There’s a lot o noise being made this week about Democratic advisors and appointees, leaving the administration and hooking up with anti union organizations. One is David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, who is joining Uber, a limo service that does not employ union members, mainly because the drivers are individual owners rather than employees of the company. Are Plouffe’s critics saying that they are against the entrepreneurial efforts of these small business owners and that they should succumb to the lack of drive (no pun intended) displayed by the cab drivers and give up their limos for a yellow cab? Interesting problem.
Robert Gibbs, Obama’s former press secretary is forming a company, with Ben LaBolt, that will campaign against teacher’s tenure and certain other egregious benefits that have been fairly won in union negotiations. Randy Weingarten, President of the Teachers Union has labeled the move anti-teacher which is exactly the kind of exaggeration that makes the teachers union unpopular with many people who are interested only in better education for their kids
Certain members of the political scene have taken it upon themselves to become extremely vociferous on the subject. Roger Hickey the president of American’s for the Future, whatever the hell that means, and Jim Kessler VP of Third Way, .have been on the tube lately, making their opinions known. Hickey makes it as simplistic as possible. For him if you don’t swallow the whole union party line then you are the enemy. He leaves no possible room for anyone to think for themselves. For him, the Democrats are pro labor and anyone who finds any problem with labor or unions, even if those problems are real, is a traitor. This is a Democrat with the thought process of a Republican.
Look, there’s no question that unions are necessary. There would be no unions if there wasn’t bad management. Nobody was sitting around one day over a couple of beers and said, hey, let’s start a union. Unions were born from abuse of labor. This is no a contestable point for anyone who has learned to read.
Kessler, on the other hand doesn’t seem to find much wrong with the suggested divergence of goals on the part of Plouffe, Gibbs and LaBolt. He sees problems in the existing monoliths, both union and management and thinks that these men will shake things up for the benefit of all.
Hickey is a real fountain of misinformation and false views. He is exactly why people are against unions, and any other practice that is not open to self-introspection. He seems to have no idea that being against tenure is not the same thing as being against unions. He babbles on about Ron Emanuel keeping the teachers from striking in Chicago in the same breath that he says Emanuel’s popularity is down in Chicago. It is but not because of his handling f the teacher’s union. The parents of Chicago didn’t want the teachers to go on strike and no responsible union strikes unless it is absolutely forced to do so
Kessler points out that the realistic argument about teacher’s tenure, the big deal of the Gibbs/LaBolt campaign is not about the need for unions but about the abuses that result from tenure, a single union benefit. He realistically voices the facts that teachers are both good and bad but that when you find a bad one you practically have to shoot him to get him out of his job. This is bad for the system. Sure it’s great for the union rep, but much more important is that it is bad for the kids and the reason for teachers existence is to teach kids. As soon as they stop doing that in an efficient, functional manner there is no reason for them at all. That is the truth that is often lost in a discussion where the unions ability to protect a teacher’s job seems to take precedence over the kids learning. That situation is the cancer of the educational process.
We cannot allow any union goal or any political solution, to be more important than the education of our kids. Right now about one half o all teachers in this country, come from the bottom third of their graduation classes. This is bad for our kids but it happens because we don’t pay teachers enough, not because they, at one point, didn’t have tenure. The union will argue that tenure is to protect the teacher from internal politics that pervade any job no matter how menial or intellectual. That’s true but unfortunately there is currently no cure for the abuses of that system. Every job, no matter what the format is vulnerable to this abuse but we don’t see copy editors with tenure, or plumbers or conductors. The only current cure is high performance and that is exactly what we are looking for in those that teach our kids.
Those against tenure argue that its major function is to protect incompetence and laziness. That’s sometimes true but there are also internal political considerations that must be addressed and cured.
Yes, teachers should be paid more then they currently are. Yes, teachers should have a mechanism to protect them from administrators with an ax to grind. No, teachers should not be protected from an inability to teach and that is exactly what tenure does.
I may be wrong but I have always thought of the fight for tenure as a substitute for a fight for higher wages. Union leadership in many cases over the years, realistically realized that there was no more money in the local treasuries to pay their membership; so in order to keep said membership in line and in order not to have to strike, they sold the idea of tenure, the lifetime job no matter how incompetent you become, to their members. Then they turned around and sold it to the local politicians. It was something that the politicians could give up to the unions that wouldn’t cost them any tax dollars, would make them look good in the eyes of the taxpayers and would probably not become an issue until they were long gone form office. That it would ultimately hurt the kids never came up, was never an issue. It was a truly Machiavellian bargain and now our kids are living with it.
Neither Plouffe, nor Gibbs nor LaBolt are anti-union. None of them took the big bucks and jumped onto some corporate run, lobbying operation that is against clean air or edible food. But they do need to make a living. None of them are necessarily anti-union but in this political atmosphere, where everyone is so short sighted that being against one union abuse or backing one attempt to do something that excludes a particular union is promoted by union enthusiasts as deadly opposition, they stand accused.
It’s a hell of a way to run a country.