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I don’t know why people are lumping teachers unions in with police unions. I’ve never heard of teachers rolling up in an armored personnel carrier and jumping
by fallingfrog 6y ago
I don’t know why people are lumping teachers unions in with police unions. I’ve never heard of teachers rolling up in an armored personnel carrier and jumping out with batons and tear gas or kneeling on someone’s neck until they die. Sounds like you just don’t like unions.
- geomark 6y agoDefinitely a vast difference in the level of physical violence between those two groups. But similar how bad performers are shielded by the unions for both of those groups. That's likely the issue that has OP lumping them together.
- NovemberWhiskey 6y agoCorruption obviously isn't the right term - but there is something inimical about a group of public workers organizing against the public interest, and (from my perspective) workplace rules that prevent bad performers from being fired certainly fit into that category.
- kasey_junk 6y agoTeachers union corruption looks a lot different for sure and is likely less insidious but there are lots of examples of problems. From teacher protection clauses that mean teachers who aren’t legally able to teach being retained to opposition to any pension reform in bankrupt states. I’m certainly not anti-union but I lump teachers unions in with police unions and the teamsters as cautionary tales of their downsides.
- fallingfrog 6y agoFighting for a decent pension is a legitimate thing for a union to fight for. Fighting to be able to murder with impunity is not. Teachers are notoriously underpaid, and there is a lot of pressure to convert the school system to charter schools in order to bust the unions. Meanwhile administrative costs skyrocket every year. There’s a lot wrong with our school system but I don’t think teachers unions are one of them. Paying teachers even less is not the way forward.
- kasey_junk 6y agoFighting for a pension is of course a legitimate union activity. It’s equally legitimately to state that one way unions become problematic is when their demands are not financially viable and are in fact part of the problem fiscally.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoI don’t consider it legitimate because of the proven conflicts of interests involved in taxpayer funded defined benefit pensions. The math can be fudged to purposely understate costs, never mind the fact that predicting that far into the future is impossible. So you have politicians with an interest in keeping taxes low in the short term to get re elected, you have union bosses who are older and also don’t care about fudged numbers way into the future, since they will be getting theirs before shit hits the fan. The people screwed are future generations of taxpayers and benefit recipients who have to accept cuts to their benefits. Cash remuneration works for everyone else, if the union members want an annuity, they can negotiate for higher cash pay and then go purchase an annuity from an insurance company. I don’t want my kids to pay for labor that was performed today just so can pay artificially low taxes.
- bluGill 6y agoI'm fine with them fighting for one. However their incentive needs to include ensuring that the pension fund actually has enough money in it to cover the future payouts.
- gowld 6y agoTeacher pay is highly variable. Teachers are usually paid above median for their local community.
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- x86_64Ubuntu 6y agoI'm not sure either. I guess it's some sort of "both sides" going on. A bad police union leads to deaths, maimings and loss of freedom. I'm not sure a "bad" teachers union can match that level of malignancy.
- mindslight 6y agoEntrenched teachers' unions protect bad teachers. Bad teachers create disinterested kids, conditioned for a lifetime of following overbearing bureaucratic authority as "just the way things are". Kids stuck in a pointless system with no worthwhile authority figures are more likely to become bullies. And bullies get older and gain employment as bad cops.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoThis. Also, kids stuck in pointless systems get bored and commit crimes.
- JackFr 6y agoNew York City pays on the order of $30 million dollars a year in salary to teachers accused of misconduct who can't be in a classroom with children, but as per their contract cannot be fired.
- fallingfrog 6y agoThe police budget of New York City is 10.9 billion dollars including 2.8 billion dollars for pensions.
- JackFr 6y agoThe school budget is 24 billion. So $30 million is a drop in the bucket. My point was not really about the money. It was about the inability of the Department of Education to fire teachers who are deemed a threat to children. I can only imagine how hard it is to fire someone for simply being bad at their job.