Tag: Teachers’ Unions

Another criticism of teachers’ unions is that they spend millions of dollars lobbying politicians to protect and advance their interests. This is bad, or so the reasoning goes, because the interests of the teachers’ unions are often (or perhaps even always) contrary to what is best for students.

When pressed for examples of such interests, critics sometimes allege that “collective bargaining agreements are written like celebrity contracts” and they point to egregious examples such as how Buffalo pays the bills when teachers have elective plastic surgery. These sorts of things do raise reasonable concerns.

It is true that unions sometimes negotiate contracts with problematic provisions.  But this is hardly a defect inherent to unions and the problems are the problematic provisions rather than the existence of teachers’ unions. To use the obvious analogy, corporations spend millions lobbying politicians to protect and advance their interests. This lobbying constantly results in laws contrary to the interests of many other citizens. But this does not justify eliminating corporations or lobbying. The problem is not inherent to corporations or lobbying but is the result of harmful legislation influenced by specific corporations engaged in specific lobbying. Likewise, when unions lobby for and get laws or agreements that prove harmful, the problem lies with the laws or agreements and not inherently in the unions or lobbying.

It could be argued that collective entities like unions and corporations are inherently damaging to the rest of society, and they should be eliminated or weakened. However, the burden of proof would seem to rest on those who hold this position. Also, this solution to the problem of teachers’ unions would need to be applied consistently, thus eliminating all collective entities that interact with the public. This would include all corporations and nonprofit organizations.

It could be contended that the problem is lobbying. If lobbying was eliminated or severely restricted, then it would be a better world. Given that big-money lobbying often has a corrupting and corrosive effect, this does have considerable appeal. However, this is not a problem unique to teachers’ unions. As such, if the solution to the woes attributed to teachers’ unions can be solved by eliminating or restricting their lobbying, then consistency would require extending the same policies to other collective bodies, such as corporations, to protect the public.

Another approach to the matter is to consider whether teachers’ unions are as harmful as their opponents claim. As a specific example, is it true that teachers’ unions collective bargaining agreements are like “celebrity contracts”?

A popular example of a “celebrity contract” provision is the coverage of plastic surgery provided to teachers by Buffalo. While the anti-union narrative is that the union negotiated so teachers could get breast implants and nose jobs, this is not the reality. When the benefit was first offered, plastic surgery was used primarily for reconstruction after a disfiguring injury. However, plastic surgery has changed since this benefit was negotiation. Plastic surgery as elective surgery for “improving” appearance is much more common. As such, it wasn’t that the union  negotiated a celebrity contract.  It is that some people are exploiting a change in plastic surgery. Sorting out this matter did prove problematic, not because of unions but because of issues with the way contracts are handled. There is also the fact that one anecdote about plastic surgery benefits does not show that teachers’ unions are generally bad. If anecdotes about bad behavior warranted eliminating organizations, then corporations would be the first to go.

While plastic surgery might be part of a “celebrity contract”, a hallmark of such an agreement is the payment of large (even exorbitant) sums of money. As such, if unions are benefiting teachers at the expense of students, then large (even exorbitant) teacher salaries should be expected as well as bonuses and perks.  However,  the typical salaries for teachers ranges from $43,491-48,880. While this is not a bad income relative to the national average, it compares unfavorably to the salaries of college educated workers in other professions. There are various myths about teacher pay that people use to argue that teachers are well (or excessively) paid. However, these are just that, they are myths. So, the idea that teachers’ unions are acting to the detriment of students by negotiating “celebrity contracts” for teachers is absurd in the face of the facts. That this is the case should be obvious to anyone who knows teachers—they do not live celebrity lifestyles and typically spend those “summer vacations” working a second job. My parents taught at public schools, and I can assure readers that we did not live a celebrity lifestyle.  They had to work second jobs over the summers to pay the bills. Speaking with teachers today makes it clear that things have not changed. Anecdotally, I am a member of a teacher’s union and I and most of my colleagues do not have “celebrity contracts.” Those are reserved for upper-level administrators and some of the “superstar” professors who can bring in grant money or have celebrity status in academics. But this is not the doing of the unions.

It could be argued that although teachers are not living the high life at the expense of students, unions still spend millions lobbying politicians and this money would be better spent on the students. This is a reasonable point: it would be better if that money could be spent on educating the children rather than going into the ample pockets of politicians. I am sure that other organizations, such as businesses, would prefer to use their lobbying money for more beneficial purposes, such as raises for employees. However, if they did not lobby, then they would be worse off because of the system that people have created. That is why they lobby. The same is true for the teachers’ unions: if they did not lobby on behalf of teachers, then things would be worse off for teachers and students. While it would be wonderful if politicians did the right thing for education and businesses because it is right and beneficial, that is not how most politicians have chosen to work. As such, the fact that the teachers’ unions and businesses spend so much money lobbying is a problem with the politicians and not a problem with unions or businesses.

Considering the above discussion, while it is obvious and evident that while unions can do wrong, they are important for protecting teachers and education. As such, the efforts to eliminate or weaken unions are, at best, misguided.

One common conservative criticism of teachers’ unions is that they harm students by protecting bad teachers. If these unions could be changed or eliminated, then bad teachers could be replaced, and students would benefit. A specific version of this criticism is about the practice of last-in first-out: those hired last are the first fired. The concern is that teachers are retained based on seniority rather than ability, which can mean that bad teachers remain while good teachers are fired. These criticisms do have some appeal since most institutions tend to devolve into systems that protect certain bad members. Churches and police unions provide two example of this phenomenon. It is especially informative to compare conservative stances on police unions and other unions.

On the face of it, this criticism fits a plausible narrative about unions: since they exist to protect members, the leadership might not be overly concerned about their quality. So, unions do their best to keep teachers from being fired and thus bad teachers remain in the system. These bad teachers do a bad job at teaching students and this harm can impact them throughout their life. Being able to fire bad teachers would open positions for good teachers and send a message to bad teachers. The good teachers would do a good job, thus benefiting the students. From this it is inferred.  that eliminating unions would be good for students. Critics of police unions have made a similar argument to address the problem of bad and even dangerous officers being able to continue to work as police.

In the case of the policy of first firing the last hired, the claim is that eliminating unions would result in merit-based hiring and firing, so that when there was a need to fire teachers, the bad teachers would be eliminated regardless of seniority. As such, being rid of unions would improve things for students.

One easy and obvious reply to these criticisms is that they are not general criticisms of unions. Rather, they are criticisms of specific practices: retaining bad teachers and retaining based on seniority rather than quality. There is nothing essential to a teacher’s union that requires that it mandate the retention of bad teachers nor that it mandate a seniority-based retention system. To use an analogy, there are countless examples of bad policies followed by corporations that do not arise simply because a corporation is a corporation. Roughly put, bad corporate policies are bad not because they are policies of corporations but because they are bad policies. As such, they do not provide grounds for the elimination of corporations. Rather, the badness of a corporation’s policy provides grounds for changing that policy. The same applies to teachers’ unions: the badness of a union policy serves as grounds for changing that policy, not eliminating unions.

It could be argued that by their very nature unions must protect bad teachers and it is impossible for them to do otherwise. Likewise, it could be argued that corporations by their very nature must have terrible policies that harm the public. If so, then solving these problems would require eliminating unions and corporations. However, this view seems implausible for both unions and corporations.

A second reply involves considering the facts of the matter. If unions protect bad teachers, then highly unionized districts should retain more bad teachers than districts that are less unionized. But, if unions do not protect bad teachers, then districts should have comparable percentages of bad teachers (adjusting for other factors, of course).

As should not be surprising, the debate over the facts usually involves anecdotes about bad teachers and intuitions about unions. While anecdotes can provide some illustrative examples, they do not provide a foundation for general conclusions. There is, after all, the classic fallacy of anecdotal evidence which involves doing just that. Intuitions can provide some guidance, but by they are feelings and thoughts one has prior to considering the evidence. As such, anecdotes and intuitions do not suffice to show whether unions are good or bad.

Fortunately, Professor Eunice Han has conducted a study of the claim that unions overprotect bad teachers. While it runs contrary to the anecdotes about bad teachers that cannot be fired and intuitions about overprotective unions, the evidence shows that “highly unionized districts actually fire more bad teachers.” Somewhat ironically, districts with weak or no unions retain more lower quality teachers than highly unionized districts.

As Han notes, stronger unions reduced the attrition rate of teachers and increased teacher wages. Because of the higher salaries, there is a greater incentive to remove bad teachers and good teachers have a greater incentive to remain. This nicely fits the conservative mantra that top talent can only be kept by paying top salaries, although this mantra is usually just applied to people like CEOs and not the people who do the work.

In contrast, weak unions (and the absence of unions) increase the attrition rate of teachers and decrease teacher wages. So, good teachers will tend to leave for areas with strong unions while bad teachers will often end up in areas with weaker unions or those that lack unions. The statistics show that unions have a positive impact on teacher quality and that the myths of the overprotective union and the irremovable bad teacher are just that, myths unsupported by facts. This also nicely matches the conservative mantra about compensation: lesser talent will settle for lower salaries. Ironically, teachers’ unions should be supported by conservative who profess to worry about teacher quality.

As this issue is so ideologically charged, those who oppose unions will tend to see the study as biased and might offer “alternative facts” of their own on the grounds that what they believe must be true. Likewise, those who favor unions can be accused of accepting “facts” that match their views. This is, of course, a much larger problem than the debate over unions: if there is not a shared set of facts and methods, then no rational discussion is possible.