Sounds like a corporate attack on the most unionized sector remaining in the country.
Unions are little democracies in a country that is thoroughly undemocratic. The oligarchs would love nothing more than for the entire country to be under their iron grip without question.
Ideally, tbqh the entire country should be a "workers' democracy", meaning the people control the country by owning the engines of the economy. That requires very high levels of unionization to even start to pull that off.
I'm fine with private sector unions, but public sectors unions don't seem like they tend to always benefit the public.
If you were reading this in good faith, the writer of this article lays out a bunch of points that you cannot simply dismiss as "a corporate attack". It's possible to have both private sector unions as a balance to corporate power, and also rebalance the power public sector unions wield.
If you want government solutions to benefit the public, then you have to grapple with the dysfunction we're seeing and find a way to resolve it.
Also, private sector unions can't simply vote out their bosses (governors, mayors) every few years if they don't get their way, which is a huge power lever.
> Look at almost any public scandal in recent years—failing schools in Baltimore, police killings in Minneapolis and Memphis—and you will find public supervisors who, under union controls, have lost basic managerial tools. Democracy is supposed to be a process of accountability. But there’s near-zero accountability in American government—between .01 and .02 percent in most jurisdictions. Two out of 95,000 teachers in Illinois were dismissed annually for poor performance over an 18-year study period. In the decade prior to the killing of George Floyd, of the 2600 police complaints in Minneapolis only 12 merited discipline, of which the most severe was a 40-hour suspension.
I'm gonna need to see some evidence that teachers unions are what's wrong with public schools. I didn't find an answer to "why", just a claim that it "is" without support.
In any other context, an organization with 0 competitive pressure, in charge of a failing institution, extremely active political lobbying, which vehemently rejects any proposals at performance-based compensation for its members, would be assumed to be the problem; the burden of proof would be to explain how this setup could possibly not cause corruption and incompetence.
Why don't you go ahead and break down what you think teachers' unions control vs what admins and school boards control? I'd love to hear your perspective.
I dont know about chicago buy up here in canada the teacher contract has clauses that make it near impossible to fire specific teachers without cause and cause is basically defined so strictly that the bad teachet will hit retirement before being fired inlesd they have sex eith their students. You couldnt even move all the bad teachets to one school and shut it fown because the seniorityapplies actoss the whole distrixt. This in itself is utter poison. Managers need to be able to fire on their own perogative as a f*ndamental part of management.
The description you wrote applies very well to school district administrators. The difference is that district admins are out of direct contact with students, or never had it in the first place.
Do district superintendents have to wait 6 hours to use the bathroom because there's no one to cover their duties?
What you write applies nicely to most large corporations, especially the CEO caste and the incestuous board of directors community. These bogons tell the corporations the "run" to print money in the form of stock, which they issue to themselves. They reject any substantive performance-based compensation for their members. Someone is funding all those dark money campaigns. How could this setup possibly not cause corruption and incompetence?
There's a rebuttal documentary called "The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman". Apparently the factual accuracy of "Waiting for Superman" left something to be desired. Maybe I'll watch them both.
People don't like public unions because they are effective unions, it has nothing to do with them being public. There are plenty of professions critical for running society. What if all trucker decided to stop working? Pretty bad, maybe even worse than if all teachers quit, but it doesn't happen because truckers don't have a strong union. If tech workers in Silicon Valley or Seattle started voting as a block with their union they would completely control the areas, but tech workers are not going to form unions.
This is not correct, at least not for me. I don't like public unions for the 3 points this article outlines. I would counter your point about effective and say that that only appear effective (if you define effective at maximizing union member compensation) because they can abuse market power and collude with politicians to pay labor way more than would ever happen if the business they were operating in could be substituted away from by its customers. This is not effective on a society level, it's dead weight loss causing abuse of market power and it should be stopped.
No it can't be, at least not for any serious length of time. If a private union gets away with the above for any length of time it will eventually kill the company because the competing companies will outcompete it. (it could work if the company was a strong oligopoly or monopoly but the correct solution there is to break up the company, not allow the union to collect its piece of the monopoly profits at the expense of deadweight loss to society).
Many unions, like the actors guild, or nurses' union aren't tied to specific companies. You see auto workers' protesting and Biden trying to appease them, but in the end it doesn't matter much because they are weak. Sure the union might end up just killing their industry, but that's no different from public unions getting crushed by resentful voters, which we've seen in cases with police unions.
Unions are little democracies in a country that is thoroughly undemocratic. The oligarchs would love nothing more than for the entire country to be under their iron grip without question.
Ideally, tbqh the entire country should be a "workers' democracy", meaning the people control the country by owning the engines of the economy. That requires very high levels of unionization to even start to pull that off.