Unions
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Unions
1–10 of 27 posts
Re: Unions
#2Blaming America's dismal education system on teachers unions is a tired and hollow argument. Mr. Adams would do well to consider the chronic underfunding, push toward standardization at all costs, and political interference that directly challenges science education.
Are unions good for a small, agile company? No. Are they necessary for monolithic employers? Probably. The U.S. government employs 2 million civilians. (ref:http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs041.htm) Withouts CBAs, etc, this likely would not work particularly well. Having a organizational structure that completely changes its goals, direction, and attitude towards employees every four years probably doesn't help much.
Re: Unions
#3I have a strong dislike for unions, especially when people are forced to deal with unionized companies for contractors.
I also feel sympathetic to those who are trapped in a union, who have been making the same wage as everyone else for 30 years and are still forced to walk out of their job for 8 months when talks break down so a union rep can feel important and still relevant.
Re: Unions
#4Unions for armies aren't a problem because they might make the army less efficient. They're a problem because they introduce a parallel and competing chain of command and undermine the control of the civilian state over the men with guns.
Re: Unions
#5Maybe instead of comparing military and education in terms of why unions are allowed in one and not in the other, he should just make a comparison between education and any private sector with functioning competition. I'd say the benchmark for education should not be the military but rather retail. Imagine schools as efficient as Walmart or Starbucks.
Re: Unions
#6Blaming America's dismal education system on teachers unions is a tired and hollow argument. Mr. Adams would do well to consider the chronic underfunding, push toward standardization at all costs, and political interference that directly challenges science education. Are unions good for a small, agile company? No. Are they necessary for monolithic employers? Probably. The U.S. government employs 2 million civilians.…
Since goals change every 4 years and that is a major problem, let's just privatize the whole thing.
Re: Unions
#7Imagine how things would be different if education were treated as a national defense issue
Good grief, Scott. The problem with unions and/or education is that we keep trying to make one-size-fits-all solutions, eventually treating our children (and teachers) like widgets in a factory. So the teachers and children have started acting like we've been treating them. Further nationalizing it isn't going to help any -- it'll just make matters worse.
Each student is a complicated problem on his or her own. That makes each class an even more complicated problem. We need to be able to give people the freedom and accountability to leverage local minima and maxima, not come up with imaginations of how various global solutions might work. School boards alone have too much concentrated power and make too many global rules. It just gets worse the higher up the chain you go. The way we got here was through a long string of really smart folks imagining what magic bullet might fix things for everybody -- it will not be the way we get out.
EDIT: Interesting trivia point: one of the big pushes for centralized education "reform" originally in the states was that in WWI the soldiers had a hard time working the artillery. It was thought that we had better start having national standards of education so that we could be assured future soldiers would be able to fight effectively. Seems like we will never escape well-meaning people using bad military analogies. La plus ca change...
Re: Unions
#8Blaming America's dismal education system on teachers unions is a tired and hollow argument. Mr. Adams would do well to consider the chronic underfunding, push toward standardization at all costs, and political interference that directly challenges science education. Are unions good for a small, agile company? No. Are they necessary for monolithic employers? Probably. The U.S. government employs 2 million civilians.…
I'm not sure that his main argument - "education is a vital national interest" (or "national defense issue") - supports union-busting over increased funding and the like.
After all, while the US has no military union, it does spend a lot of money on the military. (Whether the individual grunt is underpaid or not has very little to do with the effectiveness of the organization as a whole, and the US defense system is quite effective, despite its problems.)
Re: Unions
#9Blaming America's dismal education system on teachers unions is a tired and hollow argument. Mr. Adams would do well to consider the chronic underfunding, push toward standardization at all costs, and political interference that directly challenges science education. Are unions good for a small, agile company? No. Are they necessary for monolithic employers? Probably. The U.S. government employs 2 million civilians.…
Since goals change every 4 years and that is a major problem, let's just privatize the whole thing.
Because the chief goal of educating children should be profit.
Re: Unions
#10Maybe instead of comparing military and education in terms of why unions are allowed in one and not in the other, he should just make a comparison between education and any private sector with functioning competition. I'd say the benchmark for education should not be the military but rather retail. Imagine schools as efficient as Walmart or Starbucks.
if school was a Walmart, would teachers be shipped from China in Panamax container ships?