Shocker: Non-Unionized Schools Coping Better With Budget Cuts

Because, with an absence of rigid labor contracts that make personnel overhead an inelastic expense, public schools are often forced to cut costs by outright firing teachers (or laying off non-union support staff) instead of cutting back on pay and benefits.

Like all California public schools, Our Community School in North Hills has felt the sting of state budget cuts.
But after laying off three teacher assistants and canceling a popular dance program at the charter school, Principal Chris Ferris decided to approach her staff with a question:
Do you want to keep free health-care benefits or keep more teachers?
For many educators, the fact that charter schools like Our Community can even ask these tough questions puts them in a stronger position to weather the financial storm.
Free from rigid union contracts, able to make spending decisions at the school-site level and continuing to see enrollment growth, charter schools can run their campuses like small businesses. At a time when the Los Angeles Unified School District faces layoffs of some 8,500 people and is dismantling popular programs to cut costs, some charter schools are actually hiring teachers.
“Charter schools have an opportunity in this situation to act with far more agility than traditional schools,” said Jed Wallace, CEO of the California Charter School Association.

This same lesson can be applied to just about any industry that’s unionized. Unions inflate labor costs, and thus put the businesses they target at a competitive disadvantage. Nationally, industries targeted by unions have either seen major outsourcing to more friendly labor environments or abject failure (*cough*General Motors*cough*). Businesses not saddled with unions are better able to adapt to changing market and economic conditions. And thus, they survive better.
Unions have survived in schools, and government in general, because public schools and government is an effective monopoly. But nationally, unionization is way down and that’s for good reason.