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Teacher’s union lies to extort billions from taxpayers

As George Costanza, that sage son of Queens, once observed: “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”

That’s the battle plan for New York’s public-employee unions, who say Albany needs to allow their members to stop contributing to their pensions after 10 years on the job and to retire at age 55 with a full taxpayer-guaranteed, state-tax exempt pension — all for “recruitment and retention” reasons.

They don’t have evidence for this, just political threats against state lawmakers. So senators and assemblymen are doing what George suggests: believe the lie.

The unions insist that the state needs to “fix” the pension rules because, they say, reforms enacted for future employees in 2009 and 2012 (the latter commonly called “Tier 6”) have made it harder to attract and keep good employees.

This is a remarkable claim that crumbles under inspection.

New York state government set a record for the most employees hired in 2023, only to smash it in 2024. So much for that recruitment problem.

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New York public schools had 221,000 classroom teachers last year, a 5% increase from 2019-20. That’s especially notable given that public school enrollment was going in the other direction, falling more than 6% in the same period.

The number of first-graders dropped more than 8% in just five years.

Still, want to improve recruitment? State officials could trim the excessive obstacles that scientists, engineers and other accomplished professionals face to become teachers, but the teachers union fiercely opposes the concept. They derided one such plan as opening the door to “fake certification.”

The Legislature could give employers a new carrot and allow schools and local employers to offer the option of 401K-style retirement accounts to new hires, but the unions don’t want that either — not even the choice, because people would take it, and the unions’ case for sweetening pension benefits would get even weaker.

The inflexible status quo also makes it harder to recruit mid-career people who don’t plan to work in government for 30 years but otherwise might be useful additions at state agencies or teaching specialized high school classes.

As for retention, as my colleague Neetu Arnold notes, “teachers cite chronic student misbehavior as the top source of stress and burnout, ranking it above workload and even pay.”

So why isn’t the union doing more to challenge recent public policy changes championed by progressives, such as “restorative justice,” that prevent disruptive students from being punished or suspended?

Surrendering to the unions’ unreasonable demands will have the guaranteed effect of driving up property taxes upstate and on Long Island, and putting massive pressure on the New York City budget, where property tax hikes would also likely result.

The argument for sweetening pensions retroactively boils down to making the unions happy— by adding well over $100 billion to pension costs. There’s no demonstrable upside for the public.

Albany’s Republicans (with one exception, Assemblyman Mike Fitzpatrick) are cravenly trying to profit politically from something that will drive up property taxes — and increase the floor on which the union’s next set of demands will be based.

That means it’s up to Governor Hochul to be Albany’s lone grownup who defies the madness and says no the unions.

The alternative, of course, is to believe the lie.

Ken Girardin is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

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