"Ding-dong, the plan to close schools is gone:"

So now we will lay off even more teachers to balance the district budget, making class sizes larger, and one-on-one attention for children struggling (likely children of color because they come from lower-income households).

In the not-closing schools we will have more empty, unused classroom space, as fewer teachers, teach more kids per class.

School-district parents like arranging their firing squad in a circle. Brilliant. Way to support kids.

"Just as a reminder, if people in the professional classes organized their offices and unionized their fellow workers, they could actually have a say in whether they returned to in-office work."

Ashely must be unaware of the AFSCME, PROTECT17, and other unions representing professionals in state and local government.

"Just as a reminder, if people in the professional classes organized their offices and unionized their fellow workers, they could actually have a say in whether they returned to in-office work."

Ashely must be unaware of AFSCME, PROTECT17, and other unions representing professionals in state and local government.

one-on-one attention less

If you live in Spanaway and take a job in Bellevue, I don't have a ton of sympathy for how much time you spend in your car each morning. There's no jobs in Tacoma? No housing in Renton?

As for the person who lives in Ballard and complains about the "brutal" cost of parking near her office in Pioneer Square, I got two words for you: "D Line."

@1, the district’s estimated “savings” is overblown, many administrators said closures need to happen regardless of budget, so don’t pretend all the austerity coming our way is related to keeping schools open. This exercise was a massive waste of time and credibility, just think of how we might have used the time to find more revenue or identified other cost savings.

Too bad Board leadership cut regular meetings in half and did away with the Finance committee.

LOL @ "if the markets freak out about" 25% tariffs on NAFTA partners.

@6, Overblown or not, it is savings. So the more you put into maintaining separate, under-utilized sites, the more of an ax you have to take to instructional personnel.

"Identify more revenue". Like selling off the surplus sites. It's one-time, but its cash. If you want it to be ongoing, maybe lease the land long-term to a housing provider, set up a district controlled public entity to invest the sale proceeds (public entities already do something similar with public employee retirement funds), or set up a district entity to develop the properties into rental housing and use the cash-flow to fund schools. Think outside the box.

If the voters who elect the Legislature, have put the District in a revenue strait jacket, then the District needs to be creative with what they can control.

Lastly, the under-utilized buildings and shrinking revenue are related. Parents are abandoning public schools for home and private schooling. As uber-liberal former legislator Reuven Carlisle has pointed out, the District has no clue and they refuse money for exit surveys, polling, and focus groups to find out, so they can get their market share up above 47% of Seattle school-age children, and get the state reimbursement per kid back when kids come back.

@6, At this point Jones should resign. If District parents and Board members won't seize the only opportunities afforded by the Legislature for school finance, and then want to blame him for the teacher lay-offs that are coming, he should find another district without parents and Board members that are aren't self-defeating.

Anyone remember Susan Enfield? She got similar treatment from Seattle Public School parents and Board Members. She went to Highline Public Schools where she grew the district and increased student academic performance.

@8 There were zero savings from the last round of closures. There were going to be zero or nearly zero in savings from this round. You could make a bigger dent in the deficit by getting rid of the most-recently-hired assistant superintendent. Of course, senior admin jobs are sacred so that'll never happen.

@10, Even with no savings (unlikely), there would have been cash from selling unused sites, with potential for ongoing revenue by investing those proceeds.

By all means get rid of Assistant Supers.

A lot of admin staff is the result of state mandates to have a plan for something, document that they have complied with the state mandate to have a plan for something, have someone to implement the plan, and then file reports with the state on the outcomes of implementing the plan.

There was a time in public education when certified teaching staff actually outnumber non-certified staff and administrators. Every time the Legislature meets, or the State Super does rule-making, the percentage of staff that are teachers in public education shrinks.

I don't object to paying higher taxes for education, provided there is a proportionate increase in juice for the additional squeeze. That has been lacking.

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/heroic-witnesses-stopped-driver-from-hitting-students-at-bus-stop-florida-police-say/

Why isn't The Stranger using SLOG, or Charles, highlighting this case to feed their war on cars?

It's mind boggling how tech workers don't unionize. By and large tech workers are generally pretty progressive, and often verbally pro union, but always for other people, almost never for themselves. It's a weird poison in the tech worker mind, they're actively averse to it for themselves for some really strange reason. I've never been able to figure it out.

@13, tech workers like many Americans are drunk on individualism and fancy themselves as part of the management/millionaire class. I don’t see them in foreclosing on their bonuses and stock options options, or holding solidarity w their peers.

From Robert Reich's Trump’s cabinet isn’t as anti-Wall Street as voters might want to believe

"Wall Street doesn’t really believe Bessent wants higher tariffs.

Bessent has described Trump’s plan for blanket tariffs as a “maximalist” negotiating strategy – suggesting Trump’s whole tariff proposal is a strategic bluff. Wall Street apparently thinks tariffs won’t rise much when other countries respond to the bluff with what Trump sees as concessions.

Instead, Wall Street expects Bessent to be spending his energies seeking lower taxes, especially for big corporations and wealthy Americans, and helping Musk and Ramaswamy cut spending and roll back regulations."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/26/trump-cabinet-anti-wall-street-guardrails

“Just as a reminder, if people in the professional classes organized their offices and unionized their fellow workers, they could actually have a say in whether they returned to in-office work."

SPEEA says hello.

“… Democrats will never give us a national abortion law...”

The Stranger again chooses to express ignorance to attack Democrats, rather than simply learn how our system of government actually works. There can be no such thing as a “national abortion law” to stop states from violating the bodily autonomies of their female citizens. That’s just not how our federal system works. At the federal level, a constitutional amendment, or Supreme Court ruling, would be required. (And what are progressives doing, or have done, on this topic? Anyone? Anyone? Sawant? SAWANT?!?)

Re the “new youth prison”: we absolutely need some place to put the young lads from Green Hill. Those are not slightly wayward kids who just needed a little more attention from Dad. They are the ones who’ve committed violent crimes or worse. Probation is not going to cut it for them.

I thought complaining about homelessness then making it worse by spending tens of millions ineffectually chasing them in circles while pilfering money meant for housing was already an effective evergreen wedge issue for harrel and co. Guess a backup plan doesn't hurt. Or a backup backup plan after spending millions covering up graffiti that's replaced the next day doesn't pan out.

"Jones says he plans to fill the district's $94 million budget deficit through legislative advocacy. Time for the state to do a JumpStart tax, aka a payroll tax. We need some progressive revenue ASAP. "

Sure, why not? What is yet another tax that will fund an completely unaccountable agency that has drastically underperformed its mission and arrogantly acts like the people they are supposed to be serving are the problem? Just add it to the list of other taxes coming our way due to the states looming $10B budget shortfall (and I'm sure King County / Seattle will have their own "needs" as well). Looking forward to the 2025 legislative session.

@13: It has nothing to do with being progressive. Tech jobs and unions just don't mesh. Moreover, unionization would kill innovation and taking risk.

@11 Selling an unused building caused an enormous train wreck when SPS sold the Queen Anne High School site and later needed a high school on Queen Anne. SPS could sell the North Beach site for 8-9 figures, but where would they put another school if they need one in the future? Not to mention that a number of the sites that they don't use for schools are leased out and therefore generate revenue. The Lake City professional building and the Oak Tree site are examples of this.

Of course, you'd know all that if you had anything more than handwave familiarity with SPS' capital issues. But you don't, and ... you don't.

I’m really hopeful that the Stranger kids follow the lead of their Mercury News friends and stop linking to Zombie Twitter (come on people, I know you can do it)

@16: “There can be no such thing as a ‘national abortion law’ to stop states from violating the bodily autonomies of their female citizens. That’s just not how our federal system works.”

Oh there can be such a national abortion law. The Democrats in Congress just don’t have the votes for it, that’s all. See, e.g., Woman’s Health Protection Act of 2023, S. 701, 118th Cong. (2023) (affirming healthcare providers’ right to provide abortion services and patients’ right to terminate pregnancy, and superseding any inconsistent federal and state law). Likely sources of congressional authority for such an act include the Commerce Clause and Sec. 5 of the 14th Amendment.

@21, They aren't going to need those schools in the future.

Look at the demographics. Household formation rates have been down for decades, and those that are formed, are formed later and later. Children per household is dropping.

Add to that, couples as a group, largely went on a precipitous strike against having kids about five years ago, and it has remained constant every year since.

The demographics are national; however, SPS is losing school age children at a rate nearly double that of the rest of districts in the rest of Washington.

The market is shrinking. On top of that SPS is losing market share of the shrinking market. SPS doesn't no why, or what would win that share back, because they refuse to pay for any market research.

On another note, you think the Social Security and Medicare funding deficits are going to be bad in 2035, just wait until this demographic shift hits and there are even fewer working age adults surrendering payroll taxes for those programs while numbers of retirees drawing from it increases and remains high.

Seattle already has a payroll tax: https://www.seattle.gov/city-finance/business-taxes-and-licenses/seattle-taxes/payroll-expense-tax

@19 "completely unaccountable agency"

Almost 50% of the Seattle school board is elected every 2 years and meetings are open to the public

"has drastically underperformed"

the opposite would be surprising when running drastically underfunded public schools

The SPS deficit is simple - the district could never afford the current SEA contract (this was literally known at ratification). I’m glad the last of the school closures are officially off the table (as they were never going to close the financial gap), but SPS still needs a plan to close the gap (I don’t think a Hail Mary to the legislature is going to address the issue in time).

I’m not sure what DOGE level scheme is going to close a $100-$145 million budget hole, but I’m guessing it will take something radical (gutting central staff, eliminating transportation, etc.). Parents have been clear they don’t want classrooms impacted (which I agree with) so that doesn’t leave many options. The School Board also better get its shit together (they ratified this contract SPS couldn’t afford as is) - no one is coming to save us.

@15, Agree.

@17, I also agree, but we need to also make the time of incarceration more restorative, both for youth and adults.

I am not opposed to making sentences CONDITIONALLY shorter either.

E.g. A convict gets sentence reduction for completing drug treatment, testing clean, participating in mental health assessment and treatment, improving education and job skills, etc. We need to provide that in prison. We also need to provide long, non-incarceration sentences for less violent and serial criminals, as a condition of not being incarcerated at all. Participate in your own rehabilitation or you can quickly find your non-incarceration yanked by your probation officer.

@23: Your belief any of that would survive the current Supreme Court may be the cutest thought you’ve yet expressed here.

We voters of Washington State codified abortion rights in 1991, when we enacted I-120 (specifically codifying Roe, thus putting a rather large hole in the idea Roe was a bad ruling). Shortly after the Trump Court overturned Roe, voters of Vermont wrote their (absolute) protection of abortion rights into their state’s constitution. Just this month, we voters of New York State, by enacting our legislature’s Proposition 1, wrote our legal protections for abortion rights (and LGBTQ+ rights) into our state’s constitution. This was one of many pro-choice ballot outcomes nationwide this month.

(Of course, continuing to do this state by state would not only be work, it would require working with the Democrats, so I doubt we’ll see the Stranger even do so little as to advocate for it.)

@25, Public schools aren't accountable because voters choose not to make them accountable. The numbers of non-parents that vote in school board races or attend school board meetings can just about be counted on your fingers and toes.

Non-parent voter participation goes way up if its a tax measure for local schools or a legislative proposal to increase state taxes to fund schools.

I don't object to paying higher taxes for schools, provided that there is a corresponding increase in performance metrics. E.g. 5% in funding decreases drop-out rates by 5%, 10% increase in funding, equals a 10% move towards reading, math, and science being at grade level, etc. That has been lacking. Increases in per pupil spending above inflation have actually not correlated to increased student outcomes.

@27: We already have that. It’s called DOSA and it doesn’t work very well for most participants.

The social problems that lead to incarceration occur far upstream of the criminal justice system, so it’s no surprise that the criminal justice system can’t fix them. It’s not like these people are living good, moral, prosperous, stable lives until the mean old police get their hands on them and ruin everything! 😆

@21, Who is going to lease space at North Beach Elementary? It's on an arterial to nowhere and the area is single-family zoned.

You think North Beach parents came out of the woodwork to oppose closing the school. You ain't seen nothin' yet. Just wait until SPS applies for zoning to allow commercial use.

Also, you cite a few places that SPS has created revenue through commercial leasing. How much more revenue would those cites have created if they had been redeveloped so that rents covered the cost of additional development and spun off site-maximized revenue? What they did on those cites is fine, but not as good as it could be.

Hey look a ceasefire deal in Lebanon! You did it, Malala! According to the draft agreement, peace in southern Lebanon will hereafter be enforced by…. [checks notes] … the Lebanese army and UNIFIL. Oh shit. 😂😂😂

@25 you and I have different definitions of accountable. The district has continued to lose students since Covid, their tests scores underperform other districts and they wildly overspent their budget. Where is the accountability?

By any measure SPS underperforms compared to other districts in the state saddled with the same funding formula. Tell me how is more funding going to improve student outcomes? More funding will simply translate to raises for educators but McCleary showed that providing increased pay has minimal correlation to student performance.

@32. Thumpus. Do you follow Task & Purpose on YouTube? The host has done some really nice reports on IDF and Hezbollah in Lebanon. One that stands out was his overview of the 2006 war, considered a debacle for Israel. It will be interesting to see how the IDF learned and adjusted from that experience as the dust is about to settle.

@20:

Corporations pouring most of their profits into stock buy-backs and executive compensation packages in order to satisfy voracious shareholders has a much larger negative impact on "innovation and taking risk" than workers forming unions.

@34: For battlefield news about Israel's wars, I like Thomas Newdick and Howard Altman at TWZ (the latter of whom is also excellent on battlefield news from Ukraine) and Joe Truzman and Seth Frantzman at LWJ. I stopped reading Task and Purpose a couple years ago, after they started focusing something like 90 percent of their coverage on low-level criminal scandals within the US military, which I found tedious. I see from your recommendation that Task and Purpose's Youtube channel is a lot better on battle analysis, so I'll have to check that out, thanks!

In all honesty, Israel has absolutely shellacked Hizbollah this time around, even more so than they have Hamas. Hizbollah is the only Arab force to have defeated Israel in the field and has done so not once but twice (in 2000 and 2006). I was beginning to question Israel's ability ever to defeat Hizbollah, especially after Hizbollah spent a year shelling Israel with only the feeblest return fire on Israel's part. Then came the pagers, then came the walkie-talkies, and then came the ass-kicking of the century, including schwacking some absolutely massive names in Lebanese terror! Some of these dudes have been needing a JDAM to the dome for decades, it's incredible to see it finally happen!

From what I can tell, Israel's intelligence preparation of the battlefield was much improved since the defeat of 2006. This time, the Israelis knew exactly where the weapons and leadership were bunkered and hit those sites promptly. The Israelis also took the ground invasion extremely slowly—really, an absolute snail's pace—and thereby avoided blundering into ATGM and IED ambushes like they had the first time. All this is to say nothing of Israel's bombing Iranian territory for the first (but hopefully not the last) time, making the Iranian sponsors pay the price for once instead of outsourcing all the pain to the Lebanese. This has been quite the turnaround for the Israeli forces. It's no surprise to see the muj crying uncle.

@20: “Tech jobs and unions just don't mesh.”

SPEEA says hello. Again.

“Moreover, unionization would kill innovation and taking risk.”

Over the past fifty years, Boeing jetliners designed by SPEEA members, and assembled by IAM members, have driven multiple competing jetliner models out of production entirely. That all must’ve been pure luck, eh?

(Note: proudly SPEEA member for many years.)

@23 They didn't think that they were ever going to need Queen Anne High School again either. The demographics looked really ugly after the baby boom echo. They didn't think they were going to need the 10 schools they closed in 2005 either. Technically speaking, their own demographics said they would, but who'd counting? Kindergarten and pre-K enrollment is actually inching up a bit so we might need those schools sooner rather than later.

@31 A small private school could easily lease the building as is. But you were talking about a sale. It's a flat 6.5 acre lot, with significant parts having a water view. If it went residential, even single family plus DADU, it would be worth upwards of $40-50 million just based on acreage and current values of lots with teardown houses in the area. Given that developers could arrange houses to maximize profits and the view, it may be worth more.

@20 I don't think you know how tech or unions work.

@30, 95% of felons serving time, will get released.

You are correct, the issues that lead the felon to prison started way upstream.

But given they will get released, what is better for all of us? The weak tea of the DOSA program? What is cheaper for us? The expense of a new police investigation, prosecution, conviction, and more guard salaries for the next go around, or having them get a job and stay out?

It took a long time to establish their dysfunction. It's gonna take a lot of money and time to undo it.

@38, The demographics this time are much more national and entrenched.

If they are wrong, they have the power of eminent domain and cash flow from whatever income producing scheme they can come up with from the assets of sold buildings or redeveloped properties to borrow against for new schools.

North Beach, and many schools are ancient anyway. They are going to need a major bond at some point to tear them down and start over anyway. So why not bond for a blank slate of modern buildings at locations better centered on where kids with families actually are, assuming the demographics prove incorrect?

One out of one convicted felons agree: Free lunches, not jails!

@33 "you and I have different definitions of accountable."

or is it that you don't agree with the majority of voters?

"The district has continued to lose students since Covid"

Like almost all urban districts in the US

"tests scores underperform other districts"

It is ranked top 20 out of 300+ in Washington. It is not surprising that suburban districts with significantly higher average income do better

"overspent their budget"

like almost all school districts in Washington

etc ...

We’ll get a national abortion law when Dems have the House, the Presidency, and 60 Senators. Not before.

@39: Then by all means enlighten me. Evangelize some Cloud Architects Union or whatever.

@45, See, these are the kinds of comments you need to resist the urge to post as “Phoebe” if you want people to believe you’re a mild-mannered old lady and not a conservative middle-aged tech bro with a giant chip on his shoulder.

@43 and what makes you think giving SPS additional funding will lead to any improvement whatsoever? You just keep making excuses for them. Is any of the situation they are in their fault or is it all external factors beyond their control? You are asking taxpayers to give them $100M without any promise or even plan to do anything different or better.

@41 The demographics looked national and entrenched when they closed Queen Anne High School.

Are you really this ignorant about SPS capital projects, or is it cosplay? If it's the former, quit before you get any further behind.

They could use eminent domain to reclaim several acres of land that have been redeveloped? Hahahahaha! Hooo boy, that felt good. That's prohibitively expensive, let alone the legal challenges associated with eminent domain. Truly, you are a brilliant fiscal mind, proposing to sell land for $40 million then buy it back at $100 million. With that kind of thinking, we could bankrupt the school district even faster! Land sold is land gone, which is why SPS doesn't sell land. They know they'll never get it back.

Pro tip: Seattle already runs levies (not bonds, because that's how we roll in this district) to rebuild aging schools. North Beach was going to be on the last one, then was pulled off at the last minute. In fact, the major construction levies renew every 6 years and you'll have an opportunity to vote on the next one (along with an operations levy) in February. Typically, there are 3-6 elementary school rebuilds, plus one or more middle and high school rebuilds on a given levy, along with some major maintenance work. Of course you didn't know that, because what you actually know about the subject will fit in a teacup with plenty of room for milk.

Pro tip #2: There are already schools spread all over the city. Go take a look at a map sometime.

@45: "Then by all means enlighten me. Evangelize some Cloud Architects Union or whatever."

SPEEA says hello. AGAIN.

My SPEEA dues paid for more than just a Union Hall -- which, somewhat appropriately, wound up in the shadow of the light rail. Due to the Ed Wells Partnership between SPEEA and Boeing (gasp!), I attended the best post-graduate engineering short courses ever -- and NOT on my spare time, but during work hours. Yes, you read that properly, I was PAID to learn in great detail about the latest & greatest in new engineering developments, learn new skills, modernize existing skills, and increase any post-layoff value of my career.

@41 The demographics this time are much more national and entrenched.

Oh, bullshit. You can't predict the future.

Rent is sky high. Clearly there is demand to live in Seattle. At the same time, it is hard as shit to build new places to live in Seattle. These are the big demographic issues in the city. Two things could happen:

1) Seattle could suddenly become less attractive. It happens. But generally cities implode (i. e. spread to the suburbs) before they collapse. That is less likely to happen if:

2) Seattle allows more places to be built. If we allow more places to be built then a lot more people will live in Seattle. Then they will want all of these schools.

No one I know is predicting the former. But plenty of people are predicting that the zoning-liberalization trend will continue. What was considered a niche issue a little over ten years ago (with Matt Yglesias' e-book and article in The Atlantic) has become mainstream. It is only a matter of time when Seattle has a zoning code as liberal as the one in Spokane.

Tech unions don't work at companies with significant stock-based compensation. Also, stock buybacks are a particularly effective means of distributing company profits to shareholders.

@43, The only time school districts are accountable to voters is when they ask for property tax levies.

School Board Director elections are decided by a small set of parents such as PTA activists, people who monitor the PTA, etc. So those Directors aren't really accountable to the broad electorate but the tiny sub-section of the electorate.

The rest of the public, unless they are being asked for the money, just checks out on public schools looking at the broadest trends, or vibe, about whether district children are improving or not.

It shouldn't be that way, but that is the world that is.

@48, The national demographics when they closed Q.A. High, etc. was not nearly as entrenched or persistent as now. What changed back then was that we got SLU redevelopment, Amazon, et. al. So while the much milder national demographic trend was occurring then with school aged children, there was a massive shift from other parts of the country to here, and with what comparatively few couples were having families.

Yes there are schools geographically spread across the City, but children aren't equally distributed across the City, anymore than people in general are. So new schools could be better positioned so their "catchment" areas match where families with children are more dense.

You mentioned North Beach selling for $40 million. A reasonable estimate. So $40 million in an S & P ETF Index fund, would average 10% return, for $4 million. At $250,000 a teacher (wages, benefits, payroll taxes, retirement, health insurance, ongoing in-service costs, etc. is 16 teachers saved. You can argue that number, but its an approximation to get in the ballpark of scope. Had SPS closed 20 schools and sold them off, how much principle would that feed into a passive investment to fund annual operating costs? If the Legislature is going to put the District in a fiscal strait jacket as far as asking District voters for more property taxes, then they need to find revenue that the Legislature will allow.

SPS doesn't need to lease or sell North Beach to a private school. They don't need to be facilitating their competition. For the first time ever, they have less than 50% market share of school-aged kids in the City.

As former Legislator Reuven Carlyle, and some current Seattle progressive legislators point out, SPS hasn't bothered to find out why parents are pulling their kids out. So they have no idea how to change and compete to keep more kids from leaving. Every kid that leaves takes the State's per pupil funding with them.

@49: Well sure, that's one related white-collar engineering example. But Microsoft, Google, Meta, etc high tech employees are not in the aerospace industry.

See also @51.

@50, It used to be that each succeeding generation, more or less repeated the household formation and child bearing characteristics of the generation before. At least since the advent of the birth-control pill.

Not so with the last couple generations. They are forgoing a lot of household formation relative to prior generations. When it occurs its much later. Then the rate of child-rearing is lower. So we are kind of "baked in" with just the generations we can see in child-bearing window, or approaching it.

Housing costs rising so much faster than wages is pretty baked in as well. Even if we were suddenly start to dismantle the witch's brew of compounding public policy decisions that have driven that in the next set of local, state, and national elections, that imbalance is pretty baked in. Assuming that is a major cause of the behavior of recent generations with regard to household formation and kids, we are going to be facing housing supply shortages for a decade or more before before housing supply can provide any relief to housing costs verses wages.

Getting people to live in Seattle hasn't been the problem. It's that they come from generations around the country that are doing household formation and kids at much lower rates. That is what is causing enrollment declines, not just here, but everywhere. We are having enrollment declines here at higher rates than the national or state average.

The other consequence is that the decline of workers contributing CURRENT payroll taxes to pay CURRENT Social Security and Medicare benefits will accelerate. The 2035 cut date, when benefits automatically get trimmed across the board to match payroll taxes is about 20%. That will only grow the more the workforce shrinks because we are having fewer children.

@52 Your lack of understanding extends to school board elections. It’s a city wide vote, not decided by a small group of PTA parents. If anything, those elections are decided by the SECB in Seattle because that’s the default go-to when voters don’t know much about the race. You’re wrong about so much it shouldn’t surprise me that you’re confidently incorrect here.

Psst the sale of QA High was separated from the Amazon influx by a couple of decades. Don’t conflate them.

Sometime you should check out a map of assignment areas and school distribution around the neighborhoods. You might learn something. Also, repeat a few times. You cannot pick up and move schools. It is not feasible to build a school where there is not a large district-owned lot. And if you closed 25% of the elementary schools in the city, you would have an absolute disaster on your hands in terms of having enough seats.

Your solutions have about the same relevance to reality as RFK Jr.‘s. The only thing you’re right about is that SPS should ask departing parents why they’re leaving.

“In Beirut, residents took to the streets to celebrate the cease-fire, with some firing bullets into the air.”

Ha ha ha, I love the Middle East!

@54: As @51 noted, tech firms "...with significant stock-based compensation" don't have unions. That's a different business model than aerospace. Lack of unionization is not inherent to tech itself, despite your claim it is, all the way back @20 (and yet, I'd already mentioned SPEEA).

You hilariously cite Microsoft as some fount of technical innovation. Bill Gates became rich(er) because he (ab)used copyright law to charge for software; up to that point, development had been mostly 'crowdsourced' in academia. His technical acumen seems to have reached a zenith when he had his team sabotage machines which also hosted a competitor's product, DR-DOS. Microsoft didn't even originate the concept of windows (!), Apple did that. Later, the company's monopoly stifled innovation.

@phoebs : I could talk about the surplus value of labor but you would be better served by reading some Charles M.
The simple metric is if you work more than the legal weekly maximum and don't get overtime (or contractually obligatory paid time off) then you would benefit from a union. I work in tech and know many who work way more hours than they should. The carrot is an illusion.
Unions can suck, no doubt. But too many Americans (I'm gonna be president/millionaire....) believe they are better than average and will be the number one (hint: 50% are at or below average).
Tech is one person with a great idea who profits and a bunch of wage slaves who have to bring the great idea to fruition. The great idea person maximizes their profit by minimizing the wages. The more they make (by keeping wages low) the smarter they think they are. Stock options: carrots, and a way to not pay a wage, let the investors/market pay the workers.

@58: I acknowledged your bringing up SPEEA. But is there a high tech union of software engineers? No.

Grumbling about Microsoft's history has nothing to do with what I was saying. We know all that.

@59: Interesting. Nice to debate with someone who stays on the subject.

@60: “…is there a high tech union of software engineers?”

No, but as already mentioned repeatedly, that tech has a different business model than aerospace — and aviation/aerospace was last-century’s major tech industry. Your claim that tech inherently inhibits unions has no support.

You cited Microsoft as an innovative company, specifically because it lacks unions. You have yet to cite anything technically innovative Microsoft has ever done. I gave examples of non-technical innovations, all ethically suspect, which explain Microsoft’s success.

@61: Ahem. The word "innovative" is not in @54. And even if it was, I don't see the value in quibbling over the word without an agreed upon criteria. I simply listed it in an enumeration of tech companies.

Are you going to belabor this?

*"I simply listed Microsoft in an enumeration...."

@62: 'The word "innovative" is not in @54.'

No, it's @20: "Tech jobs and unions just don't mesh. Moreover, unionization would kill innovation and taking risk."

"I don't see the value in quibbling over the word without an agreed upon criteria."

Your ignorance of the words you chose is not really anyone else's problem, dear. (And you remain free to give examples of Microsoft's technical innovations any time you wish. Good luck with that.)

"Are you going to belabor this?"

Again, unless you're seriously arguing SPEEA "kill[ed]" innovation at Boeing, we're done here.

@64: Are you really saying patents aren't innovative? Despite what you say about Windows origins, features in their products are clearly innovative as they are with Google, Meta, and all the others. So, you're hell bent on zeroing in on an axe to grind against Microsoft - nothing to do with what I said in @20.

You're hanging your hat on your own subjective view of what constitutes innovation, or whatever subject might be. I've noticed that about you.

@65: Boeing innovates pretty well, despite heavy unionization. Microsoft may innovate too, but your argument depends on Microsoft innovating — and Boeing, not. In reality, Boeing had a long history of unionized innovation prior to Microsoft’s founding.

Once again, unless you're seriously arguing SPEEA "kill[ed]" innovation at Boeing, we're done here.

@44 dvs99: I hope I'm still alive to see another Democratic White House Trifecta. Better sooner than later.
I'm so grateful my childbearing years are long behind me, what with the horrific Trump / Vance crime syndicate reclaiming the All-White House in January.
I honestly don't know who to feel sorrier for in this upcoming Nightmare Err of the Orange Turd---girls and women aged 15 to 45 currently in their reproductive years, or younger girls from birth to puberty who have yet to experience their first menstrual cycle.
Why the fuck didn't the majority of voters get a clue this national election? It was nothing but a repeat of 2016, and promises to be infinitely worse this second term.
And despite two highly devastating recent Category 4 hurricanes---Helena and Milton---that almost wiped out six Southern states (Florida, Alabama, Georgia, North & South Carolina, and Tennessee) so many people in that region of our deeply divided country remain stubbornly hellbent on living in the Civil War era.