There is something hopeless wrong when the highest paid
teachers in the country run the worst school system with the shortest numbers
of hours and demand big raises and no accountability whatsoever.
Missing from the Union’s chants to bring down the Mayor, during the recent strike, was
the question “Are we creating value for our (little) Customers?”. In a school
system that is funded to the hilt, with an average wage roughly $20,000 per
year higher than the national average, should the discussion really be focused
on teacher wages and the lowest level of accountability possible?
As a union, when you divorce yourself completely from the outcome and focus on “Me, me, me and me!” you will find that your Customer then finds themselves irretrievably and irreconcilably on the path to removing you from the discourse. You have become an entity that is utterly and completely oblivious to reality of the situation.
As a union, when you divorce yourself completely from the outcome and focus on “Me, me, me and me!” you will find that your Customer then finds themselves irretrievably and irreconcilably on the path to removing you from the discourse. You have become an entity that is utterly and completely oblivious to reality of the situation.
In this case, the reality is the slow but study decline in
student enrollment across the spectrum in Chicago. Parents like me ask, “Do I really want
my kids to see any part of the Chicago Public School system” as they slowly but
surely (like me) migrate to the suburbs. And when they do that, they ask the
question “While I am at it, should I move out of the state as well?”. And, for
the decades the answer has been yes, as Illinois (despite all the immigrants
moving in) loses net population on a daily basis.
I don’t have a single friend that has any kids enrolled in a
standard Chicago Public School. Either they are in private schools or magnate
schools. Some pay the privilege of paying upwards of $40,000 per year for their
children’s private education.
I had a an employee come to me the other day and ask
“Why don’t you propose Solution X. The Customer will pay for
it”.
“Because”, I answered, “It does not make sense for the
Customer”.
“But they will pay for it. There is money on the table
Sanjiv!”
Because, Solution X does not create value for this Customer.
And if they buy something that does not create value for them, they will
ultimately not be able to pay for it. And then, one day, they will ask
themselves, “Can I do this cheaper elsewhere?” rather than asking the question
“Can Sanjiv help us create more value out of what we have?”.
If I was running the union, I would go out of my way to let
the world know that I was committed to getting rid of the lousy teachers
because they give the union a bad name. I would even forgo the pay increase and
would likely even agree to the extra hours because I was already one of the
highest paid union in the country. Then, I would negotiate an agreement that
contained an element of job security.
The Mayor would probably give me the job security.
Now, the Union has set itself up on a path of serious and
severe school closures followed by massive layoffs, and raises that are likely
to get cancelled – as they have in the past.
If the Teamsters helped GM create value by maximizing
productivity, one day they would be standing next to the CEO of GM and hear him
tell the world that the Union was indispensable to the job and he was working
hard to ensure they stayed around. Instead it’s an “us vs. them” war (a word the union likes to use a lot) and it’s a
war that the money wins every single time. It may take decades, but money
always finds a way of getting a choice. For Chicago parents, that choice could
be (and increasingly is) the State of Texas.
And the savings I find my Customers? They find a way to
spend that and more on us.
