forever going on about what “professionals” they are, but when it comes to being treated as such, suddenly it’s as if they’re on an industrial-union assembly line, stamping out car parts instead of educating kids.
But kids aren’t widgets.
Which is precisely why seniority-based layoffs — mandated by the state’s “Last-in, first-out” law — need to go.
Ending LIFO has nothing to do with the dismantling of collective-bargaining rights — and Hughes knows it.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. John Flanagan (R-LI), merely seeks to amend layoff laws to protect kids from losing top teachers who lack seniority to losers who’ve just been around for a long time.
There are many safeguards in the bill — in a nutshell, new teachers who don’t measure up would be out, too.
A vote could come today, and passage would shift focus to the Assembly, which takes its orders from the teachers unions.
That’s why it’s critical that Gov. Cuomo get on board, amending his proposed budget to incorporate the Flanagan bill. That would give it a huge parliamentary advantage and virtually assure its adoption.
But he has only until Thursday to do that.
A Quinnipiac University poll reported last week that 85 percent of New Yorkers want LIFO gone.
They get it.
Here’s hoping Cuomo does, too.