The attacks keep on coming

America thrives on competition. We love it when the outcome hangs in the balance. The Super Bowl is almost a national holiday. We surround it with parties and betting. Court TV is a guilty pleasure for millions. Local, statewide, and national elections earn attention. We need to see the outcome, but we want the competition to be fair.

Iowa Senate Study Bill 3158 takes away competition while crippling public sector unions and once again attacking public schools.

In 2017, Republican legislators gutted the 40-year-old public sector collective bargaining law. The changes tilted the bargaining table so much toward management, real problem-solving slipped off the table, causing competitive contract settlements to evaporate. It accelerated the teacher shortage, and it sent the message Iowa educators weren’t valued.

In the effort to obliterate public sector unions, they forced recertification elections yearly. All employees eligible for the bargaining unit could vote. To stack the deck further, those not voting were recorded as a “No vote.”

But it didn’t work.

They didn’t count on educators and other public sector workers supporting union representation at a 98% level.

So now in 2024, comes another anti-competition, grossly unfair bill targeting both unions and public schools. Senate Study Bill 3158 would force a public sector union to go to court if the employer refuses to provide the state with a list of eligible employees for the recertification election. If the union doesn’t respond through court, it would be decertified.

It's unfair and expensive.

On the surface, this is bill may be an easy vote for Republicans. After all, being anti-union is part of Republican gospel. But it also puts public schools in jeopardy. The hard-core base may rejoice, but for many Iowans this bill has the unintended consequence of harming their beloved public school.

That pesky law of unintended consequences is front and center. It’s the one where you throw a rock at your enemy, miss, and end up shattering the window of your friend. This law is devastating to public schools, especially rural public schools. Here are a few of those unintended consequences.

• Having a union allows for collective problem solving.

Without some formal or informal agreement about how salaries and benefits are determined, each educator would need to decide what salary and benefit package he/she wanted and bargain individually. Not only is this an unfair system, but it’s also time consuming and fraught with inconsistency. It would quickly devolve into chaos and turn the clock back to a time where men were paid more than women and often the football coach was the highest paid teacher.

Yes, the school district administration could get a collective agreement without a formal union. But good luck getting that agreement if the district knifes the employees refusing to even let a union vote take place.

• Morale matters.

If a school district kills the union using this law, I’m pretty sure it will further destroy the employee/employer relationship and create a hostile place to work.

In this market, educators have a choice of where to teach. I think they’ll choose a place with a positive employer/employee atmosphere. It won’t be a secret.

• The public school is often the biggest employer.

Eliminating the union will further stagnate wages, hurting economic activity in rural towns. Teachers understand they won’t get rich teaching, but they’ll look for other opportunities if there’s no pay increases in their future.

Iowa needs to once again be a place to grow. For that to be real, unfair laws like this hurting public schools and public sector unions need to die.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City, taught in public schools for 11 years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association Regional Director for 27 years until retiring. BruceLear2419@gmail.com