Teacher’s on strike
| August 30th, 2007I have very fond memories of teachers’ pay negotiations. My sixth form maths teacher was a staunch unionist and also very distractable. We could get a good half hour off calculus with a well-timed question like “What’s happening with the teachers pay negotiations?” Teachers didn’t go on strike when I was in High school, but more recently they did, and students took some really awesome support action. A Secondary teachers’ strike has a real potential to radicalise young workers.
So I’m really excited that New Zealand secondary teachers have voted to go on strike in a couple of weeks. I’ll be there.
* Has anyone else ever seen a video called Mom’s on Strike? It featured a young Yeardley Smith (voice of Lisa). The basic plot-line is pretty self-explanatory. A woman left to do all the housework for her family goes on strike (with a picket line and everythign). Then the father left all the work to the two daughters, and they joined the picket-line too. We watched it in a Social Ed class in high school - which led to a pretty cool discussion about girls’ experiences with housework in their families (I went to an all girls school).
August 30th, 2007 at 9:57 am
What grades/years in school correspond to secondary school where you live?
When I was a Junior in High School (Grade 11), our teachers went on strike. My fellow marching band members and I managed to get into the school building. We got our instruments out, went back outside and started playing marches. Our band teacher was a leader in the strike effort and he was suspected of setting it up. While his sense of humor definitely leaned in that direction, we did it on our own.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
August 30th, 2007 at 10:22 am
I’m curious–you seem to sympathize/agree with the teachers–why?
I’ve always thought that teacher’s unions were a good example of the relatively well-off agitating to be better off. (Since average pay for teachers is way above average pay.)
This comment was written by SamChevre.Report this comment to the moderators
August 30th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Sam: I support workers organising to improve their wages and conditions under almost all circumstances. As it happens teachers in New Zealand are incredibly over-worked, and they’re also underpaid (particularly compared to ‘male’ jobs). But even if they had seriously cushy jobs, I’d support them.
Ron - secondary school is 13-18 here. Having a school marching band play on the strike sounds awesome. In New Zealand in 2002, some of the students had a wildcat support strike on a day the students were’nt striking. I”m sure a large part of it was “walking out of school would be fun” but it was cool anyway.
This comment was written by Maia.Report this comment to the moderators
August 30th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
(Since average pay for teachers is way above average pay.)
Where? I live in Illinois, and the starting salary for a fresh new teacher with no experience, just a bachelor’s (in the district my daughter attends), is $28,000 a year (as opposed to what the new superintendant is getting—over $250,000 a year). Even in central Illinois, $28,000 puts you firmly in the ranks of the working poor. In my district, you have to have a master’s degree and over 22 years of teaching experience to clear $60,000.
Damn straight teachers should organize—it’s pathetic what they get paid.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
August 30th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
La Lubu -
What better offers are those starting teachers declining in order to go into teaching?
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 30th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Robert, there’s a high turnover rate with teachers here; relatively few stick with the profession. Around here, the ones that leave, yet remain in the geographic area, tend to go into civil service. Folks enter the field for altruistic reasons, and leave when they get tired of the low pay. It’s not a matter of turning down other offers—they wanted to be teachers.
The ones who stick with it? They tend to do so in other districts. They get hired here, get a couple years experience under their belts, then leave for other districts where the pay is more in line with what the rest of the population is earning. Folks don’t go into teaching to make a mint (for that matter, neither do electricians, in case you were wondering), but Damn! they shouldn’t have to scrape by on a low wage either. Teachers provide an important service to our society, and deserve more than lip service. Teachers should at least be making what tradespeople do.
And meanwhile, back in my district, kids are getting shortchanged—-good teachers cost money. It’s piss-poor social policy to pay teachers a low wage, which is the natural result of the other piss-poor social policy of funding schools primarily through property taxes, enshrining unequal opportunity.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
August 30th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Around here, the ones that leave, yet remain in the geographic area, tend to go into civil service.
And do those jobs pay significantly more than teaching did?
If they don’t, then how can we describe the teachers as underpaid? They’re getting paid the most that anyone is willing to pay them for the skill set and educational attainment they bring to the table.
Teachers should at least be making what tradespeople do.
Do they have the same level and rarity of skills, working conditions, and accountability?
I’m all for raising teacher salaries and making teaching a high-qualification, high-status occupation. That does mean that most of the people who currently do it, won’t be able to do it anymore; they won’t have the level of skill and attainment that the new entrants will have, and they’ll be competed out the door.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 30th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
I thought I made it perfectly clear that the high turnover amongst teachers entering the profession is because they leave for (literally) greener pastures. A bachelor’s degree still has value, and folks who have one can generally expect higher pay and greater opportunity than those who don’t. And yes, what they’re paying new teachers here is more typical of what someone without higher education would be paid.
Electricians aren’t paid well because our skills are rare; anyone with basic intelligence and rudimentary mechanical ability can be trained to be an electrician, if they want to be. We are paid well because we are organized. There’s guys in my local who were organized in (rather than going through an apprenticeship); they were paid even less than new teachers—some of them made as little as $6.50 an hour! It’s the unionization that made a difference. We sure as hell weren’t paid well a hundred years ago, when our skills were even rarer and the job conditions even worse—-it’s the unionization that changed that.
Teachers don’t have the pay they do because their skills and education are common (they’re not—in my area, only a quarter of the population has a bachelor’s degree, and that’s significantly higher than the surrounding counties). Part of the problem is the system of school funding. In Illinois, it’s based largely on property taxes. Schools with a higher property tax base get all kinds of amenities that schools without that tax base—and that includes access to the good teachers. Those schools can afford to pay a teacher what he or she is worth. Another part of the problem is that teaching has been a traditionally female occupation for quite a long time. Occupations that are traditionally female are paid less than occupations that are traditionally male, with very few exceptions (in fact, I can think of only two—fashion modeling and prostitution. Not exactly lifelong careers, no?). Teachers still have to battle the idea that they don’t need to be paid more, because don’t they have husbands for that? The density of women in the profession dovetails well with another sexist trope, that teachers shouldn’t need higher pay because they’re making a grand sacrifice (and isn’t that what women do?).
Bah.
Meanwhile, organizing has proven to be the only effective means of raising teacher pay. More power to ‘em. All together now! “When the union’s inspiration through the worker’s blood shall run….”
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
August 30th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
It’s hard to see how an absence of unionization explains low teacher pay. Most public school teachers belong to national unions that are quite powerful.
Schools with a higher property tax base get all kinds of amenities that schools without that tax base—and that includes access to the good teachers. Those schools can afford to pay a teacher what he or she is worth.
All schools pay their teachers what they are worth. We have a relatively free labor market; teachers who are not paid what they are worth go somewhere else. The difficulty that the poorer districts have is that the teachers they can afford to pay aren’t very good.
Even in those districts, low teacher pay is as much a question of priorities as it is of resources. You can have high teacher pay in the poorest school district in the country; you’ll just have to give up other things. Is it better to have an awesome teacher trying to run a classroom of 40 kids, or an indifferent teacher trying to teach 20? Is it better to have high-paid teachers and no athletic program, or crappy teachers and a state-leading athletic program? I don’t know; I know what I would do, but I’m not in charge.
The tradeoffs are undoubtedly easier to manage in richer districts; everything is easier when you have more money. But we also see from looking at the vast range of school districts in the country that money is not much of a panacea. The worst districts in the country (in DC) are also the ones with the highest levels of funding.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 4:54 am
“If they don’t, then how can we describe the teachers as underpaid?”
We can compare teachers’ salaries here with those in other counties, states, countries, or time periods (though the further removed you get, the less relevant the comparison is).
It could very well be that $28,000 is the most these people should expect, historically or internationally. But at least such concrete comparisons obviate the need for such inane logic such as “they must be getting paid what they are worth, because they’re getting paid exactly that”.
This comment was written by sylphhead.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 5:41 am
It’s hard to see how an absence of unionization explains low teacher pay. Most public school teachers belong to national unions that are quite powerful.
Sure, now they do. Back in my grandmother’s day, they didn’t—and the comparative pay was lower. Unionization made a difference, just like it did in the trades and civil service. But as with anything else, unions are more powerful in some areas than others. There are areas in the southern U.S. where unionized electricians have a take-home pay that is what I take home on unemployment, because although the national union has a certain amount of clout, that clout doesn’t extend very far in those areas. ‘Nother words, there are battles left to be won.
All schools pay their teachers what they are worth.
Bullshit. If the schools aren’t paying a salary adequate enough to attract and retain the qualified personnel willing to do the job, and do it effectively, then those schools aren’t paying the teachers what they’re worth. The teachers are leaving to go somewhere else where they can get paid what they’re worth.
It all comes down to “what is the purpose of a school?” If you think the purpose of a school is to warehouse young people to keep them off the streets, then attracting quality teachers isn’t going to be your priority. If you think the purpose of a school is to educate young people, then attracting quality teachers is going to be your priority.
Anyway, I don’t want to get too far off topic before going to work; it’s just when SamChevre made the statement about the well-off agitating to be more well off, well, it’s simply not true. As an objective measurement, teacher pay is low, and certainly lower than what people with a comparative level of education and work experience receive. You’re talking about pay as an abstract concern, and I’m talking about pay as necessary purchasing power—what it takes to get by, pay bills, save for the future. Folks aren’t going to college so they can barely make it—the whole point of higher education (where I’m from) is to have a decent standard of living—not being constantly under the gun of bankruptcy. Objectively, getting higher-quality teachers means raising the pay. Period.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 6:10 am
My education has been regularly disrupted by strikes. I have yet to cross a picket line, but now as I’m about to start graduate school, I may have to. Under my collective agreement, my union cannot protect me if I don’t cross, (we are, of course, encouraged to picket in solidarity, the union has donated money to the strike fund, etc.).
When I think it over, there have been education-related strikes in Toronto/Ontario almost every two years. Teachers, janitors and administrative staff, food service people (on campus during my undergrad), and bus drivers.
This comment was written by debbie.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 6:32 am
SamChevre made the statement about the well-off agitating to be more well off, well, it’s simply not true. As an objective measurement, teacher pay is low
It’s becoming rapidly obvious that our basis of comparison is different.
I’m saying that $28,000 is HIGHER than the median wage for a worker–and it’s starting pay, guaranteed to go up–and it includes good benefits (at least, here in VA it does). I’m not seeing the logic of taxing people making, on average, less than $28,000, so that people making, on average, somewhere around $35,000 can be paid more.
Now–if you are comparing to the other college-educated professions, a teacher is fairly low-paid; that I will happily agree to. I just don’t see why, in an area where most people don’t have college degrees, that should be the basis of comparison.
I support workers organising to improve their wages and conditions under almost all circumstances.
So do I. One of the few circumstances where I am less certain is when the workers are government employees, paid by taxes. I do not think that it is necessarily fair to charge more taxes to pay government workers more; I am especially uneasy when the people being taxed are poorer than the people being paid.
(Before attacking me, take into account that my wife is a teacher; I’m not talking from ignorance here.)
This comment was written by SamChevre.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 6:39 am
I don’t know about NZ but in the US a teacher’s low pay relative to education level is offset by extremely high job security through the tenure system. Electricians might be more organized but the ones I know also have to deal with a large amount of downtime and underemployment. I don’t think I’ve ever known a teacher to go on unemployment because there weren’t enough kids to teach.
In many areas of Michigan (the state I live in) it’s all but impossible to find a job as a teacher. So while the pay may be lower than a lawyer’s many people still want the job.
This comment was written by joe.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 7:20 am
One of the few circumstances where I am less certain is when the workers are government employees, paid by taxes. I do not think that it is necessarily fair to charge more taxes to pay government workers more; I am especially uneasy when the people being taxed are poorer than the people being paid.
So, why is there never any question about taxing these lower-paid workers when it comes to increasing the salaries of other government workers—like police officers, firefighters, 911 operators, public works crews, etc. All of those folks have a starting salary anywhere from $15,000-$20,000 per year higher than that of a teacher, and those careers do not require a college degree (with its attending debt). In my city, the city and county share the costs of the 911 operators. Retention was a huge problem because of the low starting pay, and because of that, in recent years there was mandatory overtime of the 911 operators—12 hours a day, period. My Local started representing these 911 operators, and after a few years we (the Local) were able to increase the starting pay to the high 40s—what the starting pay is for cops and firefighters. The result? Better qualified people are applying for and getting these jobs, and turnover is low. No more mandatory overtime and burnout. Were any people laid off to accommodate the higher salaries? No, it still takes a certain amount of people to do the job. There’s higher salaries, but the dramatically reduced turnover means lower recruitment and training costs—and less overtime. Win-win.
(Before attacking me, take into account that my wife is a teacher; I’m not talking from ignorance here.)
Brava for your wife, Sam! I don’t feel that you are speaking from ignorance here, just that your perspective on who is well-off may be colored by your family situation. See, in the United States there is still the assumption that teachers are going to be female, and that they don’t really need the same rate of pay that other college graduates need, because they will have a husband to support them—they don’t need a family-supporting wage because they’ll have that in the form of a spouse.
That isn’t the case anymore. Men (by and large) aren’t entering teaching because of the low pay, and women are increasingly eschewing teaching as a profession als0—partly because we have opportunities in other arenas that we didn’t have before (thank you, feminism!), and partly because women (especially college-educated women with greater job opportunity) aren’t satisfied with the “petite-cut” wage—women want the man-sized wage. It isn’t sensible to rely on a spouse’s wage as a support; there’s not just divorce to watch out for, but lack of spousal job security for the still-married.
So again, why is there no problem with finding the money to pay government employees who do important work in male-dominated or gender-neutral fields, yet when the employees who do important work, crucial to the proper functioning of our society, happen to be in a female-dominated field—-we can’t afford it?
The social and economic landscape has changed. School districts can no longer rely on a cadre of educated women to enter teaching and be satisfied with the lower pay. The change has already occurred—now its time for school districts to catch up. And yes, that means raising the pay. If taxes have to be raised, or allocations of existing money redistributed in order to accommodate new programs, training, and higher salaries for more qualified police officers, the same can be done for teachers.
We just have to want to do it. We have to value the next generation. We have to value their minds, their future, our future. We have to value the people who are preparing them educationally for that future.
And as a society, we don’t.
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 7:39 am
Just that your perspective on who is well-off may be colored by your family situation.
It certainly is, but maybe not in the way you are thinking. Remember that I grew up in a county with a median household income that’s half the national average now, and was more like a third when I was a boy. A trailer was a better-than-average dwelling. I’m the best-eductated person in my family with a bachelor’s degree–and I went to college to get that 10 years after dropping out of school.
In other words, I think I’m unbelievably lucky to have a job where I work out of the weather, and have work every day.
It’s interesting to me that in your area, police are paid more than teachers–it’s the opposite here (on base salary–police do make overtime.) A first-year police officer makes $30,617 and a first-year teacher makes $33,303
This comment was written by SamChevre.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 8:50 am
Regarding the whole thing about it’s being unfair to further tax the lower-paid: Yep. So why the fuck don’t we start properly taxing the rich? And big businesses?
This comment was written by Crys T.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 9:25 am
All schools pay their teachers what they are worth.
Bullshit. If the schools aren’t paying a salary adequate enough to attract and retain the qualified personnel willing to do the job, and do it effectively, then those schools aren’t paying the teachers what they’re worth. The teachers are leaving to go somewhere else where they can get paid what they’re worth.
Well, exactly. With a free labor market, nobody can be paid less than what they’re worth, because if the employer tries, the employee leaves. If a school is paying $20k a year, then those whose market worth is greater than that will not take the job. Unless you have some method of coercion, it’s very difficult to get anyone to work for less than what they’re worth.
I think you’re conflating “what they’re worth” with “the amount society should value them by”. What they’re worth is what society DOES value them by; your disagreement with the status quo is that you think the valuation should be higher than it is. We are in agreement there.
So why the fuck don’t we start properly taxing the rich? And big businesses?
Taxing business is economically pointless. And what does the size of an enterprise have to do with the proportional contribution it should make to the tax system?
As for “properly taxing the rich”, the rich pay most of the taxes that are paid. This keeps coming up; there must be a genetic code in liberals that makes you believe that the rich are getting away with something. They get away with lots of things, but the tax situation isn’t one of them. ;)
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 9:28 am
Most police departments require something more than a high school diploma. A BA and graduation from a police academy is pretty standard outside of small departments. To be promoted within a police department you have to pass specific tests. It’s not the same as getting a MS or PhD in education. But neither of those are the same as an MD, JD, or MBA either.
Everyone I know that left teaching did it more because of the problems they couldn’t fix than they did the money. At least that’s what they said. They described vast frustration at trying to educate students that were tired, under fed, disrespectful of authority, ambivalent to education and distracted by a poor home life. One of my very good friends used to let students sleep for several hours in the back of the room. She knew it was the only safe, quiet time they were likely to get. She felt that way she was able to at least teach them something in the afternoon. Also the class was respectful of the sleeping students need for quiet and it made class room management easier. Makes me sad. She quit to teach a private school. This involved a pay cut and loss of tenure but she’s happier now thanks to the improved work environment.
begin snark: Since the plural of anecdote is data this conclusively proves it’s not about the money. end snark
This comment was written by Joe.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 10:58 am
Everyone I know that left teaching did it more because of the problems they couldn’t fix than they did the money.
Yeah, that’s pretty widespread. Consider the unwinnable war part of the problem to be negative compensation for all teachers.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 11:03 am
Everyone I know that left teaching did it more because of the problems they couldn’t fix than they did the money. At least that’s what they said.
Oh, I believe you. But let’s face it, higher pay goes a long way towards getting people interested in less-than-ideal working conditions. I’m an electrician, and I’ve been on jobs where the conditions were abysmal, but the paycheck at the end of the week made up for it. I received the kind of pay where the conditions of my off-work life were not abysmal—they were pretty damn good. All the little things like being able to afford my own house, knowing that my bills are paid, eating well, being able to buy clothes when I need them, having a reliable vehicle—that makes up for bad working conditions. Garbage collectors have poor working conditions; they’re paid more than teachers. Why? Because that job has to carry a certain wage in order to attract workers.
She quit to teach a private school. This involved a pay cut and loss of tenure but she’s happier now thanks to the improved work environment.
How does she negotiate housing, utilities, transportation, food, health insurance, retirement savings, clothing, medical expenses, etc. on that lower pay?
Teacher pay is lower than that of other professions, because as a society we expect spouses (mainly husbands) to subsidize teachers. I’m not saying that teachers can’t or don’t leave the profession for reasons other than the pay. I’m saying that some of them are leaving because of the pay, and others who could be effective teachers won’t even consider entering the field because of the pay. We’re left with too few good teachers in the classroom because of the poor pay. Folks who go into teaching know that they’ll have to deal with kids from dysfunctional homes; kids who haven’t had anything to eat; kids with learning disabilities or mental illness; indifferent, neglectful, or hostile parents; parents who have learning disabilities or mental illness of their own (and thus ill-equipped to help their children); kids left at home in the evenings while their parent works a second job to make the ends; indifferent or incompetant school administrators; obstacles in the bureaucracy—-they know they are likely to encounter all of the above in their classroom going in(in the same way that young folks that sign up for the Marine Corps know there’s a likelihood of getting shot at someday). However, a lot of them haven’t had the visceral experience of trying to make ends meet on the typical teacher’s starting pay. It’s an eye-opener for some of them to realize that the school district ran out of paper in March, so teachers have to make do with their own resources—what about the teacher who can’t afford paper for her classroom? On top of all the rest of the crap they have to deal with?
Maia, how do working conditions, pay and benefits for teachers in New Zealand compare to the U.S.? Are their issues the same?
This comment was written by La Lubu.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 11:04 am
“Taxing business is economically pointless. And what does the size of an enterprise have to do with the proportional contribution it should make to the tax system?”
The corporate tax does not affect all corporations equally, including those within the same net income bracket - in fact, that’s one of the common *criticisms* of it - so passing most of the cost onto the consumer isn’t an option. Now, perhaps a corporation out there is willing to lose market share this way purely as a matter of principle, but I doubt there are too many of these to worry about.
In fact, the exact same applies to 99% of the situations whenever anyone claims ‘the costs being ultimately borne by the consumer’ as a reason to oppose anything big business doesn’t want, for any reason, ever.
Sam, I understand what you’re trying to say about state employees’ wages - the same thing irks me sometimes as well - but in the end, top down income redistribution isn’t the sole, or even the main, purpose of taxation. Teachers provide a service not just to their students, but to society as a whole (by providing a critical mass of educated citizens). Everyone, rich and poor, benefit from this, and so long as taxes overall remain reasonably progressive, I don’t see a problem with ‘taxing the poor to feed the (comparably) rich’, in this case.
This comment was written by sylphhead.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 12:58 pm
How does she negotiate housing, utilities, transportation, food, health insurance, retirement savings, clothing, medical expenses, etc. on that lower pay?
She has a lower standard of living. I don’t do her books but from what I can see she goes out less and hasn’t bought a new car. But she seems happier.
This comment was written by joe.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 1:30 pm
When I was a local truck driver garbageman made 15$/hour to start and could work their way up to 17.50. That’s 30 - 35k/year with little in the way of benefits and no job security.
Enough when i was/what my friend told me….according to monster.com
the average teacher salary
25th Percentile Median 75th Percentile
$41,645 $47,759 $55,646
(link)
This comment was written by joe.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Teacher pay is lower than that of other professions, because as a society we expect spouses (mainly husbands) to subsidize teachers
This might be true; perhaps in the instance of educators, society decides to substitute a moral judgment for the market. I see no evidence of that, but if you have some I’ll be glad to look at it.
I think it more likely that teacher pay is set primarily by the labor markets.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 4:11 pm
It’s most likely that both of the above are true. There is a labour market that buys and sells teachers’ labour. This labour market in turn is shaped by factors such as spousal support - if the majority of teachers seeking employment have a secure source of sustenance down, secondary considerations such as working in a district they like overtake pure monetary concerns, for instance. Moral judgments don’t substitute for the market, they play a part in shaping it, because markets do not exist independently of the society they operate in.
In fact, the above may explain a large part of the wage gap w/r/t occupational segregation. “Wimmin’s work” pays less because we never expected anyone to live on that alone - single moms being a figment of imagination here.
This comment was written by sylphhead.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 6:47 pm
Many teachers will be paid less than their peers because many teachers are worth less. While they may have degrees, it’s not the same degree as others have.
It’s much more difficult to get a degree in biology than in education. And the market knows that. Teachers are often generalists, and a general “college degree” without any specialization isn’t worth as much.
Math and science degrees, for example, are worth much more in the open market than are, say, English or Art History degrees. And that is also reflected in the teacher salaries; some areas are giving $10,000 bonuses to qualified math teachers, PER YEAR. that split–within the teacher ranks–suggests that the other teachers may be worth less than you propose.
I personally agree that we should overpay teachers, attract people holding grad degrees in their specialty, etc. But a lot of the current teachers would have to be fired first. They just don’t have the skills.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2007 at 6:53 pm
Maia, in the U.S. “secondary” education refers to high school (grades 9 - 12). Grades 13 and above are college and is called “higher education” here. Grades 1 - 8 are called “primary education”.
Robert, La Lubu, Joe; my wife taught in suburban Chicago parochial schools. She left because of the absymal pay.
Teacher pay is lower than that of other professions, because as a society we expect spouses (mainly husbands) to subsidize teachers.
I don’t think so. In fact, after having spent a lot of time thoughout the years listening to and reading debates on teacher pay whenever (numerous) school property tax levy referenda have been up for a vote, I conclude that teacher pay is mainly a function of two factors:
1) Whether or not the current pay levels are high enough to get people to do the job with what the voters of the district consider adequate skill levels and performance, and
2) how much money the voters in the district have.
The voters in my high school district have rather more money than most school districts in Illinios. On the average - there are certainly poor pockets, but there are also quite well-off areas as well. Therefore, in my kids’ high school district that translates to a median teacher salary of $76,000 U.S. a year (mean = $78,000). We have 44 teachers out of 237 making more than $100,000 a year, and only 3 full timers making less than $45,000. But then, my kids’ high school district has a pretty strong tax base and an electorate willing to tax themselves enough to support this. YMMV. So what happens is that the better teachers in surrounding school districts compete to get jobs in our district.
and others who could be effective teachers won’t even consider entering the field because of the pay.
Bingo, La Lubu. I could be a hell of a math or science teacher (if I may be so bold), but unless I was lucky enough to have gotten into my present district I wouldn’t be making more than about 2/3 of what I make now. I can’t speak for the market for language or art or music skills, but someone who’s got strong math/science and communication skills can make a heck of a lot more money in the corporate world than in education.
Now, this can balance out in other ways. A teacher may make less money, but they also get tenure (so they almost never get laid off) and they get summers off. And there’s the satisfaction of seeing the light go on in a kid’s eyes. Taking or leaving a teaching job isn’t just about money. But it’s one of the primary ones.
Folks who go into teaching know that they’ll have to deal with kids from dysfunctional homes; kids who haven’t had anything to eat; kids with learning disabilities or mental illness; indifferent, neglectful, or hostile parents; parents who have learning disabilities or mental illness of their own (and thus ill-equipped to help their children); kids left at home in the evenings while their parent works a second job to make the ends; indifferent or incompetant school administrators; obstacles in the bureaucracy—-they know they are likely to encounter all of the above in their classroom going in
Now, that depends on where you’re teaching. In the inner city, sure - all of the above. And I’ll sign off that in just about any district you’ll run into indifferent, neglectful or hostile parents. In fact, sometimes the more money they have the more hostile they get. But the rest of that is by no means inevitable.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2007 at 5:42 am
I think in some ways it’s self selecting. In Michigan, and many other states, a lot of the cost of schools is payed through property taxes. This can vary widely between neighboring cities. So when you move, if you want the schools with better facilities and higher teacher pay, you buy less house in the high tax area. If you’re not as interested in the schools you buy more house in the lower tax area. It ends up with a district where many people have intentionally chosen to pay more for a better school system.
But Michigan is NOT a state friendly to the teachers union. When John Engler was governor they made it unlawful for teachers to strike. If they do the local school board can fire them. Still, salaries are pretty high for teachers in most areas.
I don’t think more money to the teacher is really the key anyway. In areas where there isn’t a lot of ‘external challenge’ there’s no shortage of teachers. In areas where there is I don’t think another 10k is going to make up for the hardships.
This comment was written by joe.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2007 at 9:10 am
I will come to catch up on this thread later, I hope, and it may be that someone else has said this, but my own experience suggests that another factor influencing teacher pay is the degree to which the people who pay teachers’ salaries consider teaching to be a profession, a specific set of skills–separate from the discipline that is being taught–that requires training, practice and maintenance, and not simply something that anyone who can get up in front of a classroom with a particular body of knowledge can do. People who understand this, in my experience, tend to be willing, even if they are often unable, to pay for good teachers; people who do not understand this are the ones who tend to talk about teachers being overpaid.
It is true that one does not go into teaching to make a lot of money. (In answer to RonF: I teach writing at a community college and I could easily have been making double what I make now if I had taken my skills and put them to work in corporate world.) It is also probably true that the job security that comes with tenure is worth some portion of what I could have been making were I in the corporate world where tenure would be unavailable to me, as would the state benefits package I enjoy, to which I currently have to contribute nothing, which is also worth not a small sum of money. (Though I also have to say that tenure, properly understood, does not provide the kind of absolute guarantee of employment that may people think: really all it does is guarantee a teacher due process. (I realize that the question of tenure is, in practice, very much more complicated than I have just made it out to be; I simply want to point out that it is not a guarantee of employment.))
Nonetheless, my salary–good as it is in terms of raw numbers–barely, if at all, keeps up with the cost of living, and I am consistently accused of having what is essentially a part time job, since I am in the classroom “only” 15 hours per week, by people who understand little of what is involved either in teaching college courses or in maintaining a college teaching career.
Well, I was going somewhere with this, but I we are leaving for a lovely day at my sister-in-law’s pool. I will try to return later.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2007 at 9:39 am
Teachers’ unions have always seemed vastly different ethically from most other unions. As a result I am far less supportive of teachers’ unions than of other unions.
Unions generally start at manufacturing level, or below. In those jobs, there is one crucial aspect that leads me to often support the worker: there are few other options. You can’t tell a waitress, or a day laborer, to “go find another field.”
People get “dumped” into work as a coal miner; they “have no choice” other than to work as a housecleaning temp. They start work bagging groceries because it fits into their childcare schedule; they end up as a delivery truck driver because they will pay immediately and they didn’t have the luxury to spend a month looking for work. Not many people plan to be janitors.
But teaching is just the opposite. It takes planning, foresight, and CHOICE. Anyone who is qualified enough to go into college, and obtain a specialized degree, and obtain a job as a teacher… should also be qualified enough to go into college, get a different degree, and get a different job.
It’s a choice, not a forced decision. So for me, at least, a lot of the sympathy is gone. It’s one thing to complain about the conditions or pay of a job when you didn’t choose it, or didn’t really want to end up with it. But if you work for 4 years (or more) to get a job and THEN proceed to complain about the normal and expected working conditions of the job, when you could have done something else? Strikes me as odd. And whiny. And exhibiting an appalling lack of both research and foresight.
As a result, I tend to have much more feeling for older teachers–they often bought into a different system and are getting screwed by recent developments. Things sure have changed in the last couple of decades. But I have essentially no sympathy for the new teachers, and in their limited circumstance I think they’ve dug their own hole.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2007 at 2:47 pm
I realize that the question of tenure is, in practice, very much more complicated than I have just made it out to be; I simply want to point out that it is not a guarantee of employment.
It’s not an absolute guarantee, true. But it’s pretty damn close, at least here in Illinois, as long as you keep your pants on, don’t do drugs and don’t whack the kids around. We’ve had some teachers in our elementary school district that all the parents and members of the school board that I’ve talked to have figured were incompetent. Yet the response has been to move them around and reassign them duties that minimize their exposure to kids rather than just up and fire them. It’s been because of the inordinate documentation and procedural requirements and the associated costs (> $25,000) and sturm und drang that’s required under the terms of the teacher’s union contract. As opposed to just about everyone who works to pay their salaries; the vast majority of us can be kicked out the door of where we work with 2 weeks salary and a heartfelt “Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out!”.
I want to note that I’m not anti-teacher. I say that the majority of the problem that an underachieving child has is due to his or her home environment. A teacher can make up for some of that, but overall it’s the parents’ responsibility. But we as taxpayers and children deserve the best teachers our money can buy, and I don’t see that things like tenure help us with that.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
September 3rd, 2007 at 3:51 am
RonF:
Having taught for almost 20 years in a department where, when I was hired, there were two men whom everyone knew had been having sex with their students for years and whose only punishment, as far as I know, was to be forced into “early” retirement–and I put early in quotes because, again, as far as I know, each was close to or beyond retirement age when they left–because the school was unwilling and/or unable to do what it needed to do to remove their tenure, I have no fundamental argument with your point that the burden of documentation and other requirements in a tenure-removal process need to be defined in ways that make the process as practical and doable as possible.
That said, however, I think it’s important to point out that the protection tenure offers teachers–the overwhelming majority of whom do their jobs–are deeply important: i. e., the protection against administrators who might, under various kinds of pressure, pressure teachers to change student grades or do other things that fuck with the integrity of the educational system/process in the interest of whatever local politics happen to be holding sway at the time; the protection, in higher ed, to do one’s research or publishing without worrying that one might be fired because the nature of the work is too controversial (and, I should point out, this also applies to what one teaches; think about what it would mean if a teacher could get fired for teaching, say, a book that enough people found unpopular that they brought sufficient pressure on a principal to get rid of the teacher); tenure also helps, when it works (and, as I have said, I recognize it does not always work), to keep teachers focused on the task of educating those in their classrooms rather than on the competition–between teachers within a school; between schools for the best teachers–that would likely ensue in a system without tenure; tenure makes it possible for a teacher to commit him or herself long term to a community of kids (I am thinking here of primary and secondary school teachers, not higher ed), a kind of commitment that has a great deal of value, I think.
(And here, Sailorman, though it’s not about tenure per se) is something that I think your point about teachers knowing what they are getting themselves into misses: one can feel a commitment to education, believe in it as a public service/good/necessity, go with eyes open into the profession for those and all related reasons–because teaching, I can promise you, is not something you want to be doing if teaching itself is not something you feel committed to; the hours and time off would not be worth it–and still feel and see and act on the need to improve the working conditions within the profession. In other words, the two are not mutually exclusive.)
But, back to tenure: Is it a flawed system? You bet. Are there other ways of doing things that have attractive elements to them? Again, you bet. Sometimes, when I think about my salary and what I could be making in the private sector (and I am not complaining; I am comparing; it is not complaining to acknowledge that my life would be more comfortable in many ways if I were making more money), I think it would be great if teachers were free agents–which is essentially what you would have in a tenureless system. With my record, years of service, etc., I would be worth a whole hell of a lot more than I am now. But then I wonder what kind of a school system would result from that and whether I would want my kid educated in that system, and no one has been able to presuade me that such a system would be one that held the people in the classroom as its central concern to any greater extent than the system we have now, which can at least claim that concern as its central motivation, if not always a goal that is achieved.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 3rd, 2007 at 4:40 am
I’m finding this thread interesting, because the US employment/education/tax system are so very different from New Zealand.
The teachers strike I’m talking about would be a national strike. In New Zealand Teachers bargain their pay nationally (which is much less a big deal than it sounds, since we’re talking a country of 4 million people). I have to say, though, that the American system seems doomed to entrench social inequalities. If education is paid for locally, then poor communities are going to have the worst education.
For the record, In New Zealand teachers have no more job protection than other workers, but our basic level of job protection is much higher than it would be in most states in America. Benefits are also irrelevant, since we have a national health system (they may have a slightly better retirement deal, although that’s probably being rolled out to the rest of the country).
Apart from that I’d just like to second La Lubu - you get paid what you can negotiate. Collective bargaining is the way workers can increase their bargaining power.
This comment was written by Maia.Report this comment to the moderators
September 3rd, 2007 at 6:26 pm
“our basic level of job protection is much higher than it would be in most states in America.”
This comment was written by Sailorman.any chance you can elaborate? I’m curious to hear more.
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September 3rd, 2007 at 6:32 pm
I think it more likely that teacher pay is set primarily by the labor markets.
Are you now arguing that labor markets are not affected by human factors, such as discrimination? You’re old enough to remember when wants ads were sorted into “Men Wanted” and “Women Wanted”.
Sailorman, not really following the “you asked for it” argument. The point of a union is that workers acting through an organization have greater bargaining power than they do individually. It’s not some kind of reward workers get for being sufficiently oppressed and virtuous.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
September 3rd, 2007 at 7:05 pm
Are you now arguing that labor markets are not affected by human factors, such as discrimination?
Not at all. Just that a broadly-held sentiment of “I’m not going to pay these teachers much, because I expect their husbands to support them” is at most a small component of those factors.
The point of a union is that workers acting through an organization have greater bargaining power than they do individually.
And this is of course true. At the same time, the existence of the union and its power may have negative consequences for the membership over time. Most Americans don’t like the teacher’s unions. Even among Americans who like labor unions in general, many dislike the teacher’s unions, mainly because they are accurately perceived as providing job security and protections to teachers. That sounds good, but teaching isn’t like working in an office; if the guy who’s in charge of ordering staplers is a fuckup, the unit can route around him. When a teacher is a fuckup, they have to be fired or fixed immediately.
Fixing is hard because of human nature; firing damn near impossible because of the union. So the crapulent teachers instead pile up in the system, and the good ones try desperately to make up for it. But the kids only have some many years in the system. Every year in the hands of Mr. Jones the Happy Incompetent is a year they’ll never get back. Parents aren’t morons; we pick up on all this.
One exceptionally unfortunate side effect of that is that teachers don’t come into the school year with a presumption of competence from parents. The parents don’t think that the system would have gotten rid of them if they were incompetent, so the parents are always leaving open the possibility in their mind. This undermines trust. (I can remember how relieved we were after our kids’ first semester at public school in a new town. The teachers were great. We had no way to know that ahead of time.)
So the union does indeed make sure that the individual teacher is getting a better deal than they would have without the collective bargaining. But the union also reflexively provides job security protections that make it much harder to run a tight ship, and that protection ends up undermining the trust and faith that individual teachers can expect to receive. In other environments that’s not so important; in education it’s pretty critical.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
September 3rd, 2007 at 7:23 pm
It’s comforting to think that if most people have a negative opinion about X, it’s rational and because X has earned that negative opinion, but I’m a bit more cynical than that.
I wasn’t even thinking of the ‘husband support’ angle, but of the notion that teaching has in the last several decades been seen as women’s work, and we all know how much prestige and pay that adds.
If the guy at your office who’s a fuckup is a Teamster like you, it’s no harder to work around him than it is to work around a bad teacher.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
September 3rd, 2007 at 9:15 pm
You can’t route around bad teachers. If they’re a teacher, they’re going to be fouling up someone’s education, even if you manage to tuck them away in the A/V room or something. There are few “teaching” jobs that don’t involve being responsible for teaching kids. That’s why bad teachers, and the difficulty of getting rid of them, are such a huge issue, whereas nobody really cares if there’s a bad office worker or a bad truck driver (at least until the latter goes off an overpass and kills someone). A union doesn’t make people hate Teamsters for being fuckups because not many people care. A union does make people hate teachers for being fuckups because lots of people care. It’s not the union’s fault that fuckups exist, but it’s certainly their fault that it’s hard to get rid of the fuckups.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
September 3rd, 2007 at 9:35 pm
If education is paid for locally, then poor communities are going to have the worst education.
Unfortunately true. There have been various fixes proposed for this. Some work, some don’t, some fall much shorter in the application than in theory.
For one thing, educational funding in the U.S. (and I am limiting myself to K - 12 education, not higher/college education) is not ever wholly dependent on local funding. The Federal government provides a base level of funding to all school districts, on a needs-dependent basis (e.g., my school district gets damn little, but then doesn’t need it) across the country. States also (AFAIK) provide an additional level of funding to the school districts in their stte. Local property taxes may provide very little or almost all of the funding for a given district; for poor ones, very little.
The total formula, however, sometimes proves inadequate. In Illinois, the poorest districts spend a little less than $5,000 per pupil year. The wealthiest spend about $23,000 per pupil year. Now, it’s definitely bad that kids in poor districts get inadequately funded schools. These are the kids who most need good schools! So one logical way to fix this is to use income taxes to help boost funding, funneling wealthier people’s income to poorer people’s kids. This is recognized in the Illinois State Constitution, which states that the State will provide at least 50% of the funding in the State’s school districts. Except - it doesn’t. The General Assembly just doesn’t provide the money. Why this hasn’t resulted in massive lawsuits I don’t know.
You’ll never get away from some property tax dependency - after all, if rich folks want to tax themselves and spend it on their kids, they should be able to. But a minimum level of funding for all school districts that comes out of general tax revenues instead of property taxes in a given district will pay off in the long run.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
September 3rd, 2007 at 9:43 pm
I’ve worked for some major corporations — J.P. Morgan, Simon & Schuster, and others — and the idea that incompetents get fired in private life, rather than sticking around for decades, runs contrary to my experience.
I have no doubt that there are incompetent teachers out there — there are incompetents in every large organization. I don’t believe there is any imaginable system of running universal public schooling which will eliminate incompetent teachers; nor have my experiences in large corporations given me any reason to believe that more freedom to fire teachers will lead to fewer bad teachers.
Fortunately, kids route around incompetent teachers all the time (contrary to Robert’s apparent belief that a single bad teacher permanently destroys every child he ever teaches). (For one thing, it’s usually just a matter of one bad teacher out of a whole group of teachers, and that only for one year out of many years.)
In the real world, incompetent teachers without tenure would not be fired; not if they knew how to play the game, how to suck up to the principle, how to suck up to the kids with influential parents. In contrast, competent teachers who refused to play that game — or who weren’t competent at playing it — would be declared incompetent and fired. (Richard pointed this out already, but I don’t think anyone responded to him.)
Maybe it should be easier to fire teachers. But the idea that teachers should be as easy to fire as Wal-Mart clerks is an extreme idealogical view, and it’s wrong. (I’m not even convinced that Wal-Mart clerks should be as easy to fire as Wal-Mart clerks.)
Besides, even if every bad teacher was fired tomorrow, the important problems with educating American kids — many of which are more in the homes than in the schools — would remain.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2007 at 12:40 am
In many areas of Michigan (the state I live in) it’s all but impossible to find a job as a teacher. So while the pay may be lower than a lawyer’s many people still want the job.
This comment was written by Lawyer.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2007 at 6:24 am
A union doesn’t make people hate Teamsters for being fuckups because not many people care.
Uh, right, until the driver goes off the road and kills someone, or until they can’t get their papers filed at City Hall because the public-union clerk is taking another lunch break. The notion that people uniquely hate teachers’ unions is so weak even you’re not really trying to make it whole-heartedly.
If a parent can’t get rid of a teacher because the teacher is the principal’s husband, or threatens a bogus lawsuit and the school board caves, the result is the same regardless of the presence of the union, which is Amp’s point.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2007 at 7:31 am
mythago:
Of course unions have greater bargaining power than individuals. That’s why they exist–though they certainly weren’t invented for situations like teachers. ‘The question is, when looking at the actions of EITHER a union or an employer, is whether their actions are morally supportable.
Given the unusual links of the education system, teachers, students, public funds, etc, I’m not always convinced that the actions of teacher’s unions–including but not limited to strikes or walkouts–are morally supportable. Often they are not.
I do not think that, generally speaking, it is morally correct to
1) Enter into a difficult-to-get job with full knowledge of the conditions;
2) which job has a large effect on third parties;
3) which job is paid for by taxes;
and then
4) threaten a strike to force change in the job, which change primarily benefits you.
Put more succintly: if you don’t like the job enough that you predict you’re going to have to strike to change it, don’t take the freakin’ job in the first place. The “reward” for being oppressed and/or virtuous isn’t that you get to make a union. It’s that you avoid being judged poorly for doing so.
I don’t know about your area. But here where I live, TEACHERS are generally well respected. Teachers’ UNIONS are hugely disliked. This is notable because of the disparity. there are plenty of other professions that are well regarded, and plenty of other unions that are despised. But teaching has managed to capture both extremes.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2007 at 7:41 am
A couple of points
I agree with Amp that a lot of private companies are pretty slow to fire. If it’s a large company there’s often so much precedence that it can be VERY hard to fire a low performer. I have worked at a company where they were pretty quick to pull the trigger. But it wasn’t a fun place to work. Not because of the firing, but imo because of the mindset that let to the easy firing.
However, I have seen that it’s common to move the low performers into less critical (and desirable) roles. It’s called the dance of the dunces. You start out in a normal job with pressure and work that’s important to the company. You do a poor job and your boss gets annoyed and moves you on to something else. Eventually you’re working as the third shift ISO compliance officer, sitting in a horrible office in the back of the building and getting a lot of dull tedious work that no one thinks is important. By this time you’re also not getting raises so inflation is effectively giving you a pay cut. If the company hits the skids and HAS to start making hard choices you know you’ll be the first to go. Unless you’re in a union where seniority can protect you.
Do schools have third shift ISO compliance officers?
About local funding
I really like the idea of a minimum for everyone with local communities allowed to go above and beyond. I even like the idea of forcing the local community to share it’s additional revenue. But I’d hate to equalize it across the state/nation.
~Firstly cost of living is different across the nation, and that would be a pain to deal with.
~Secondly I’m willing, eager!, to lower my standard of living to help my kids. I’m willing to pay taxes to help all children. I think it’s the right thing to do. But I’m not as willing to help all children as I am to help mine. Part of this is pure selfishness. I just like mine more than other peoples. Part of this is because I KNOW I make my kids study and do all the things that will help them learn. So I feel money spent locally will be well used. I don’t know this about money spent 2000 miles away.
I also don’t think that money is the end all be all solution. It helps. It helps A LOT. But I don’t think paying teachers 250k/year would make up for the other effects of poverty that impede learning. So I don’t think it would be money well spent.
The other problem with National Funding is national control. My school system teaches that evolution is a part of biology and creationism is not. It teachers Sex ed appropriate to grade level with opt outs and. I feel I and my wife should be the ones making the tough calls for our kids. I’d rather not be overruled by a national consensus and partisan horse trading. If I don’t like what the schools are doing I can look up the number for the school board president and call her at home to lobby my position.
About the Union
I have nothing against Unions. You want to form one go ahead. Society is better with unions than without. But, they exist to help the members. Since I’m not a teacher I know the union has NO interest in me. As soon as the teachers union can explain how they help students more than teachers I’ll support them. In the mean time, can someone from the union explain why the Gym teacher, the Calc teacher and the ESL English teacher for readers behind grade level all make the same (Holding seniority and education equal)? I just don’t see how seniority and tenure are going to best help education improve the lives of poor children.
Wow this is really long. Sorry
This comment was written by joe.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2007 at 8:40 am
Sailorman, you seem to be operating on the assumption that the USA has far more qualified teachers willing to work at teachers’ wages, than we have teaching job openings.
Although I’m sure that’s true in some individual districts, much of the country is currently facing a teacher shortage, and the problem is expected to get worse.
As for your idea that only people in shitty jobs can ever form unions or else they’re bad people, I think that’s lunacy.
But I also think that your logic leads to an interesting circular place:
1) Teachers supposedly know the work conditions when they take the jobs. You shouldn’t strike or form a union if your job is exactly what you knew it would be. (Apparently, in Sailerman’s world, joining an organization with the intention of trying to improve it is morally wrong.) Therefore, we should disband the teachers’ unions.
2) However, one of the conditions teachers’ are aware of when they take a teaching job is that they’ll be taking a job with a (for the US) strong union protecting them. If you disband those unions, then teachers will suddenly be working in conditions significantly different from what they expected when they initially took the jobs.
3) So if teachers unions are disbanded, as Sailerman is suggesting, that would create a situation in which (by Sailerman’s standards) teachers would be justified in forming a union.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2007 at 9:53 am
“As soon as the teachers union can explain how they help students more than teachers I’ll support them.”
??? But the entire point of a teachers’ union is to support teachers. Why should a union specifically intended to deal with the employment situations of teachers have to prove anything about their committment to students to anyone? In fact, why would anyone assume that a teachers’ union necessarily has a committment to students? It’s simply not their remit.
This comment was written by Crys T.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Why should a union specifically intended to deal with the employment situations of teachers have to prove anything about their committment to students to anyone?
Primarily, because the people that the union represents are being tasked with the future of our nation and culture. Secondarily, because the people that the union represents are being employed directly by the community to serve those long-term interests. People carrying that particular set of freight aren’t permitted to operate purely on the basis of rugged self-interest.
In fact, why would anyone assume that a teachers’ union necessarily has a committment to students?
We don’t assume it. And in fact, it isn’t there. And in fact, this is a huge problem, for what seem to me to be fairly obvious reasons. So you want to educate my kid, and you want to explicitly not have a commitment to my kid’s interests? Yeah, that fills me with a desire to guarantee your employment and make sure you get a good salary. On Mars.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2007 at 10:52 am
Speaking as a teacher, I have to say that the fact I have a strong union is one of the reasons I can focus on teaching the students in my class. Granted, I teach college and so the situation is very different from primary and secondary school, but I think it needs to be pointed out that when a teacher’s union works–and I am not arguing that all do or that everything teachers’ unions do is above criticism–it actually enables the kind of teaching Robert suggests unions work against. More, I think it’s worth unpacking what it means when teachers’ unions are criticized for not having student interests as a central, if not a sole concern. Leaving aside, for the moment, examples of corruption and incompetence, because I don’t think anyone would disagree that those are instances where concern for students has taken a back seat, in what way(s) precisely, is it true that teachers unions work agains the good of the students in the classroom?
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2007 at 11:03 am
in what way(s) precisely, is it true that teachers unions work agains the good of the students in the classroom?
By taking the side of teachers in instances where the material interests of teachers and the interests of students conflict.
There is a lot of fog in that question because we often have real disagreements as to whether something is good or bad for the interests of students. (Or whether it’s good for some and bad for others, and what the balance is.)
But conceptually, any time you have something good for students but bad for teachers, the union will be opposed to it. (How not?)
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2007 at 11:08 am
This thread is really teaching me where anti-union sentiment comes from. The logic used to denigrate unions truly surprises me. Amp has already outlined one of the problems with the anti-union logic stated by Sailorman. If we follow Robert’s logic, no union should ever exist since the whole point of any union is solely to better the economic and working conditions of its members. So, no Teamsters , no MLBPA, no UAW, ILWU, etc. since those unions wish to have no commitments to their employers customers.
Commitments to the employer’s customer are entirely outside the mission of a union. A union makes commitments to the employer, and the employer alone, in return for commitments from the employer to the union members in the employer’s hire. Believing otherwise, or that it must be otherwise, is incorrect.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Jake/Amp,
I don’t dispute unions in GENERAL.
I have problems with teaching unions SPECIFICALLY, because of the unusual mix of circumstances involved in becoming a teacher and working as one. So a response regarding UAW is inapposite; that’s not the union I’m attacking.
That you view this as “anti union sentiment” generally is also a mistake. I support almost all the unions I know of. As I sit here typing, I can’t off the top of my head identify more than one other I don’t support–it may be out there, but I don’t know it.
Surely you’re not so naive as to think all unions are the same? Because you seem to be talking about the GENERAL case of unions. And I’m talking about the SPECIFIC case of teachers’ unions. It seems fairly obvious that not all general statements will apply equally to each member of a large class, yes?
Oh yes, and as for this:
Is this supposed to be new information?
I’m not debating what a union DOES; I’m debating whether what the union does is morally defensible.
You’re “pro-union,” right? You know that what a corporation or business “does” is to maximize profits through essentially all means necessary, right?
You understand that this “normal” behavior by corporations in general does NOT preclude a corporation from acting in a way which we find reprehensible or problematic in a specific instance.
Hiring scabs, or firing workers who try to organize, or lowering wages as far as possible when leverage permits… there are all part of what a corporation “does.” I strongly suspect that this knowledge wouldn’t prevent you from criticizing the corporation. the reverse is also true.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Robert:
Precisely because this is conceptual, and precisely because there is a lot of fog in the issue, as you acknowledge, I was hoping you would give a specific instance of this.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2007 at 11:16 am
CryssT, That’s my point. I would love public policy that gave us better education for children. I don’t think giving more money to teachers is necessarily the right answer. (not saying it won’t. I’m agnostic about it.) The teachers union usually tries convince the public that money for teachers = better education for students and that teachers are underpaid in general. The fact that there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of people willing to teach Non-math/science in middle class districts says they’re wrong about the second. Those same districts also seem to do a decent job at educating their students. So we’re really talking about better education for the poor.
This comment was written by joe.Teaches want more money? So do I. I’ll give you some of mine (taxes) but what do I get? I want to know how it will help educate kids. Will another 10K lower class sizes? Will it make teachers work harder? Will it give teachers the motivation to overcome all of the effects of poverty? (I doubt it)
Would that tax money be better spent improving the safety net? Hiring more social workers? Job retraining? More police? If we give you another $ of taxes what does society get for it?
I have no complaint with teachers unions. My hunch is that most of their members want what’s best for their students. But we’re not on the same side. I want better public education. The unions want better stuff for teachers. Our goals might overlap or they might not. We can be allies, we’re not on the same side.
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September 4th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Sailorman,
I have problems with teaching unions SPECIFICALLY, because of the unusual mix of circumstances involved in becoming a teacher and working as one.
I don’t see that teacher’s unions are unique. Nurses also have an unusual set of circumstances surrounding their profession. The same goes for child-care workers, (school) bus drivers, pilots, food-workers, police, firefighters, etc. I just don’t see how a teacher’s union is so special.
In response to your question:
Is this supposed to be new information?
My statement was directed to Robert (I should have made that more clear) and, yes, this seems to be new information to Robert.
You’re “pro-union,” right? You know that what a corporation or business “does” is to maximize profits through essentially all means necessary, right?
You understand that this “normal” behavior by corporations in general does NOT preclude a corporation from acting in a way which we find reprehensible or problematic in a specific instance.
Hiring scabs, or firing workers who try to organize, or lowering wages as far as possible when leverage permits… there are all part of what a corporation “does.” I strongly suspect that this knowledge wouldn’t prevent you from criticizing the corporation. the reverse is also true.
The (ethical and moral) problems with unions are very similar to the problems with businesse’s. That is to say that they both exist within the particular capitalist economy in which we live. That economy encourages people to take as much for themselves as they can get away with. Given the economic environment in which we find ourselves, I find unions, on the whole, to be both good and necessary.
I find myself wondering where the “free-marketeers” are when it comes to agitating against anti-union legislation. But that is (getting to be less) tangential to this thread.
BTW, I do criticise unions when they (or more often, their leadership) do something I find to be wrong.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Commitments to the employer’s customer are entirely outside the mission of a union.
Yes. And that’s why a teacher’s union is specifically problematic. The “customers” of the teacher’s union’s employer are our children. We care, as we should, a great deal about our children. The existence of a powerful entity in close proximity to our children, an entity which explicitly announces “I don’t care about the welfare of your kids, I only care about this other thing” is thus an issue.
In the balance of things, it’s often the case that a union creates a net good for society - for example, when workers are being genuinely oppressed and exploited through coercive means. Even though a farm worker’s union might make produce more expensive, it may well be the case that this is acceptable overall because the union corrects an evil that is much more important than a ten cent rise in the price of grapes.
Teacher’s unions don’t seem to be facing an evil of that scale. Accordingly, my tolerance (and the tolerance of many others, I think) for their self-interest is significantly toned down.
I think this generally applies to any group of public employees, by the way. People who are hired to uphold the public interest should not be permitted to use the weapons of a union against that interest. Teachers are a particularly urgent case, because education is more important than postal service or driver’s license processing.
Precisely because this is conceptual, and precisely because there is a lot of fog in the issue, as you acknowledge, I was hoping you would give a specific instance of this.
Fair enough. Competence testing for teachers. I believe that an objective test that measures a teachers’ basic knowledge and ability to articulate that knowledge would be beneficial to children, by systemically discouraging the recruitment of stupid teachers, encouraging the firing of existing stupid teachers, and increasing the average level of competence in the system. The teacher’s union is opposed to this, because some of the incompetent teachers that would lose their jobs are union members. The union appropriately defends the interests of its membership; this legitimate and appropriate use of their power is bad for children.
I find myself wondering where the “free-marketeers” are when it comes to agitating against anti-union legislation.
I believe in the right to organize. The only places where I can see that right being overridden by other social necessities are when the people organizing are on the public payroll. So for the most part, I don’t like anti-union legislation on conceptual grounds. However, I also note that much of what is framed as “anti-union” is not objectively anti-union; it is instead anti- a particular leadership, or anti- a particular way of organizing things. That SEIU doesn’t like it, doesn’t make it anti-union.
Broadly, though, I favor unions on Burkean grounds. Specifically, there are many unions whose behavior I despise - but I must tolerate that, again on Burkean grounds. I despise a lot of the choices that people will make, but self-organizing cohorts of mutually-selected allies are still the best way to order a society. Public employees have an asterisk that limits their privileges and rights in this regard, because of the unique public service aspect of their work. (”I am here to uphold the public interest! Now, give me more money or I will shut down the government.” Bit of a contradiction there.)
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Well, teachers have an unusual set of characteristics. In no particular order:
1) We care about the kids much more than we care about the shareholders of GE. Same model, right? GE is run for the benefit of the shareholders. The schools are run for the benefit of the kids. Both GE and the school negotiate with their employees to serve their customer base.
Now, if we have to choose between supporting some GE dude versus lots of GE workers, we might side with the workers. But if we have to choose between the kids and the teachers, I’ll choose the kids every time.
Would you?
When (if) you accept that reversal of the “who wins?” question, everything changes. (again, same model, right? Just different input.) Unions take power and money away from the corporation for the benefit of the workers; generally, they make it more expensive to purchase the services. That’s a net loss for the corporation and/or its customers, who pay more for