Regular reader and commenter Lloyd Lofthouse explains why we need unions:
Let me add something one of my uncles told me. He was 96 when he died about ten years ago.
As a young man, he remembered going to the railroad yard hoping to get work to earn enough to buy food. There was no union then. He said hundreds got up early every morning to show up. The manager in charge of loading and unloading the trains would stand in the opening of one of the box cars and throw ten, fifteen or twenty chips over the heads of the crowd of hopeful workers. Those who caught the chips and kept them got to work sixteen hours that day for about 25 cents.
The next day was a repeat.
This was in the United States during the Great Depression.
Without labor unions working as a collective voice for the workforce, most of the rich and famous will make sure the world we live in returns to that time. Study history as Back2basic suggests and you will learn from it. Mankind doesn’t change and power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. History repeats itself if we allow it.
I read an article recently that compared business methods and this article said that about 4 out of every 5 business are run like dictatorships and the workers are not treated with respect or paid a fair wage with benefits.
Businesses like Costco that are not unionized, Wholefoods, and Trader Joe’s that treat their workers with respect and pays them a living wage with benefits are the exception. Costco has even been criticized by Wall Street because of how much they pay their employees (like $12 or $14 an hour instead of the minimum wage). The stock holders grumble that if Costco paid their employees less, the stock holders would make more from the stocks. If you doubt this, Google it. Costco’s CEO basically told Wall Street to “F” off without using the “F” word. Companies like Costco have a high retention rate compared to corporations like Wall-Mart.
Why is it that some of the 1% who have the most money have spent HUGE fortunes on propaganda and lobbyists in state capitals and Washington DC for decades to destroy the labor unions? What do they have to gain?
Negative opinions of labor unions come from that propaganda and if you believe them and you are not a billionaire or millionaire, what does that say about you?
The answer may be found in this Abraham Lincoln quote: “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
Who is greedy—the Koch brothers who are worth more than one hundred billion dollars (combined) and are willing to pollute the air, water and soil to increase their wealth or the union worker who is paid maybe $25 an hour with a retirement and health plan that cuts into the profits and wealth of people like Bill Gates, the Walton family or Eli Broad?
Without labor unions, the worker has no voice. The only voice heard will be from someone like Bill Gates.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Unions need coupled with a populist movement. Most of the country is non-union. The 1%ers use this fact to divide and conquer. Union v. Non-union. Public v. Private. Old v. Young. Male v. Female. It becomes a race to the bottom where the new normal is widespread poverty.
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There’s a great article from theatlantic.com about the issue of pay secrecy. Pay secrecy has become more common as fewer and fewer people hold unionized jobs.
When the Boss Says, ‘Don’t Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid’ by Jonathan Timm
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/when-the-boss-says-dont-tell-your-coworkers-how-much-you-get-paid/374467/
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I am a member of a union (AFT)
that consistently misrepresents my interests . Go figure.
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Don’t blame the labor unions for a lack of support—look at the human leadership and the members who allowed themselves to be fooled to vote for those leaders.
Historical examples of the state and national leadership of all labor unions may be found that shows them disconnected from the best interests of the membership—the more removed the leadership is from the members, the more at risk those humans are for being out of touch or not caring.
For instance, in “The Bully Pulpit” by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Teddy Roosevelt found corruption among the leadership of national unions when union leaders became too cozy with the leaders of industry, who often paid their workers poverty wages without benefits.
Therefore, look at the local chapters to see if your interests are their interests and if the local isn’t supporting its members, then do something about it other than complain. Change the leadership of that local, and if the local membership is too ignorant or uncaring and does nothing to elect a local chapter president who will support the interests of the members, then look in a mirror. What is it that you are not doing that could make a difference?
Once, during my thirty years as a teacher, we had an elected president for our local who leaned too far to toward administration and the school board. When it became obvious to the majority of teachers, she was voted out in the next election and the majority voted in a leader who supported the best interests of the teachers and children. I was one of the reps from the high school where I taught who discovered her corruption and helped spread the word that led to her downfall.
If the locals are supporting the members at the community level, then eventually that will lead to changes in leadership at the top.
Unions are democratic organizations and are at risk of corruption just like the White House, Congress, Governors mansions, state legislatures and school boards are when big money is waved in front of their faces or elections are rigged by the same billionaire oligarchs.
The Koch brothers, for instance, have shifted from spending huge sums to influence national elections to rigging local elections at the city and state levels and for sure they are using their great wealth to influence elections of teacher union leadership in addition to local school boards. I’m sure that Bill Gates is doing the same thing.
It is not the labor union that is the problem. It’s greed and the fact that with great wealth comes power and power corrupts. The 1 percent does what it can to find the price it takes to buy someone.
The working men and women of America NEED labor unions today as much as we needed them back in the late 19th century and early 20th, and if we abandon them because too many members thought with their emotions and let the oligarchs fool them, then those American fools deserve the darkness that will drop on the U.S. like a plague.
If a labor unions isn’t working, then it is up to the membership to fix the problem by getting rid of the rot. Complaining will not lead to change.
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love it. you are the best!
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I am reading this book, too, and I am fascinated by the discussions about labor vs capital, the corruption in local and national government that both T. Roosevelt and Taft fought, and the emergence of in-depth reporting to expose wrong doing and immoral practices both in government and in big business. So much of this book is relevant to what is going on today, yet I worry that people are not as concerned about doing what is right when doing what is financially profitable has so much more power. I am only a quarter through the book, but hoping answers applicable to our problems today emerge. One answer already…thank goodness for online journalism and blogs like this one to expose what much of the traditional media won’t!
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Lloyd, thanks a lot for all you do! You have laid out the historical case quite well. We need a strong union movement to counterbalance the elite. We have cut our own throat by buying the propaganda.
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Lloyd,
Thank you for your thoughtful response. I plead guilty on all counts. My teaching situation has become so untenable that at this point I am seeking an exit strategy. My days of saving the world are over. The students I have had the opportunity to teach have given me great joy on the days they were not making me crazy. I am not a good candidate for scripted curricula and micromanagement. My book collection is gathering dust. My district moves closer to New Orleans every day. Fighting with administrators to implement best practices is an ongoing battle. How might my energies be focused in a more productive direction? Go for it TFA. I am sure you will be more successful than I.
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There must be some sort of support for teachers to recover from burnout. Maybe this piece from NEA might help.
http://neatoday.org/2011/06/07/surviving-teacher-burnout/
Over the years, I came close to being overwhelmed with burnout but managed to come back from the brink several times. In the 1990s, taking over one period of journalism for seven years did the trick and kept me in for another decade until I turned sixty with thirty years in the classroom and could afford to retire on a 40-percent pay cut with no medical. That one journalism class that produced the high school’s student newspaper kept me sane while I dealt with the daily dizzy, crazy struggle in my ninth grade college prep English classes.
College prep was such a false title. The poverty rate at the school was more than 70% and I had kids reading at second grade level being forced to work out of grade level textbooks. Many of these kids came to me already hating reading and going to school. The odds of any child who reads at second grade or lower by ninth grade is next to nothing that they will end up in college at some point. If a child doesn’t have a high level of literacy and/or a love of reading books by high school, they are not going to fulfill the fake Machiavellian agenda of Obama’s Race to the Top of 100-percent college or career ready.
How do we get kids ready for careers when they are reading below basic and there are no vocational classes that are found in almost every other developed and developing country in the world?
Anger also provided fuel for me to survive until hitting thirty years in teaching.
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I have this book. Maybe it is worth a look. But as much as I like the ideas behind unions, the leadership of teachers’ unions is corrupt and causing us more harm than good. I don’t agree that we are better off with a bad union than we with no union at all. The union has teachers hog tied. They are not protecting us, they are selling us out. As the reformers tear teachers’ lives apart , the public assumes they are impossible to fire. I want you to know thousands of teachers have been fired for no good reason and their unions dont care because TFA interns will pay dues too, but they will not be so demanding.
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Teacher labor unions are like a stairway climbing to the top, the national level. At the bottom we have the locals and at the top we have the national.
For that reason, I think it helps to be more specific when leveling a charge of corruption. The AFT and NEA are also made up of state chapters and in each state there are district chapters.
For instance, the drama that unfolded at the AFT national convention in Los Angeles between the Chicago chapter and New York City chapter—they each had their own president.
For me when I was teaching, the staircase led from: local school reps > ARE (the Association of Rowland Educators) > CTA (California Teacher’s Association) > NEA (National Education Association)
It is arguable that the NEA and CTA could be corrupt according to many of its members while a local like the ARE wouldn’t be corrupt because the president of the local is still a classroom teacher.
And I think the locals often do more for teachers and students than the state or national levels do.
Take a look at the ARE and see what it’s needs are (it looks like the site is a bit out of date):
http://www.aremembers.org/get-involved.html
I’m not arguing that the national level of the AFT and even the NEA are morally corrupt and have lost their way when it comes to representing the total membership, but I think many of the locals are honest and the smaller the local is, the more honest it will be. Size tends to introduce a higher risk of corruption, which is why we often hear complaints of LAUSD’s teacher’s union not doing the job they should be doing.
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Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I fear the day when we will be standing alongside a railroad car hoping to snag a token will return.
I fear it already has begun.
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rratto~
….Along with losing pensions and not being eligible for Social Security, old age looks frightening. Taking care of two loved ones and spending much of my time in nursing homes and assisted living…I conclude that the American Dream is just that, a nightmare.
Do we even count the elderly in the poverty statistics? Or, have they disappeared off the US radar and only show up on Medicaid spreadsheets? Millions of seniors appear to be an invisible population, and growing.
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We really don’t have labor leaders any more. they are in the back pocket of the neocons like Clinton, they are a subsidiary of Gates. Now they want to write standards (ergo, curriculum), a clear violation of the Constitution. Jimmy Carter said that we no longer have a functioning democracy, the same can be said about unions. I find it odd to have a pro union message immediately following the disaster called the AFT Conference in Los Angeles. Hope spring eternal. The parents will be the only alternatives where teachers can organize. A message supporting OPT OUT might be more timely.
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I was brought up to understand how important the Unions are. I walked the picket line with my Dad, and helped in my Mom’s kitchen during the 1968 teacher strike as she fed the teachers in her department. When my son, a non-tenured ATR was attacked unfairly, I went to Mulgrew myself and he promised to help. He sold my son down the river along with hundreds of other teachers. That’s not the Union I know! We need a Union but it cannot be self-serving!
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Lloyd…nice piece – said beautifully.Thanks for sharing your story Lloyd. I hope it invites a lot of readers to share their stories too. Americans need to be reminded of the role of unions! There are so many stories to tell – no doubt. My grandmother was in the first graduating class for women at a university where I grew up. She got a degree for teaching. She had to leave the teaching profession as soon as she became pregnant. There was no union to say otherwise. Perhaps this is not the best example because of male/female attitudes in earlier times but nonetheless….
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That’s got lots of names, sometimes called the Pick. Workers addressed it first with militant action then thru refusing their labor (strike!) then forming unions then through collective action then through collective bargaining then thru regulatory change then through collective political action.
There were no 527s.
The Pick happens every day in every way still. In union environment it can be decided by seniority per the contract or in hiring halls.
Go to the local gathering point for immigrant day laborers. Its not history. Its most likely just not in your neighborhood.
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There seem to be some inherent differences in the role of traditional unions vs. teacher unions. If the role of a union is to protect members (workers), what happens if what is in the best interest of students and families differs from the best interest of the employee?
Is this not problematic?
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xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx When does the best interest of teachers differ from the best interest of their students and families?
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I have argued in the past that the starting time for high schools is set for the convenience of the adults (both teachers and parents) to the detriment of the teenage students
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UG! Such a question reveals much ab out YOUR grasp of the issue.
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@ Ms. Schwartz How does asking a question reveal anything other than the request for an honest answer/opinion? I would say I know enough about the issue to have honest discourse. I’m sorry my question generated such a feeling of disgust.
@Spanish Perhaps an ineffective teacher would like to keep their job while not changing the amount of work they do. If a union’s job is to protect the employee, I think this could be potentially problematic for students.
The union representatives in my district negotiate for fewer work days or days with students in the classroom. Unless I’m mistaken, fewer school days certainly aren’t in the best interest of students.
I’m not trying to preach a platform here, but it appears to me that there are some arguable differences (or should be) between conventional unions and those which operate within education.
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Suggesting or negotiating for a shorter school day is not making it happen, so why make an issue out of it?
For instance, a few decades ago, there was a Democratic state representative in Sacramento who wanted to mandate through legislation that teachers would be required to boost the self-esteem of children.
California’s legislature—with a Democratic majority—wouldn’t even let that one out of the committee. Just because someone is elected to a position in a democratically run organization like a teachers union, a state legislature, Congress or even the White House doesn’t mean that person has common sense. Why, we elect fools all the time. Just look at Chicago’s current mayor and the governors of New York, North Carolina, Florida, and New Jersey.
Yet, I have an old far right, libertarian friend who used that one example as a way to slam the entire Democratic Party for all time as if they were all blood sucking monsters. How does anyone have the gall to condemn millions of people for what one elected official proposed that didn’t even get enacted?
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The union’s job is to provide due process for the teachers. If a teacher is refusing to work, all that the union will do is provide due process. The teacher can still be fired within a matter of months. HOWEVER, if a teacher is a good teacher and is being railroaded by a bitter colleague or a clueless or vindictive administrator, then the union can protect that teacher. Most ineffective teachers that stay long are because they are related to someone in the district, and/or they’re pretty. Other teachers have been attacked for no reason whatsoever. Unions protect good teachers FAR more than they protect ineffective teachers. Without due process protections, excellent teachers who have taught a long time or have advanced degrees will be targeted first, because they are more expensive. The ineffective teachers that are the niece, brother in law or whoever of the superintendent will be bullet-proof. How does THAT help students?
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Check out this breakdown of NEA’s spending during the 2012-13 fiscal year. You can attribute the ‘Representational Activities’ to due process protection and the like, but look at the allocation of other dollars union members contribute.
I appreciate fair protections for teachers, but there is more to it than that, right?
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2014/07/deep_dive_nea_spending.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-TW
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Are the unions spending enough to defend public education, children and teachers? If the local, state and national teachers unions don’t do it, who else is going to fight back?
Through their foundation, the Walton family has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to promote charter schools and private schools, and family members are involved in many prominent national organizations pursuing this agenda.
http://walmart1percent.org/issues/education/
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn’t just bankroll the development of what became known as the Common Core State Standards. With more than $200 million, the foundation also built political support across the country, persuading state governments to make systemic and costly changes.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bill-gates-pulled-off-the-swift-common-core-revolution/2014/06/07/a830e32e-ec34-11e3-9f5c-9075d5508f0a_story.html
Out-of-State Corporate Interests Fund Charter School Amendment Push
http://www.atlantaprogressivenews.com/interspire/news/2012/11/05/out-of-state-corporate-interests-fund-charter-school-amendment-push.html
‘The University is For Sale’: Koch Brothers Target Higher Education
http://neatoday.org/2014/04/06/the-university-is-for-sale-koch-brothers-target-higher-education/
Got Dough? How Billion ares Rule Our Schools
Hundreds of private philanthropies together spend almost $4 billion annually to support or transform K–12 education, most of it directed to schools that serve low-income children (only religious organizations receive more money). But three funders—the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad (rhymes with road) Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation—working in sync, command the field.
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/got-dough-how-billionaires-rule-our-schools
Hedge Fund Titans Hum a Happy Tune as They Target Public Schools
The 157,800 teachers of America’s little people, the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us, together make about $8.34 billion a year. Hedge fund America’s top four earners alone last year grabbed $10.4 billion.
http://billmoyers.com/2014/05/15/hedge-fund-titans-hum-a-happy-tune-as-they-target-public-schools/
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Don’t get me wrong, KC. I have plenty of problems with how both unions spend money. HOWEVER, we can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. We need protections as teachers, and we need people to represent us to lawmaking bodies. Unions can and should be fixed, but not jettisoned.
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@Threatened I agree. Thanks for the discussion.
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Are the public employee pension funds amoung the stockholders that are reported to be grumbling about high wages paid at Costco?
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teachingeconomist: from your snarky comment I gather that you are against unions and/or defined benefit pensions?
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I am certainly not against unions. Just pointing out that public employee retirement funds depend on the how high a return the managers of those funds can achieve.
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Of course he or she is. This troll is a libertarian.
Best not to respond to the person.
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A few thoughts. First, we now have about one-hundred years of federal legislation to protect workers, none of which existed when you grandfather was in that rail yard. Secondly, a union will not improve a “bad” employer, only force them to resist even more. Good companies, like Bill Gates Microsoft and many, many others like a Costco don’t need a union which would only get in the way of management and employees working together to advance the company and reward the employees. Finally, an administration that would promote jobs and not blame congress can do more for workers than any union because it offers everyone choices, good choices. And, the choices become more numerous and better with “real” full employment.
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So, in other words, you are a union hater. Unions are needed now more than ever.
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This is all the more clueless given that Microsoft is about to announce layoffs of over 5,000 people.
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STEM shortage? Looks like a 5,000 head of STEM surplus.
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First, federal legislation meant to protect labor is under attack from the right, using misleading terms like right to work. Workers pensions have also been decimated especially in the private sector.
It is well documented that Gates’Microsoft is not worker friendly. The same tactics are being pushed by the Gates loving crowd that are looking to destroy employee due process protections.
Second, the Gipper will always be remembered for his work destroying unions.. see PATCO?
Third, your comment regarding the administration, reveals the troll like motivation behind your comments.
Finally, corporate profits are up, while wages, pensions, employee benefits are plummeting. So much for your argument that management works to reward employees.
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I think Microsoft employees dealt with stack ranking until recently. I have also heard Gates takes ideas and inventions of employees and makes millions that the employee never sees,. I hate our unions, they are back stabbing careerists and have been for the last decade or more; however, all workers deserve to be treated well, not just teachers. The wealth of plutocrats is not more important than the living wage, decent working conditions, health care, pensions and job security. If these idiots understood the economy, they’d understand that paying employees well is good for business. It is sad because more money is not going to change much for Gates but for millions of people more money can transform their lives .
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Microsoft’s use and abuse of temps (no security, no benefits) does not make it a good employer.
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Microsoft, the champion of H1B visas and permanent part time workers. The many ways to stab the American worker in the back and to reduce him/her to an indentured servant.
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Many companies classify ordinary workers as independent contractors so they don’t have to pay the workers any benefits and they don’t have to contribute to Social Security or Medicare. It’s a disgrace and a union would fight this nonsense.
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Just about any organization can, and I dare say all, organizations will, ultimately become corrupt. Our founders understood the danger of factions; the incremental compromise away from founding principles.
Like the child whose handwritten word moves further to the right with each consecutive line, sometimes we have to make a conscious decision to get back on course. Politically we have allowed ourselves to veer far off course from our original founding. Either we support the principles our founders laid down determining them to be eternal truths or reject them determining them to be obsolete. The idea that D.C. is a place of two opposing viewpoints with one side representing the people and the other corporations is a seriously limited view. These apparently opposing political powers have more in common than they differ.
The party animal has in effect created a combined massive faction of political dynasties that has effectively created a class of philosopher kings that have silenced the people.
A correction to this political monopoly is long overdue. This is why those who considered themselves pure Marxists, the champion of the working class are finding themselves having more in common with the Tea Party (horror) than with their own representatives.
Unions also have succumbed to the intoxication of political power. Instead of being “of the people, by the people and for the people”, they also have become an entity of their own lobbying for their existence.
I am not sure how this mess will correct itself or even if it is possible. I do know that when we don’t respect law or bend it even for what we believe to be “good intentions”, we contribute to the decline of a society. What it will be replaced with will be up to those who yield the power and people din’t give up power willingly ( George Washington excluded)
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Amen!
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“The stock holders grumble that if Costco paid their employees less, the stock holders would make more from the stocks”
The problem is capitalism!
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Hi Communist Teacher:
Again, your sentence is incomplete. It should be rewritten as “The problem is capitalism WITH CORRUPTION, WITHOUT CONSCIENCE, WITHOUT STRONG UNION ORGANIZATION.”
Please tell this community that you know the specific communist country where its citizens are happy to live in without fear of daily economic threat.
Yes, people who are passionate without intelligence (working people and communist followers), greedy without knowledge (Walton’s children), hard-work without education (Buffet), educated without wealth (union leader, political leader, you know who), wealth without hard work (like Gates), power without experience (like Obama)… lead society to communist, fascist, and intention to destroy civilization like American Public Education System and Union Organization of all levels.
Please remember that even a shark dares not to open its mouth while it is surrounded by a whirlwind force of salmons. Similarly, communist or fascist cannot exist if there is capitalism with all conscientious educators and strong union organization in all levels from local to States and to National. Back2basic.
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Dear Joe, just because someone has a different opinion does not mean they are a union hater.
As for Microsoft, so many of you are filled with Bill Gates hatred you are missing the point. People are scrambling to work at the company. They are dynamic and pay their people extremely well with benefits that even exceed the New York Teachers Union plans. As for the layoffs, do you suggest everyone has lifetime employment until the company simply dissolves by its own weight and everyone loses their job…or should they make changes as products and the economy change?
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Amen, Lloyd. If it weren’t for unions they would draw and quarter teachers. The unions are ESSENTIAL to the people’s survival. The oligarchs have the money. as you pointed out, and we the people need to be ORGANIZED AND ACTIVE!
Unions provide that ORGANIZED platform for activism.
THAT SAID: They need to do more than negotiate salaries.
It is time that we teachers oust the corrupt union people who have lied to us and sold out teachers right to grieve slander and lawlessness. No teacher can survive in schools where top-down administrators are unaccountable for the most unethical,immoral and illegal actions.
The grievance procedure has been suborned, and as the ass’t superintendent of my silk-stocking NYC district told the principal who was ‘nervous’ that I managed to get a step 2 grievance: “The principals are always believed!”
They are also trained in how to win grievances…. also overheard at the elevator when I won a single grievance out of hundreds I filed:
Manhattan Bureau top Union Rep: “What the hell happened in there?”
Asst’ Superintendent: “I tell them how to do it, but he didn’t listen.”
Yeah… we need the unions, but that head honcho, Manhattan UFT Union rep said to me when I met him in the halls of the district office, months after I was imprisoned in teacher jail with no communication from the union;’ Relax: Do you know how lucky you are? You get to do nothing and collect your salary!”
I was, at that time, working with the national research teams for the Pew standards research out of Harvard, in the third year as a cohort. Now, I could ‘relax’ as they trashed my room and my reputation back at the site, and set me up for charges ranging from corporal punishment and incompetence.
Yeah! We need unions… we just don’t need the shills who collect good salaries and speaking fees for selling us out!
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/03/lausd-and-utla–connecting-the-dots-of-blattant-corruption.html
As for the corrupt hunk of junk that sold me out, he was sent to an upstate job in the union treasury, with a great salary, and retired with a great pension and benefits.
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Spoken like somebody who knows what she is talking about. You and me both.
Until you’ve been through the illegal “due process” hearings, you really can’t appreciate how utterly corrupt the public education system can be.
My “due process” hearing in Nevada was a total sham. If such a travesty had been done in a civil or criminal action, these people would be doing prison time instead of still being allowed to work for the district. Meanwhile, I have been financially ruined, probably for life.
Of course privatizing the system would be a million times worse.
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The concept of the hearings isn’t corrupt, just they way they are instituted.
You have to have an outside lawyer to have a ghost of a chance of “winning.” Even if you “win,” you have a target on your back for the rest of your career.
The incompetent who violated FMLA, state statutes, and the negotiated agreement still has a job making 100k a year. Totally backed by the then-superintendent.
The most current sup, Pedro Martinez (Washoe County School District), although not really qualified to be a superintendent since he doesn’t have an education background, is actually doing something about cretins in administration who screw up. He’s actually forcing some of them out. I am hoping “karma” will eventually catch up with the principal who ruined my life to save her butt.
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The hearings are “illegal” in how they are most often conducted, not that they exist.
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Susan to Susan. Nevada? The stories that you and I are telling are the reality that has been hidden. The stories are the same across the nation; 50 states and 15,880 districts make it possible to hide the lawless place that is the educational workplace.
As intellectual conversations fly about VAM and and Common Core, and this method vs that, they have taken down public education by the simple expediency of removing the veteran professionals in the most egregious manner possible… and 20 years later, few people are talking about this reality.
The public education workplace lies beyond the law, and until that is rectified the schools will be places where nothing can be accomplished. The teachers voice is the crucial element and they have no say in what happens, and no support for what they need to enable learning. 42 kids in a class? Why not?
Who will want to teach if this goes on.?
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Union leadership is in a very difficult position, but it looks to me that they are more reactive than active in terms of developing strategy. I acknowledge it can be difficult to set the terms of the debate in your favor when the opposition has a significant resource advantage. However, if the status quo is allowed to persist then American unions run the risk of falling into complete irrelevance. It’s a little disheartening that unions largely failed to capitalize on the public discontent generated by the Great Recession. If they couldn’t build momentum over the past couple of years then when will they be able to do so?
There is some encouraging polling of millenials’ attitudes toward unionization, but patience is a luxury unions likely don’t have at this point. I doubt the worrying trends we see today will reverse themselves if teachers unions remain on their current path. Teachers unions and other public sector unions like AFSCME are now the primary target of anti-union business groups whom have already succeeded in diminishing private sector unions.
Unions have historically been the bulwark of progressive politics in the United States and throughout the world, so their decline should be a major concern for anyone who leans to the left. Their weakness in the United States raises a number of pressing questions: Who will lead the fight against austerity and excessively tight monetary policy? Who will fight for equality? Who will fight for free public education? Who will fight against child poverty and inequitable funding? Who will promote economic security?
As Diane Ravitch has pointed out, the primary problems that exist within the American education system are a reflection of broader economic/social issues. Forget this fact and we risk ignoring the root of our troubles. Private sector unions have little left and likely cannot be revitalized under the prevailing economic paradigm. Teachers and their unions must stick up for themselves and their students! Is there really a choice?
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What’s happening today has happened before. I suggest that in September you buy a copy of Dana Goldstein’s “The Teacher Wars, A History of American’s Most Embattled Profession”. Goldstein’s heavily researched book covers 175 years of public education in the U.S.
I reached page 200 last night, and the book is just starting to cover what’s happening today on that history timeline.
Here’s a pull quote from page 197 where Goldstein says, “In my experience as an education reporter, Teach for America recruits are neither the savors nor the banes of public education.”
The author also reveals the history of TFA and its founder who never taught a day in her life. Instead, Wendy Kopp is a marketing guru who is an expert at weaving a web to deceive others to agree with her thinking. Public education has been plagued from the beginning with people like Kopp.
I have 74 pages to read and then I will write the review for Amazon and my blog. The book already has five reviews from other Amazon Vine reviewers who also read the advanced Galley proof. You may also want to read what they have to say.
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Thanks. I will read it. I appreciate all that you offer to those of us who come here to be informed.
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The problem with teachers’ unions is they are inherently weak because in the vast majority of the states, public school teachers aren’t allowed to strike. WHY that is, I do not know because public safety is not at risk if there is a work stoppage by teachers (unlike police and fire personnel). Without the ability to strike, teachers really don’t have squat power collectively. And of course, individually they are often screwed over by their alleged “unions,” the officials more often than not in bed with school districts.
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Every democratic politically based organization—this includes labor unions—is flawed by its very nature because individual humans in those democratic organizations can be bought, fooled and controlled.
However, flawed democratic organizations are a much better option than dictatorships ruled by billionaire oligarchs, who are often ruthless dictators in the undemocratic corporate sector that cares more for profit than dealing with the suffering of the working middle class and those who barely survive on poverty wages.
At least with labor unions, because they are democratic organizations, course corrections may be made when the majority of the members wake up and stop allowing themsevles to be fooled by the propaganda of the oligarchs like Bill Gates, the Walton family and the Koch brothers.
Look at history and you will find many examples of these course corrections in democratic organizations like labor unions.
Be patient and never give up the fight. Once the majority gives up the fight, then the ruthless, power hungry, corrupt profit vampires have won another round in the historical struggle between leadership and the common people.
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These “unions” were asleep at the switch when states determined they couldn’t strike. They aren’t effective now and have been infiltrated by people who are in bed with the privatizers.
The Teamsters should take over both the NEA and AFT, as far as I am concerned.
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And the Teamsters can’t be bought? Every democratic organization is subject to corruption and course corrections so why abandon what we already have for something else?
The grass is not greener on the other side of the hill.
I suggest you read this paper from Cornell: Corruption and Reform in the Teamsters Union
http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1164&context=ilrreview
What the membership must do is take back the teacher unions and reform them.
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Your words bear repeating “Be patient and never give up the fight. Once the majority gives up the fight, then the ruthless, power hungry, corrupt profit vampires have won another round in the historical struggle between leadership and the common people.”
Just the fact of this conversation means something is happening. If we give up, they win, and there will be no future for our country because KIDS are not children for long…they are the ones who will run the show when we are old and after we are gone!
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Exactly!
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Beautiful piece:)
And I agree, unions represent the best interests of parents, students, and teachers.
Due process does not protect “bad teachers”: poor administration does. A teacher who is accused of gross misconduct will immediately be taken out of a class for the investigation. Due process just guarantees that, if there are false charges, that teacher has the right to defend themselves…just like in the real world.
As a parent I would not want a quality teacher dismissed because a new administrator wants her best friend’s child hired. At our school, in a non union state, our AP used funds to hire her son as a consultant. She is friends with our principal since childhood, unprofessional, and incompetent.
If we had a union, this sort of thing would happen less. As a taxpayer, I want ethical conduct in the school system.
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The AFT stood with postal workers. Media declared their boycott of Staples, a success. I thank the teachers. Lloyd is right about the importance of unions.
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Love your answer. I will tell you exactly how it works. First, if you have followed me here, or go tony author’s page, you know that in 1998, my practice was instrumementali n bring the Pew $$$ for the authentic National Standards, the research out of Harvard that would verify what learning l and BEST PRACTICE LOOKS LIKE… AND THEY DID.
Second, imagine that the top-down management is ready to push testing and their idea of curricula, and there is a teacher in the school she helped to put on the map from day one, who is wildly popular with students and parents on the east side of Manhattan and across NYC.
Third, her curriculum is vetted and stands out among thousands as the way that a teacher meets the standards for learning, the rubric , the criteria that are the principles of learning.
Gosh! How can you remove her FAST?
Take a frightened child , one who is fearful of discovery at a time when classmates re busted for drugs in this tony school. This child whose mom is president of the PTA and sits by the side of the new principal, one who will move up to superintendent if she can rid the school of the strong voice of a teacher… one who will never use test-prep to replace the successful methods and materials she has put together over 8 years of her TENURE!
Now comes the good part. The child goes home crying, when she realizes that the kids in the class and the entire school, every single one of them, write letters to this teacher, and confide in her.. SHE knows EVERYTHING THAT GOES ON IN THAT TINY SCHOOL OF
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oops. anyway TITLEONETEXAS TEACHER, TO CONTINUE WITH THE EXAMPLE OF HOW IT WORKS: I hit ‘post’, but I was not finished with the tale. This blog is difficult compared to the news site where I post and can edit. I tell this story, not so you can feel sorry for me, but to offer the story that shows that failed human beings can do when THERE IS NO ACCOUNTABILITY.
My little episode is nothing compared to what happened to Lorna Stremcha, but the underlying cause for it is the same across the nation… no legal representation for DUE PROCESS.
YOU GOT IT RIGHT TEXAS GAL.
http://www.speakingasateacher.com/SPEAKING_AS_A_TEACHER/No_Constitutional_Rights-_A_hidden_scandal_of_National_Proportion.html
SO, here is the juicy part…the drama… THE CHILD WANTS THE TEACHER’S VOICE SILENCED, and so does the principal, and the kid’s mother is powerful and does not know of her 13 year old’s relationship with the 8th grade drug-dealer, who has just been CAUGHT…taking down a score of really nice children who enjoyed smoking grass on their lunch break!
The 13 year old drama queen cries to her mom, and says that the mean teacher embarrassed her and called her names in front of the whole class… and she was ‘frightened’ says the superintendent… so THATis corporal punishment.
Now here comes the good part… you see even if I had said the awful things that she alleged to her mother and to students, it would not be corporal punishment. But CP is a criminal offense and BOOM! Out the teacher goes. The DOE knows this, and their principals use it anyway.
The union knows this, and does not follow grievance procedures.
Instead, The NYC union hack tells me “how lucky” I am “to be able to relax and get paid”, but offers no explanation for my removal. Six months later, I am Told at my first meeting with administration, that I have been guilty of corporal punishment.
NO charges ever put forth. No hearing. No investigation. No opportunity to grieve or confront the child or offer testimony from the 30 kids who were there.
can you spell LAWLESS!
it cost me $25,000 at a time that I had one sons in college, to hire an attorney who would point out that NYS education law describes corporal punishment as physicall abuse.
Yes, He gets me returned to the school, to be placed in a storeroom with no supplies or instructions, to ‘teach’ a few kids each period, instead of the entire seventh grade with my famous curriculum.
Now,the new principal can document my incompetence, and empty my employment folder of the decades of excellent service so the superintendent can now charge me with incompetence.
So, pardon me, when I say IT’S THE UNION, and parents need to get behind teachers whom they love… not that it did much good in my case…. the parents screamed bloody murder and wrote letters to the superintendent. They had chosen the school in no small part because of my reputation.
The principal, then upped the ante, and got someone to say that she heard me threaten to kill her. Back to teacher jail for me…. from child abuser to potential killer within 8 months of the EDUCATOR OF EXCELLENCE AWARD by NYSEC; and when those insane allegations went away, thanks to my filed lawsuit…. they charged me with INCOMPETENCE.
and this was not Texas, or La, it was NYC… where the powers that wanted to end public education, began the first assault to see if they could silence the real teachers.
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Great post Lloyd Lofthouse! Thank you.
A great summer read about unions by novelist Barbara Kingsolver (written in 1989, but still relevant today) is Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike.
http://www.kingsolver.com/books/holding-the-line-women-in-the-great-arizona-mine-strike.html
I learned a lot from this true story and was amazed at how similar the miners’ story is to the teachers’ story.
Lloyd, your last two paragraphs are the message we need to get to the people.
Who is greedy—the Koch brothers who are worth more than one hundred billion dollars (combined) and are willing to pollute the air, water and soil to increase their wealth or the union worker who is paid maybe $25 an hour with a retirement and health plan that cuts into the profits and wealth of people like Bill Gates, the Walton family or Eli Broad?
Without labor unions, the worker has no voice. The only voice heard will be from someone like Bill Gates.
The people need to learn the truth about unions.
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Bill Gates is using Randi Weingareten like a ventriloquist doll that talks out of both sides of its mouth.
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I’m going to refrain from commenting on the puppet imagery. . . . I could top it, but why risk being seen as mean and objectionable?
I think you hit a nail on its head, Rene.
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Here’s my perspective on teachers unions as a retired Superintendent with 29 years of experience in 5 states:
=> The teachers union is not a monolith: each district and each State has it’s own unique history and, consequently, each union has its own unique reason for being.
=> Younger teachers have not experienced the adverse effects of working in a non-union environment and are therefore unaware of the benefits and protections they are receiving as a result of the hard work done by those like Lloyd Lofthouse and other commenters who organized the first set of unions.
=> Unions are inherently conservative in the sense their desire to maintain the status quo. Because “the devil they know” is always preferable to the unknown, they are reluctant to change the step-and-track system compensation system, to accept individualized compensation packages, to make changes to the current scheduling format for schooling, or adopt peer evaluation systems. This adherence to the status quo makes it possible for “reformers” to present themselves as “bold innovators”.
As one who believes in economic justice, I appreciate the need for unions in all sectors of the economy and believe that their diminishment has contributed to the suppression of wages over the past two or three decades… I would like to see all unions speaking up against the current system that values shareholders at the expense of the 99% and would like to see national teacher’s unions speak more stridently about the effects of poverty on children and less about the effects of the economy on their membership.
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There’s a graph at Think Progress.org: As union membership decrease, middle class income shrinks.
The graph covers a time span of almost 42 years. In 1967, union membership in the U.S. was approaching 30 percent and the middle class share of the national income was more than 52%.
By 2008, union membership had dropped to less than 15 percent and middle class income had fallen to almost 46%. Since 2008, the middle class share of national income has fallen further and is approaching 45 percent while the share of the top one percent has exploded upward like one of those volcanoes in Iceland that doesn’t stop spewing.
Yahoo Finance reported in September 2013 that the top 1 percent in the US took the biggest share of household income since 1928. Yahoo says, “Last year, the incomes of the top 1 percent rose nearly 20 percent compared with a 1 percent increase for the remaining 99 percent.”
About the same time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the percentage of American workers in labor unions fell to 11.3%—a 97-Year low.
And there seems no shortage of fools among the 99% who support the 1 percent’s war against labor unions.
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Dear Dr. Lofthouse:
Some earn Doctorate degree through academe. To me, you genuinely achieve Doctorate Degree through experience and the pure love to fight for better Public Education for all children in America, and for a stronger and better Union Organization.
Please be healthy to guide many young educators because they will really need your guidance. I really enjoy reading your patient answers to Teaching Economist. Your tolerance is very amazing.
Teaching economist and communist teacher are quite lunatic in my viewpoint. They pretend to provoke readers’ patience and tolerance. They are educator, but quite morally corrupted and uncultivated! Back2basic
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Thank you, but I have no PhD.
An MFA in writing is as far as I went and I never wanted to go for a PhD. Never even considered it.
I think you missed a few of my comments to TE where recently I decided to go postal with my words and tell him what I thought about him being an idiot, a fool, etc.
As for CT, I think there is a place for socialist policies/prgorams such as Social Security and a national medical plan as long as there is a fair and honest balance with some forms of capitalism outside of Wall Street and monstrous corporations that often have too much influence.
I think there should be private property ownership and a private business and manufacturing sector but there should be a cap on how large an individual fortune should grow and the size of corporations.
No corporation in the private sector should be too big to fail and no private fortune should be larger than a GDP of most countries. This puts too much power in too few hands.
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Hi Mr. Lofthouse:
I heartily agree with your suggestion that “No corporation in the private sector should be too big to fail and no private fortune should be larger than a GDP of most countries. This puts too much power in too few hands.”
I have lived with both capitalism and communism. Both of these ideologies will be ultimately the same when the leaders are greedy and terrorize its citizens by the mismanagement of social security and economy.
However, in capitalism, people are free to move around, free to work or lay back, free gathering for a strike, free writing on public newspaper without being fear of punishment, free to upgrade education in post secondary level. Most of all, we have this forum to exchange and inform what affect our public education, as well as to expose all crooks who abuse power of money to corrupt and to cause chaos to Public Education System.
In communism, only children of communist high ranking will be chosen to work for government. Common people will be restricted in most of aspects in life. Let’s take a few of examples in East/West Germany, North/South Korea, North/South Viet Nam, Russia, and China, people who have education or money, try to escape communism. Whoever stays behind because they cannot leave together with their big family members.
Communists are excellent with words and strategy to fool some people all the time, all people sometimes, but do not fool all people all the time. So does capitalism without conscience, without strong union, but with A LOT OF CORRUPTION within administrative system.
There is no communist country where you can witness its citizens/ common people who live with contentment. Communist leaders are built without trust, without humanity, without compassion, ONLY with terrorism and intimidation to surrounding.
In conclusion, I prefer to work in the work force with union organization as I prefer to live under capitalism. Most of all, I prefer to vote for Democratic or Republic Party, but never third party. Yes, I prefer traditional public education system over edu-reform at any cost. Back2basic
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It isn’t “capitalism” that offers the freedoms you mention. It’s the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights that were written thanks to the wisdom of America’s Founding Fathers to protect the citizen of the United States from their own government, but these protections often do not apply to the private sector where capitalism has its roots.
For instance, the 1st Amendment doesn’t protect our freedom of expression from private sector, capitalist corporations. Workers in the private sector have little or no protection from losing their jobs if they say something that boss or CEO doesn’t approve of or agree with.
Public employees, because they work for state or federal governments are protected through due process rights that have been linked to the Bill of Rights. And this is a protection that the private sector’s fake education reformers are trying to take away from public school teachers so teachers can be easily fired if they speak out against abuse or fraud of any kind in the public schools or private-sector Charter schools.
Capitalism exists and has worked comfortably in Communist China since Mao’s death and American CEO’s and business leaders have been quoted saying they think doing business with the CCP is easier than dealing with a country with a democratic form of government because the CCP is organized and operates simliar to how corporations in the capitalist sector work.
I think it is arguable that there is ample evidence that capitalism—like communism and fascism—is the enemy of democracy and individual freedoms and must be watched closely. If the U.S. federal government had been doing its job as a watchdog of business in the capitalist sector, the odds are that the 2007-08 global financial crises would have never happened.
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Intelligent and thoughtful response.
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Hee, Hee, Love it. I hold 2 degrees and the equivalent of 2 more, and after 40 years of teaching I am still informed by Lloyd Lofthouse ( and Bob Shepherd) .
As for the clueless ones, they might learn if they are not so seeded to their beliefs and totally ignorant of what is happening in the 15,880 districts.
But the one most important voice, in my opinion, is Diane herself.
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