[geeks] One of the things I love about America

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 03:21:26AM +0000, wa2egp at att.net wrote:
> > A union is supposed to only represent the interests of their fee-paying
> > members. If children need a union, they need their own and not expect
> > the teachers union to argue their case.
> 
> That reminds me when, several years ago, we had a strike in the district 
> where I teach.  The union was accused of being "self-serving"
> to which the union president responded, "Of course we are.  Who is
> a union suppose to serve?"    Duh!

I meant to reply to the prior comment (who was replying to me), but I'll 
reply to you instead.

The problem isn't that a teachers union is supposed to serve kids.  The 
problem is that the teachers union is respected as an authority on 
education.  You have to be wary about taking advice from an entity that is
there solely to serve itself.

One of the things that sets me off about teachers unions is that while many
teachers I've met plan to, or are, homeschooling, many places, but 
particularly in PA, the teachers union is dead set against allowing it. They
claim the reason is because the believe it is bad for the states kids.  But,
if the union purpose is to serve itself, shouldn't we be looking for their
motivation there rather than some concern for the kids?  And further, 
shouldn't we think that this is a biased opinion?  But people take it as
solid advice from the experts instead.

In recent years (OK, in my life time), I've only heard of unions being 
beneficial in one case.  There is a company that imports teachers for 
highschools from places like Japan, etc.  It brings the teachers here to
work in American schools.  In most places the union insisted that the 
teachers be union memebers, paid on the union pay scale, etc.  In one
case (Philadelphia, I believe), the union didn't insist on this, so the
school district allowed the teachers to be retained as employees by the 
company that brought them here, where the company that brought them here
financially abused very harshly.  So, in most cases (except Philly, I think),
the union prevented foreign teachers from being abused.

On a side note, I've heard a lot of teachers gripe about the union, and only
being members of it because they couldn't get jobs otherwise.

But anyway, enough griping about the teachers union.  I don't believe it 
should be disbanded or anything.  I just think that for the most part they
have too much political influence.  I don't know that campaign finance 
reform would help with this though, because going against the union tends
to make people look bad.  I think it was the discussion of campaign finance
reform that brought this up, but I'm too lazy to check the archives to see
what the topic was.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd