Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

No doubt you’re aware that Hostess, the makers of the pseudo-food guilty pleasures we have all enjoyed, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

While the Sno-Balls will keep rolling downhill for the foreseeable future, Hostess is looking for a way out of its “unsustainable cost structure,” which is finance-speak for its labor union obligations. The company’s largest debt – $944 million – is owed to the bakery and confectionary union pension fund. Last year, Hostess paid $52 million in workers compensation. Since 83% of the company’s 19,000 employees are unionized – far more than the industry average - it appears at the very least that layoffs and benefit cuts to union jobs are looming.

We can all join forces to save these jobs. Not only can we buy Twinkies ourselves, but we can stop trying to get kids to eat edamame as a school snack and hook them on Ding Dongs and Ho Hos. If Hostess was good enough for my generation, it should be good enough for them.

In the state of Hawaii, there is an ongoing political and legal battle that involves a Presidential initiative, the role of federalism, a governor imposing a settlement on the teachers’ union, performance pay, teacher evaluations, pay cuts, and the fate of $72 million in grant money.

What’s fascinating is that there isn’t a single Republican involved in any of it.

Members of the Hawaii State Teachers Association voted down by a 2-to-1 margin a collective bargaining agreement designed to address not only the state’s budgetary needs, but the requirements of the federal Race to the Top program, for which the state had been awarded $75 million. The result came as something of a shock to the HSTA leadership, which had unanimously approved the proposed agreement.

Katherine Poythress of Honolulu Civil Beat has had this story thoroughly covered, and has the best compilation of reasons why the proposal was defeated. It’s worrisome that the teachers quoted would not speak on the record because they “feared retaliation.”

Hawaii teachers have a number of options open to them now. They can return to the negotiating table, strike, abide by the contract imposed by Gov. Neil Abercrombie, or continue with a legal challenge to the imposed contract. What isn’t clear is how Race to the Top can be accommodated in the wake of this rejection. Certainly the U.S. Department of Education can bend and interpret any subsequent agreement in Hawaii so that the requirements seem to be met. But it will set a bad precedent for the other states who battled through similar difficulties for their Race to the Top funds.

Did you know that the Buffalo school district pays for elective plastic surgery for its teachers?

Yes, you did.

So the unions have turned in one million signatures in an effort to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, and four Republican state senators. Evidence from Ohio would suggest that at least one-quarter of those are invalid.

It is best to assume that a recall election will go forward. If 46 percent of the signatures gathered turned out to be invalid, it would be one of the biggest political stories of the last 10 years, and would incite a revolution in ballot initiative elections across the country. One of the most contentious political and legal battles in Wisconsin is over its voter ID law. Imagine the uproar if you had to identify yourself to sign a recall petition. But up to 450.000 of those signatures could be invalid and no one will care.

I wouldn’t attempt to predict how this will all turn out, but I do believe that both sides benefit when voters are asked to decide on the true issue, rather than the focus-group, opinion-poll-tested pseudo-issue. Which do you prefer: Gov. Walker’s policies or the unions’? If the unions are chosen, they deserve to win and reap the rewards of victory. After all, union money paid to gather those signatures, union manpower will run the campaigns, and the unions are even picking the opposing candidates.

However, it appears the unions aren’t all that confident in that approach. Time reports:

If the signature-gathering effort is any indication, Wisconsin Democrats want to make the recall debate about Walker’s cuts to the social safety net, not the collective bargaining restrictions that launched mass union protests and a spate of senate recall votes last year. Shiver’s hard-luck story was exactly the kind of cautionary tale Shilts was telling to residents last Thursday. Shilts is a member of a teachers union, but his pitches didn’t stray into labor politics.

If Gov. Walker and his colleagues are to survive, they better do more than stray into labor politics. They have to march through it in force.

Click here to read:

1) NEA Members Support Obama, Think Romney Is Best GOP Candidate

2) Last Week’s Intercepts

3) Quote of the Week

I’m speechless.

“Both sides ignore this fact: The classroom performance of beginning Teach For America instructors is about the same as that of education school graduates just starting out. On average, both do poorly. More supervision and support would help both groups. How does aggravating the feud make that happen?”