Hat tip to Right to Work Foundation
The below video is worth a look. This is New Jersey Governor Chris Christie at a town hall meeting in Robbinsville, NJ on June 3, 2010 speaking about the bullies in the Teachers Union.
I think this man has a future.
I don't completely disagree with him. There definitely is a problem with the way school unions are set up, and reform is definitely necessary. However, as a teacher I know how readily administrators are willing to take advantage of us (particularly new teachers) and oftentimes the strength of the union is the only thing holding them back. Administration is always trying to get us to take on new tasks that go above and beyond our contract, and the mantra they give is, "Hey, this is what you signed up for when you became a teacher."
ReplyDeleteWhat a lot of people don't understand is that it's important that teachers be paid well and given good benefits. Right now, the economy is bad, but when it's good, a lot of highly qualified people have no desire to teach, as they can get a job that takes better care of them, and when it comes to taking care of their family or following their passion, they often have to choose the former.
This is why my school, and many others, often go through math and science teachers really quickly. We can't keep the good ones, and we get stuck with a lot of bad ones who just can't get a job doing anything else.
If there isn't any kind of decent financial/benefits situation for the teachers, then it will only attract the lowest common denominator, and that will hurt the kids more than anything. So, in a very real sense, teachers wanting better pay and benefits IS about the kids.
Are there problems with the unions? Most definitely. I remember a teacher we had years ago who did nothing but hand out some worksheets for his kids. The worksheets took about fifteen minutes to do, but the classes were two hours long. Meanwhile, he'd just sit in his office, play solitaire, and sometimes shout at them to knock it off while chaos ensued in his room, often disrupting the classes next door. What could anybody do though? He was a few years shy of retiring, and the administrators preferred to wait him out rather than take on that particular fight with the union.
Some reform is definitely needed, but I think far too often conservatives oversimplify the argument into "unions = bad". I remember one time when the teachers at my district were handing out literature to the parents at an open house for a middle school. We got a chance to talk to a lot of them and were able to explain exactly what our grievances were. (I won't go into detail, but let's just say that as a result of all this, our superintendent resigned amongst a lot of pressure, and his advocate on the board lost big-time at the following election.)
Anyway, I remember one parent not even wanting to hear what we had to say. Her response is, "I don't like unions." Since we were doing this as a union, it was automatically bad, and no facts were going to sway her one way or the other.
The guy in the video says he has no problem with the teachers. While it's a cliche, there is some truth to the saying that the teachers ARE the union.
"Right to work for less" laws are a cynical ploy by businesses who forget the fundamental premise "We're all adults here," who want to treat their employees like children and pay them peanuts.
ReplyDeleteThere is a specific problem with unions in any job where the primary job is not operating machinery, handling raw materials, or stamping out a product, but is direct service to another human being.
Then you have at least two sets of rights and responsibilities. You also have a great difficulty measuring "performance," since it depends on another person's subjective as well as objective characteristics.
Finally, the ultimate principle, TANSTAAFL, is submerged under the propaganda of capitalists as well as labor, trying to pretend that "I'm just barely getting by" while doing very well indeed. Workers understandably distrust the line "There's only so much money available..." but on the other hand, sometimes that is true. Teachers are entitled to a living wage, respect, and reward for good work, as well as protection against capricious and arbitrary administration. But, security has to yield to the urgency of providing the students a useful and inspiring education.