I know I'm late to the party here, but I just have to say that as a former member of three different teacher's unions, I can generalize and say that teacher's unions don't do shit and should be abolished.
My very first job, I had graduated with an B.S. in Education and was excited as hell to be teaching. As it happened, the district that hired me had had their contract run out the previous year, and this year was coming round with no contract in place. The teachers were asking for a 3.5% raise, the county was countering with 2.5% and they were at an impasse. Three days before school was to start, they voted to strike. As a brand new hire, I hadn't actually joined the union yet, and I didn't really know what any of this meant to me. My department head (who I'd met in a few meetings leading up to the start of the school year) took me under his wing and explained:
When the teachers go on strike, they will (obviously) not be working, and thus will not be paid.
Since I hadn't technically joined the union yet, I was not bound to honor the strike and could report to work if I wanted.
If I reported to work, I would still not be working, and thus would still not be paid.
Well, fuck. I finally had my degree and was happy just to have a job, and these guys would rather walk around carrying signs than teach, over a measly 3.5%. I didn't know how it worked in other districts, but in this one, the principal and assistant principals are not teachers and do not belong to the union. They are administration and were "the bad guys" in this scenario. They were also the ones who would be evaluating me at the end of the year to see if I worked there the following year, so, wanting to look as positive as possible and all that, I reported to work. They told me to go home, there's nothing to do. But I hoped I'd made a good impression, or something.
The strike lasted three weeks, during which time I worked as a sub in some of the neighboring districts. The union ended up caving and going back to work, and accepting the 2.5% raise which was on the table. The strike was for nothing! They lost three weeks of salary and took the original offer anyway!
At the end of that year, I got an offer to teach in a Magnet school on the east coast. Sweet gig. The teachers' contracts had run out the previous year, and they were currently negotiating for a three-year contract with raises of 5%, 5%, and 6%. Wow! Big bucks and they were gonna get bigger. I took the job and kissed the shitty first one goodbye.
Found out that the negotiations weren't going so well. The county was saying that there was no money for a 5% and were offering a 1% raise. Seriously? One fucking percent? Eventually the talks broke down and went to binding arbitration. I'd already taken the gig, and the school year started with the teachers working without a contract. Well, it was better than a strike, I guess.
The arbitrator looked at the 5% the teachers were asking, and the 1% the county was offerring, and "split it down the middle". He decided that the teachers would get 2.5%. (Trivia question: What is the average of 5 and 1? Answer: Not 2.5)
Somehow the contracts were worded in such a way that if the money simply was not there, the county didn't have to give any raise at all. Well, you can play with the numbers any way you want. If you want to make it look like there's no money, there's no money, so the second year, the teachers got nothing. Zero percent raise. The third year, same thing. Zero. Nada. So the amazing 5%-5%-6% turned out to be 2.5%-0%-0%. Not exactly the big bucks I was promised, and my son was born during this time, so money was getting tighter.
And of course it was time to negotiate a new contract. Our union managed to get a one-year contract with a 3% raise, caving in after originally asking for 6%, mostly to make up for the fact that we'd gotten nothing the previous two years. And at the end of that year, it was time for yet more contract negotiations. And time for me to find another gig.
This is already too long didn't read, but let's just say that despite actually paying a decent salary, I only lasted a year at my third and final teaching gig because my union had either no balls or no power to help me keep my job when things got ugly, so fuck education, and I now work as a programmer and make three times as much as I did when I left teaching. This is why the best teachers don't teach. They can make a lot more money doing something else, and since I had kids to raise and bills to pay, I left a profession I loved and was damned good at to pursue the almighty dollar.
Fuck unions.
Topic: Union Workers (Read 2986 times)
