Politics, Economics and other Stuff

Teacher Absences

Alex Tabarrok writes:

Yesterday I looked at teacher absence in the developing world, highlighting India where a quarter of teachers may be absent on a given day.  Teacher absence isn't that high in the United States but it is still shockingly high.  On a typical school day, 5-6% of teachers are absent, i.e. an absence once every 20 days!

Bearing in mind that the typical school year is 180 days, add absences to all the school holidays, teacher workdays, staff development days (btw, ever seen a Walmart shutdown for a staff development day?), and other non-teaching days (e.g. in Fairfax, Mondays are half-days) and the number of days of true teaching greatly diminishes.   

Teachers probably do get sick more often than other workers but teacher absence rates are three times higher than for managers and professional employees in the private sector.  Moreover, are you surprised to learn that teacher absences are most frequent on Mondays and Fridays or that teacher absences are of a duration just short of that requiring medical certification of illness?

Finally, teacher absences reduce student achievement both in the United States and in the developing world. 

Yesterday I looked at teacher absence in the developing world, highlighting India where a quarter of teachers may be absent on a given day.  Teacher absence isn't that high in the United States but it is still shockingly high.  On a typical school day, 5-6% of teachers are absent, i.e. an absence once every 20 days!

Bearing in mind that the typical school year is 180 days, add absences to all the school holidays, teacher workdays, staff development days (btw, ever seen a Walmart shutdown for a staff development day?), and other non-teaching days (e.g. in Fairfax, Mondays are half-days) and the number of days of true teaching greatly diminishes.   

Teachers probably do get sick more often than other workers but teacher absence rates are three times higher than for managers and professional employees in the private sector.  Moreover, are you surprised to learn that teacher absences are most frequent on Mondays and Fridays or that teacher absences are of a duration just short of that requiring medical certification of illness?

Finally, teacher absences reduce student achievement both in the United States and in the developing world. 

Card Check Update

snark via Kaus:

Workers at Boeing factory vote to un-unionize. By secret ballot. ... Because when it comes to decertifying unions, union lobbyists insist on the sanctity of the secret ballot. ...

So why do unions get decertified in the US?  Not a close vote here either, 199 out of 267 for decertification. 

Barry Bluestone says public sector unions are behaving badly

Barry Bluestone is one of the more pro-union academics of the last 25 years and a cofounder of  the Economic Policy Institute, an outfit that puts out titles like 'How unions help all workers' or 'How Unions Can Help Restore the Middle Class.'  In today's Boston Globe, Bluestone wrote something I didn't expect to see when I started reading:

Today, less than 14 percent of US workers are members of unions, down from 35 percent in 1955. With membership so low, private-sector unions have lost much of their power and the nation is losing a major force for progressive change.

Will public-sector unions follow the same path? Nationwide, these unions represent over 35 percent of federal, state, and local employees, roughly the same as in 1980. Over the years, they have won improved wages and benefits for their members. Yet the leaders of many of these unions, particularly in Massachusetts, seem to be setting the stage for the same kind of deterioration we see in unions like the UAW.

Teachers unions refuse to make changes in work practices that could help improve the chances of children succeeding in school. Police unions fight against lowering the cost of details at construction sites. The MBTA union and others representing transport workers lobby vociferously against reforming the state’s transportation system. Municipal unions refuse to permit their local communities to join the Group Insurance Commission that would save their towns millions without compromising the quality of their members’ medical care.

As a result, between 2000 and 2008, the price of state and local public services has increased by 41 percent nationally compared with 27 percent in private services. Even in the face of the worst fiscal crisis in decades, many state and local union leaders refuse to consider a wage freeze that could help preserve more of their members’ jobs.

Such action is rapidly losing the support public-sector unions need to survive. Union leaders may think that by working diligently to elect friendly public officials, they can fend off the day of reckoning. But that day is fast approaching. Citizens, and ultimately their elected representatives, will increasingly object to tax increases to pay for what they see as bloated union contracts and poor public service.

Sensing the public’s demand for reform, Governor Patrick and the Legislature have already passed pension and transportation measures opposed by union leaders, and Mayor Menino and Governor Patrick favor an expansion in the number of charter schools.

Ultimately, new ways will be found to provide public services to circumvent public unions. Non-union charter schools will proliferate, not to reduce teachers’ salaries or benefits but to avoid a plethora of work rules that make school reform difficult. Public services will be privatized with private contractors hired to pick up trash (in addition to recycling), to guard prisoners, and perhaps even to fight fires. Public highways may be sold off. The result: public-sector unions will see their memberships and their influence decline.

This will be a tragedy. To move in a different direction, we need to think about a new “grand bargain’’ between public-sector unions and government. Union leaders in the state need to consider ways to work collaboratively with public officials so as to offer quality public services at a reasonable cost to the taxpayer while preserving union jobs for their members.

I assume there is some context here that explains why Bluestone is writing this, but I don't know what it is. 

High Turnover Firms do more of the hiring in recessions

Lisa B. Kahn, Job Durations, Match Quality and the Business Cycle: What We Can Learn from Firm Fixed Effects

This paper seeks to determine how employer-employee match quality varies with economic conditions at the start of the employment relationship. During a recession, workers have fewer outside options so may be willing to accept worse matches. Conversely, …firms make fewer hires so may feel pressure to only hire in cases of very good matches. A confounding factor is …firm heterogeneity; the types of …firms that hire in recessions may differ from the average …firm. In this paper, I exploit a unique, proprietary dataset consisting of pay records for the universe of employees for each of 150 …firms for a …five-year period. These fi…rms are large, mainly Fortune 500 companies with a wide degree of variation across industry and geographic location. As a proxy for match quality, I use length of the employment relationship. I …find that employment relationships end earlier when workers enter f…irms in worse economies. However, once …firm heterogeneity is taken into account, the effect of entering in a recession reverses; the employment relationship lasts longer. I …find that this effect can largely be accounted for by the fact that f…irms with higher turnover rates hire relatively more in recessions.

Which leads into a whole slew of interesting issues, with some papers that I ought to mention...

Card Check Dies

Since I have some past rants complaining about card check, I though it only fair to observe that card check has now died.  Time to move on to things that make sense.   Drum writes:

This shouldn't come as any surprise at this point, but Democrats have decided to drop card check from the Employee Free Choice Act.  It never had unanimous support within the Democratic caucus and Republicans were sure to filibuster it, so it had no chance of passing.

Now there is the cynical take here that card check was always intended as a polarizing bait to mobilize both unions and employers (with both sides of the issue taking credit: 'see, we tried' and 'see, we prevented this') not as a serious proposal to be passed as law.   

Past High Pay as a Cause of Future High Pay

One mechanism I've never seen worked out, though it may (?) be implicitly present in some models (like the Minnesota style limited commitment model of enterpreneurial financial contracting), is that high past pay may cause high future pay simply because it is more costly to provide incentive to high wealth agents.  You need to pay quite a bit to somebody who has already made $20 million and who has $10 million in the bank to make them care about the financial consequences of their actions.  Somebody who has made $1 million and has 100K in the bank is much easier to incentivize, even if otherwise the two agents are identical.  

Not sure if this is empirically important, but my guess is that it is.  Obviously it requires some market power and bargaining, but that arises naturally in most employment relations with specific investments in the relationship. 

Basically what I'm after is a simple model you can take to some data to see how important this effect is. 

California IOUs

The California IOU situation looks like it might get interesting.  Not clear to me how this institutional feature fits into the overall politics, economics and law of fiscal federalism in the US.  Just figuring out how the game is set up and played would be nice. 

Big Law Layoffs aka 'career guidance'

The language and style of the big law layoffs is noteworthy.  Above the Law reports:

A tipster reports:

I know of [several] associates and counsel that have been laid off at Wilmer in the past week. Many of the associates are 2-4 years, but the lay-offs reach up to the 6 year level. All of them were let go for "performance" reasons - but everyone that I've talked to has had nearly perfect evaluations....

The not so subtle indication we are getting from the firm is to tread lightly - find something else and leave quietly, and if [people] do that, they will get help, resources, support and references. I imagine the flipside of that is [squeaky wheels] will get a performance based dismissal to hang over their heads. ... People are just too scared to say anything in this economy. Of course, there is always the shame of thinking you've been let go for "performance" reasons that will keep people quiet as well.

As we understand it, these cuts have taken place in Washington D.C. and Boston. WilmerHale tells us that there have been no "layoffs."

"We have done no layoffs and we have no layoffs planned. Unlike many of the firms that have conducted layoffs, we did not go into the recession with highly leveraged practices that suddenly collapsed."

But whatever is going on at WilmerHale, the economy is playing a large role.

That said, many of our clients have been adversely affected by the recession and we therefore have seen a decline in demand for legal services in some practice areas. This does have consequences for how we manage attorneys, and economic considerations and demand for services do affect the career guidance we give lawyers, but we have not conducted layoffs and have no plans to do so.

And here comes the oxymoronic "openly stealth, non-layoffs, layoffs" part:

"What you may have heard also is that we have, over the past two years, developed a career advancement program, which is intended to give more meaningful career guidance to our associates, senior associates and counsel. As that program is implemented and mentors meet with associates and counsel, career messages are given which may lead over time to departures."

Obviously, our tipsters are getting the message that they have to depart the firm. The WilmerHale statement concludes with:

"The firm will continue to monitor economic conditions and client needs. As you may know, we have reviewed our budget and tightened it further, delayed the incoming associate start dates and created a deferral program, and we are not doing a significant amount of lateral hiring at this time. Performance reviews will continue to be held twice a year, during the spring and fall."

Despite the clarity of the WilmerHale response, there are lingering questions about WilmerHale's career messages. Above the Law has received conflicting reports about the amount of time WilmerHale associates have to find new jobs. Some people tell us they've been given two months, other people claim they have three. We asked WilmerHale to clarify the notice or severance given to associates. A spokesperson said:

"There is no one answer to this question because unlike a layoff, with bi-annual performance reviews messages to those who will need to transition out of the firm are individualized."

Regardless of what you want to call it, there are current WilmerHale associates who probably won't be there by the end of the summer. It's a tough message to receive in this economy. Good luck.

I had no idea physician assistants had such high incomes

The BLS reports that the 1,290 physician assistants in Connecticut have a mean annual income of $94,360 for 2008.  The 90th percentile for annual income is $121,330.  These are not registered nurses (of which CT has 35,730 with a mean annual income of $70,350). Also not to be confused with the 5,800 CT medical assistants with an average annual income of $33,670. 

So what is a physician assistant?  And why do they earn so much?  The educational and training requirements don't seem to call for this sort of salary. 

This would explain the physician assistant couple in our neighborhood that drives several fancy cars. 

Update #1: Yale Medical School has a physician assistant program that started in 1971.  They note:

We do not have a minimum score on any specific section of the GRE, but competitive applicants have overall scores above the 50th percentile. The mean verbal, quantitative and written scores for the Class of 2009 are 566, 690 and 4.6 respectively.

Which is around the 75th percentile for GRE scores (for all exams taken, not for grad students enrolled or graduated -- around 400,000 GRE exams are taken annually, more than the number of graduate students enrolling in graduate programs annually that require GRE exams -- but it would be nice to know how big and how selective the fall off is). 

Reporting without context

The PLOS website is down right now, which means I discovered that

Vandals cut fiber-optic cable lines belonging to AT&T and Sprint at two locations early today, knocking out landline and cellular phone service to thousands of residential customers and businesses in southern Santa Clara County, in Santa Cruz and San Benito counties and along the Peninsula, authorities said.

as reported by the SF Chronicle and other news organizations.  However, as far as I can tell from google news search, none of the 92 news posting on this event so far mention that AT&T is currently in tense labor negotiations with a strike looming (but not called).  I could see that nobody would like to speculate, but the news as reported leaves out context that is a part of the story. 

Outrage of the Day

The taz reports:

Sie hat einen Doktortitel, ist einfallsreich und kann unterhaltsame Geschichten aus ihrem Leben erzählen. Dr. phil. Nell Zink, 45, sucht dringend einen Ehemann. Einzige Bedingung: Er muss Deutscher sein, denn die US-amerikanische Übersetzerin mit Wohnort Tübingen muss sonst bald zurück in die USA. Das hat ihr die Ausländerbehörde der Stadt angedroht.

Schuld daran ist ihr Doktortitel, den hat die promovierte Medienwissenschaftlerin vor wenigen Monaten erhalten. Und eigentlich hatte sie sich darüber gefreut. Immerhin "cum laude". Doch dann kam das Ausländeramt.

Akademiker mit einem Doktortitel, so die Beamtenlogik, müssen in Tübingen mindestens dreitausend Euro im Monat verdienen, sonst gelten sie als nicht angemessen bezahlt. Und wer nicht angemessen bezahlt ist, erhält keine Verlängerung seiner Aufenthaltsberechtigung. Stempel, Punkt und fertig.

Nell Zink schlägt sich trotz ihrer Promotion mit Übersetzungen durch und lebt von rund eintausend Euro. Sie fährt Fahrrad und trinkt Leitungswasser, das machen viele in Tübingen so. Sogar der grüne Oberbürgermeister Boris Palmer.

An den musste Nell Zink sofort denken, als ihr der Sachbearbeiter in der Ausländerbehörde als einzig rettenden Ausweg zu einer Ehe mit einem deutschen Staatsbürger riet. Palmer ist unverheiratet, könnte noch ein wenig Englisch-Nachhilfe vertragen und will seiner Stadt ein menschenfreundliches Image verpassen. Perfekt.

"Sehr geehrter Herr Palmer", schrieb Nell Zink und schickte, um Missverständnissen vorzubeugen, gleich eine Kopie des Briefes an die Frauenbeauftragte der Stadt, "ich würde Sie gern bis Ende Juli 2009 heiraten." Dann entschuldigte sie sich dafür, dass ihr die Idee "Sex gegen Bleiberecht" nicht selbst gekommen war, und schränkt in dem Brief sofort ein: "Ich glaube echt nicht, dass die Behörde von uns sexuellen Kontakt verlangen würde - bloß die gemeinsame Wohnung. Ich bin schon 45 und habe nie so besonders gut ausgesehen, muss sogar z. Zt. eine Zahnspange tragen, also ist die Ehe aus freien Stücken für mich ungefähr so wahrscheinlich wie der dreitausend-Euro-Job." Der Brief endet mit den Worten: "Ja dann, ich freue mich auf Ihre Antwort!"

Aber Boris Palmer schwieg. Stattdessen kam das Fernsehen. Der SWR hatte Wind von der Sache bekommen, und nun hat Nell Zink ihren Heiratsantrag am Montag dieser Woche auch noch über den Sender verbreitet. Mit ihrem Problem ist sie nicht allein: Auch anderen promovierten Akademikern wird von der Tübinger Ausländerbehörde ihr Doktortitel als Ablehnungsgrund für die Verlängerung des Aufenthaltsrechts vorgehalten. Entweder mehr verdienen oder gehen. So kämpft ein promovierter Sportwissenschaftler aus Israel seit Jahren vergeblich um eine längere Befristung. Der Herr Doktor ist eben "nur" Trainer in einem Sportclub.

Dabei ist es in Tübingen nichts Ungewöhnliches, dass eine Fahrlehrerin den Titel "Dr. phil" in ihrem Firmenlogo trägt oder dass der Crèpe-Verkäufer am Marktplatz einmal über Hegel promovierte. Beide haben allerdings das Glück, einen deutschen Pass zu besitzen, denn auch sie sind nach Behördenlogik "nicht angemessen beschäftigt". Ausweisen kann sie jedoch niemand.

Mit der Ehe zwischen Nell Zink und dem Oberbürgermeister wird es wohl nichts. "Solange ich nicht heiraten muss, helfe ich gerne in Zweifelsfällen", sagte Palmer gestern der taz. Im konkreten Fall aber setze das Land und der Bund die Einkommensgrenzen fest, die auch er und sein zuständiger Bürgermeister "für fern der Lebenswirklichkeit" halten. Tübingen sei im Übrigen "eine großzügige Stadt", erst vor kurzem habe er sich für den Verbleib einer Klinikärztin erfolgreich eingesetzt, "und das war ein noch viel krasserer Fall", sagte Palmer. 

What is the administrative rule being enforced here, what is its legal foundation, where does it come from historically, how has enforcement worked in the past, how binding is the rule and what are its effects?  It would be nice to know more.  My guess is that this is a relatively new labor market policy to prevent unfair competition from non-EU (and for the moment new-EU) foreigners, i.e. it is equal application of a law designed to go after Polish construction workers applied to an American with a Ph.D. from a German university. 

Women in the CT State Police

I heard a story about this on NPR this morning.  Surprising numbers for 2009 for a state employer.  Here is NH's Channel 8's report, the only coverage I could find online:

The State Police force is about 1,200 strong. In 2003 there were 79 women. And, in 2009 there are 81. That's not enough progress for some. ...

"Approximately 13 percent of law enforcement nationwide is female; in the State Police only makes up 6 percent," said Lt. Marianne Daly of the CT State Police. "And, this number has been stagnant for far too long."

"State Police Departments throughout New England, to my understanding, have female presence in the range of 6.5 to about 8 percent," said Commissioner John Danaher of the CT Department of Public Safety.

If you look at occupational statistics, 13% of police officers are women across all jurisdictions...also surprisingly low and not just a legacy statistics from a slow transition.  Still, it would be good to know the statistic for police at a job tenure of 5 or 10 years, and hiring and attrition rates by sex and tenure. 

On the other hand, the construction industry is 2.5% female. 

Employee Free Choice Act Derangement

Steve Benen, a blogger I generally like, posts:

SECRET BALLOTS.... When criticizing the Employee Free Choice Act, conservatives tend to argue that the legislation would "eliminate secret ballots" for union elections. It doesn't; it's just another bogus talking point intended to scare people.

In fact, it came as a very pleasant surprise to see the Wall Street Journal editorial page, of all outlets, concede today that the bill "doesn't remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act." This comes as a welcome and rare example of honesty from the WSJ editors on the issue. It was, after all, the same editorial board that argued just nine days ago that EFCA would "eliminate secret ballots for union elections."

But in a fun little twist, Greg Sargent notes that the Republican National Committee -- which levies the bogus EFCA argument in its party platform -- itself "forbids the 'secret ballot' as a way for the committee to make many of its own decisions."

From the party rules:

"No votes (except elections to office when properly ordered pursuant to the provisions of Robert's Rules of Order) shall be taken by secret ballot in any open meeting of the Republican National Committee or of any committee thereof."

To be sure, this is fairly standard for committees like the RNC. But the point here is that even the RNC is implicitly acknowledging that the "secret ballot" is not the only fair or Democratic way to make decisions by vote. And yet the sanctity of the "secret ballot" is one of the RNC's central arguments against Employee Free Choice.

Good point.

I'm very uncomfortable with not having a secret ballot mandated for contested union certifications.  But what strikes me here is how deranged Benen's claims are.   First, if you look at Benen's gloating that

it came as a very pleasant surprise to see the Wall Street Journal editorial page, of all outlets, concede today that the bill "doesn't remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act." This comes as a welcome and rare example of honesty from the WSJ editors on the issue. It was, after all, the same editorial board that argued just nine days ago that EFCA would "eliminate secret ballots for union elections."

and then clicks through to the WSJ editorial one finds that the WSJ actually wrote

The bill doesn't remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act but in practice makes it a dead letter. The bill allows a union to automatically organize a worksite if more than 50% of workers simply sign an authorization card, so pressure for employees to sign in public view would be enormous.

The truth of the matter is that under EFCA the secret ballot is still available only if a) the union presents the employer with authorization cards signed by fewer than 50% of workers and b) the employer elects a secret ballot.  So the secret ballot would only be available if both the union and the employer elect to have one. 

Secondly, the RNC rules do provide -- if as I understand Robert's Rules, the RNC need a request from one member for a secret ballot -- for a secret ballot for elections, but disallow secret ballots for non-election votes, which seems like a reasonable line to draw if one is worried about the sort of vote where intimidation would be used for matters the RNC votes on.  So it seems pretty odd to accuse the RNC of hypocrisy on this point, since the RNC rules provide for a secret ballot in contested elections. 

This is not an untypical post on the EFCA by a liberal blogger I generally respect -- what is going on?  Why this amount of disengenousness? 

Update #1: what other countries have union certification via signing authorization cards and don't mandate secret ballots?  I've seen the claim that Canada does, but I'd not necessarily believe stuff I see on this issue in blogs, Benen being an example.  What is the German situation? 

Ah, Canada does have card check certification, but they require 65% of workers to sign cards or 50% is a secret ballot, which seems much more reasonable than a 50% card check rule.