If there ever was a doubt what the Mackinac Center and the Koch Brothers think of you and the work you do, that doubt has passed. Ex-MEA member Rob Wiersema argues in an August 17th Lansing State Journal Op Ed that you should lose your salary schedule:

The step scale system also distorts the true market value of teachers. Most of us, including myself (sic) are paid above market value…Because wages are high, districts must restrict the number of teachers hired.

Wiersema is not some lone advocate. He has long served as a mouthpiece for the Mackinac Center and is spending his summer speaking on their behalf to defund the MEA

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On August 1st he authored an anti-MEA email sent by the Mackinac Center to school email addresses. On August 12th, he appeared on a Heritage Foundation (the national equivalent and model for the Mackinac Center) video cast, and on the same day was featured on the AAU faux union‘s website. He’s made these and other, some pretty curious, arguments for the Mackinac Center.

The salary schedule is as basic a feature as any part of a union contract and The Mackinac Center has worked to ban them for years. The Center says you can save money by freeloading, but it wants to outlaw the one contract feature that assures you of progressive pay throughout your career.