One of the stranger concepts that I have been exposed to since taking public office is the notion of the “furlough” day. This essentially means that public agencies tell their employees not to come into work a certain number of days so that they can reduce their pay proportionally. Often such terms need to be negotiated in a collective bargaining agreement, but given the financial crisis this year — in schools and in other government agencies — this has become quite common.
In fact there was an article on the front page of the SF Chronicle on July 19th that talked about the fact that sixteen of the state’s 30 largest school districts are reducing the school year as a consequence of implementing furlough days. The most fascinating part of this article is that it just assumes the only way to reduce employees’ salaries is through furlough days. This is consistent with the conversations that I’ve heard as a school board member — in the government lexicon, salary reduction = furlough day.
This linkage presumably echoes a century-old, hourly-wage, framework when the way to reduce employee costs was to reduce the hours that employees work. Of course many people still work today based on an hourly wage, but generally teachers more fit the job description of a salaried professional than they do of a factory worker. And as many of us have experienced, so many private sector businesses have had to reduce their employees’ salaries over the last few years. Obviously reducing someone’s income is a horrible step to take, but if it must be done for financial reasons, why in the public sector does it automatically mean everyone should work less? As anyone who’s been in a private sector job knows, when a company runs into difficulty, you tend to work MORE, not LESS (even if just to pick up the slack for other employees who were laid off).
This analysis appears quite foreign to so many people. In almost all school districts (and other government agencies) across the state, it’s just assumed that you have to offer furlough days to save money. Let’s be clear — a furlough day in and of itself does not save any money (apart from very minor savings of utility costs by not operating a classroom or office); it is the salary reduction which saves the money. The obvious alternative is just to cut compensation, but leave the work year intact. It’s shocking that most people have never even thought of that, as our current mindset is so ingrained. These two actions have unfortunately been coupled — the reduction of compensation and the reduction of work load — when we should be talking about them separately. (Also note that this lexicon actually under-emphasizes the burden public employees are assuming — for example, a district may say “we furloughed six days” instead of saying “we gave a 3% salary cut,” which is really the impact on those teachers). Now maybe there are reasons for employee morale, etc., to “give back” something to your employees if you’re cutting their salaries, but people aren’t even talking about the problem like this. We all talk like it’s a given that these two actions are coupled.
It saddens me greatly to see so many school districts shorten the school year and cut non-student days as well, which are used largely for professional development to make instruction better. These actions directly hurt our kids, yet no one seems to be speaking for them. Of course our educational system is woefully underfunded, and it’s devastating that employees have to sacrifice financially because of it. But if such sacrifice is required, why also hurt children for no reason other than that’s the way we’ve always done it? The furlough may have had some justification one day in the past, but certainly for education that day has long passed.
I have, and will continue to be, a vigorous opponent of furlough days. Fortunately, in the San Carlos School District, we will not be cutting the school year (the final contract with the teacher’s union was approved by the Board on July 22nd) and we only added 1/2 of a furlough day (which was an optional training day). However, this is in addition to the two furlough days we granted last year, which in hindsight I believe was a mistake. I am happy that we finally have a contract (and I voted for the contract, because I thought it was a necessary compromise), and I thank all of the parties who worked so hard to come to agreement. Nonetheless, I will strongly and publicly push to ensure we add those days back to the work calendar next year, regardless of our financial situation.
In my role as a School Board Member, I have a great appreciation why government is (and should be) different from the private sector. And very often, citizens are quick to judge government as incompetent before understanding all of the context and the complexity of the issues. However, in this case, government is just being dumb. Furlough days are antiquated and hurt children. Parents should be up in arms and demand to both their local school board and their local unions that we just can’t accept them any longer.
