@Putin

I pay my dues, so in what way am I a scab?

@Frank

Actually, I didn't know I would be in a union when I first joined, because I didn't receive any credits for the classes I was teaching. I found out I was wrong when I got a very friendly blacklist threat.

In any case, there are plenty of professions that are quite fine without unions. Why isn't teaching one of them?

"On a personal note, I was in a union when I was a teaching assistant in graduate school."

I was in a union in grad school as well. I was paid significantly higher by my dept than the union bargained for. Their health plan was good though, so I didn't complain that much.

@Frank Not everyone wants to be in a union. That's fine to me, but I think they shouldn't get the union benefits or negotiated pay, health benefits etc. Let them try and negotiated for themselves and if something happens that the union would normally protect them then let them figure out themselves.

"Anyway, this thread was meant to deliberately antagonize and has no purpose except to warm the hearts of union bashing scum."

No, it was meant to blow off steam because I'm pissed I'm paying money for something that isn't helping me. And, while I can understand this sort of attitude for someone of the general public, I'd like to stress that I am a *member* of the union. I have a stake in the game, so I should be able to air my grievances all I want.

@CF

"Not everyone wants to be in a union. That's fine to me, but I think they shouldn't get the union benefits or negotiated pay, health benefits etc. Let them try and negotiated for themselves and if something happens that the union would normally protect them then let them figure out themselves."

Exactly. That's all I'm asking for. Let me negotiate my own wage. I don't need union protection. If people want it, that's fine. I just don't want to be forced into it. And, if it turns out I'm wrong and the union is needed, I'd be happy to crawl back with my tail between my legs. I'd even pay a fine for the time I was a nasty scab.

@abge: I hope you can at least at agree that its your responsibility to figure out if your job is unionized.

Teachers have unions because they are able to achieve substantially better working conditions and compensation through collective bargaining.

"@abge: I hope you can at least at agree that its your responsibility to figure out if your job is unionized. "

Yes, certainly. It was my first job out of college and so I was not as wary as I would be now.

What state and union are you in? Let me know and I will tell you what your union has accomplished for you. Here's an example of a what a similar union to yours has accomplished at Rutgers for non tenured faculty, post docs, ga's and ta's (i assume you are one of these)

http://www.rutgersaaup.org/about/recent-accomplishments

"In any case, there are plenty of professions that are quite fine without unions. Why isn't teaching one of them?"

Unions are only helpful in fields that require skilled or semi-skilled labor for which the supply exceeds the demand. This is not the case for people teaching engineering. But it certainly is for people teaching, say, English or history.

Mass.

Perhaps it would be more productive if I explained the things the union is responsible for that frustrate me:

1) My pay is based solely on how many classes I've taught. Not what courses they were, how good I am, or how much outside experience I have.

2) The pecking order for picking classes is based solely on seniority, not experience or competence.

3) Tenure prevents wildly incompetent faculty from being fired. This prevents good teachers from having jobs, students from learning, and gives teachers on the whole a bad name.

Those are some things to start off.

"But it certainly is for people teaching, say, English or history."

Is that true? I know there are a lot of liberal arts majors, but that doesn't mean they can teach.

abge - I don't object to taxation - I too object to waste. I think you will find very few people, in fact, that 100% object to taxes. That there is some insane misrepresentation that anyone "conservative" or "tea party" object to taxes 100% is just the mindless misunderstanding of the sheeple.

Most conservative/tea party types want *fair taxes*, and a cut to government waste.

That you say you hate you *high* taxes and hate the waste...we are in lock-step with each other, whether you understand that or not.

Unions = Labor monopoly.

In any other aspect of business, is a group came along and said "We own 100% of this <supply/commodity/product/service> and if you don't meet our demands, we will <cut supply/remove source/stop providing product/service>" the government would put an end to it in a heartbeat, and probably fine the entity out of existence and then break it up in to little pieces.

But labor union...ahhhh....they grease the skids of the Democrat party and have special monopoly status....and all the sheeple go "bahhhhhhhh..."

Taking money from others (brief summary):

When private citizens do it = armed robbery
When unions do it = collecting dues
When the government does it = collecting taxes

Compulsory union membership is a giant middle finger to the concept of individual liberty. Then again, so are most taxes, but that's an argument for another day. What I can't get over is the sickening double standard that I just stated. Why do unions and governments get preferential treatment over private citizens?

Unions are a relic from a bygone era of robber barons and 19th century safety standards. Unions serve no purpose in this day and age, when even burger flippers at McDonald's are practically pampered with no shifts longer than eight hours. Just because unions successfully fought for the 40-hour week doesn't mean that they continue to serve a useful purpose. Keeping unions on life support is tantamount to equipping modern cavalry units with live horses.

"Is that true? I know there are a lot of liberal arts majors, but that doesn't mean they can teach."

There aren't a whole lot of opportunities outside of teaching for most liberal arts majors. It's either swim (teach), sink (wait tables, etc. for the rest of your life) or mutate (get further education in another field, which is what I did).

Abge, if you're a city teacher where there are plenty of wealthy taxpayers to support your sub-average paycheck, then yeah, you probably don't need the unions and you probably would do better off without them. But if you're a rural/suburban teacher whose community can't afford to pay the taxes or don't even have the proper tax laws to keep schools and teachers at a national standard, then you most definitely need your teachers' union. My guess is that you're probably somewhere in between, but the point is that the union keeps teachers at a certain pay grade nationally/regionally/whatever. If not for some minor redistribution of wealth around the union, there would likely be a much larger income gap between teachers in wealthier regions and teachers in poorer communities. Here in Virginia, excess wages that would go to teachers still end up in the education system, providing the students and teachers with better supplies and computers. Without people like you losing your '5%' schools in urban areas would find it difficult to provide students with any sort of modern technology. The justification the union gives is that you're a kind enough person that you care about back-of-the-woods communities that can't afford things without your coerced salary deduction. Giving you the option to opt out hurts people hundreds of miles away whom you'll never meet or think about. I live in an area wealthy enough where basically every teacher would opt out if they could, which would be unfair to hundreds of teachers (and more importantly, students) who desperately need the cash...

"There aren't a whole lot of opportunities outside of teaching for most liberal arts majors. It's either swim (teach), sink (wait tables, etc. for the rest of your life) or mutate (get further education in another field, which is what I did)."

So, I need to be part of a union because someone else majored in something with no job prospects?

The selfishness, smugness and ingratitude of people like abgemacht is breathtaking.

"The selfishness, smugness and ingratitude of people like abgemacht is breathtaking."

You say that, and yet this is only an issue because I'm willing to spend my Saturday teaching 1st generation college kids (some of whom can barely speak/write English) how to use computers so that they can get themselves better jobs.

"So, I need to be part of a union because someone else majored in something with no job prospects?"

I wouldn't say that, but others obviously would.

I think you are all coming at teaching unions from a different perspective than Abge. Abge, if I recall correctly, is in Massachusetts. Some of the biggest critics I see here are from the Midwest and Canada. Teachers unions in the Northeast are different than in most other states. In New York, they're either the single largest - or one of the largest - donators to political campaigns at the state level. At the local level? Forget it, nobody is going to run a platform that's against the teachers.

In my hometown in (rural) New York, teachers could easily make $100,000 a year before retiring, and then have health insurance plus 70% of their salary FOR LIFE after retirement. It is the single cushiest job out there. ~60 hour workweeks, holidays off, summer off, you get snow days and will anyone ever fire you? Nope, so long as you don't molest any children. My high school was taken over by the state due to poor performance (25% dropout rate, abyssmal test scores, etc). Was a single member of the faculty or staff fired? The principal got moved to middle school. That's it.

So maybe it's different in other parts of the country. I know one of my former teachers said teachers in NY start off making almost $20,000 a year more than teachers in NC, where he started (again, not New York City, but upstate NY). No one will touch the teachers unions at any political level and they get the tax raises that they want every damn year. So I, for one, am in agreement with abge, though for different reasons. Its not to say every union is bad, but just teachers unions in the northeast can go rot in hell.

Fascinating. In the UK the union "closed shop" of which you speak was outlawed years ago. I wasn't aware that in the USA there were still places where union membership is a condition of employment.

I'm a member of my trade union through choice. Over half the employees in my organisation are members of one of the three recognised trade unions - without anyone forcing them to join.

Unions are nothing more than a labor racket, just as pharmaceutical companies are de facto drug cartels.

I see that one of the main lines of attack against teachers' unions is that it protects teachers who are incompetent. I don't think that's true in the sense that you guys are saying, but even if it is, I'm fine with it.

There's no objective way to measure how good a teacher is. Yes, you can look at test scores and such, but there's no direct one-for-one correlation between the quality of a teacher and the test scores of their students. The problem is that all sorts of people are different in all sorts of ways. You can't reduce a student or a teacher to a number. There are many factors that affect how students perform on standardised tests, and you can't pin it all on the teacher.

Unions exist to protect all the workers, not just those deemed "competent". Sometimes that means they defend people who really shouldn't be defended, but that happens less frequently than you'd think. This happens because unions are there for the collective (and when I say collective, I don't mean the sum of individuals therein). I would wager that if someone was completely and totally incompetent, there'd be nothing the union could do (provided you could prove everything, etc.).

I've seen also in this thread the idea that unions are no longer helpful. A relic of the previous centuries where factory workers were children and worked 80 hour weeks. This is not true. As mentioned before, they do more than just push for pay raises when it comes to contract renewal time. They're there for workplace grievances, pensions, and other benefits that any worker might need in between contract signings. They're there in the event of wrongful termination, discrimination, and a numerous non-pay-related roles. Unions also have economists on staff to support them in negotiations (expected future price levels, etc.) and lawyers on hand if they ever need to litigate.

Are unions perfect? Absolutely not. But we don't have a choice between perfect and imperfect--only imperfect and slightly less imperfect worlds.

Now to return to Abgemacht's concerns: one potential solution could be to force union rules on all workplaces but leave union membership optional. I think they have something like that in France where union membership is comparable to the USA, but everyone still reaps the benefits of unionisation. But that would be a radical departure from the culture and history of unions in North America, and a move that I don't think is practically possible. North American unions (typically) have an antagonistic relationship with management (not outwardly hostile, but more competitive than their European counterparts), and diminishing the power of unions through such measures probably won't do anyone any good.

pangloss - we're talking about an educated workforce though, in the case of the teachers union. Do college educated people need to have a union to help them with workplace grievances and pensions? When many companies that they could otherwise work for (GE, various consulting firms, law firms, etc) all do the same functions in-house? These aren't blue collar workers we're talking about here.

As a long time union hater I approve of this message.

Educated workforce. lol.

So a doctor, being highly educated, could OBVIOUSLY do ANY job requiring less education.

Right?

Make an effort to tell me where I'm going with this, Mr. "I'm a teacher, so I can also be my own labour advocate".

No, not any job. But they can do things like file their own complaints, manage their own pension, etc. that the union advocates say that unions are needed for.

Teachers unions fight for smaller classrooms, better facilities, better equipment, more school supplies, more elective programs for students, and in general safer school environments. Studies have shown that students in unionized districts do better along all dimensions than students without. But nevermind that, abgemacht only concerns himself with himself, so obviously they're all worthless.