Democrats don’t want to hold Teachers Unions to the same standards they want to hold Law Enforcement Unions
George Will wrote an insightful opinion piece this week in the Washington Post. In it, he reviews Philip K. Howard’s new book “Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions.”
One of the book's points is that teachers unions have been a plight and destructive force to public schools. You can read the whole review here.
Midway through his opinion piece he wrote the following:
"A government can do neither. Collective bargaining presupposes adversarial conflict, but in “negotiations” between government employee unions and government, the unions want government to do what government wants to do: expand, using money from a third party, the citizenry. In 2006, New Jersey’s Democratic governor — management — assured a rally of 10,000 government employees, “We will fight for a fair contract!” Who would fight whom?”
Particularly at the state and local levels (e.g., school board elections), public employees wield union power to elect their employers, who reciprocate with contracts containing labyrinthine job protections. A 2011 book reported that over an 18-year period, just about two of Illinois’ 95,000 teachers were dismissed annually for unsatisfactory work. Because California’s 300,000 teachers are unionized, Howard says, two or three a year are terminated for performing poorly. Consider this from a pro-union blog: “We don’t need to swap out all the bad and mediocre teachers for better teachers, any more than we should swap out our struggling students for more advanced students.”
Burdensome grievance procedures discourage federal executive branch officials from filing negative assessments of employees, 99 percent of whom receive the “fully successful” rating. Public sector unions exist to make the world safe for mediocrity by opposing, as Howard says, any reform aimed at introducing merit or other forms of accountability.
Police unions, too, win contracts with thick layers of protections to shield substandard performers from accountability. Of the approximately 2,600 complaints the Minneapolis Police Department received in the decade before the murder of George Floyd, 12 led to discipline, the most severe being a 40-hour suspension. In 2017, a Post report on 37 large cities’ policing found a dismissal rate of 130 officers a year out of 91,000. Seventy percent of San Antonio officers fired for cause from 2006 to 2017 were rehired after contractually mandatory arbitration.
It is quaint that the 1939 Hatch Act bars “political activity” by federal employees, yet the unionized 25 percent pay dues that fund the unions’ political activities. Public sector unions are, Howard says, “a political force unlike any in American history — amassed and entrenched using state power.” These unions spend $1 billion to $3 billion a year influencing political decisions: “No other interest group, no industry, comes close to mobilizing that amount of political money."
Two things stood out:
First, how much public union money is spent on influencing U.S. elections. Think about it, people who are paid with your tax dollars, donate money to a liberal public union PAC and turn around, and donate mostly to Democrat politicians. For example, in 2020,
· National Education Associations (NEA) donated almost $45 million. According to OpenSecrets.org, 94.9% of that money went to Democratic campaigns.
· The American Federation of Teachers donated almost $15 million. Again, OpenSecrets.org wrote that 99.2% of their donations went to Democrats.
So your tax dollars are not only supporting mediocre public education, but providing campaign funds to elect progressive candidates who keep supporting and prop up these subpar schools and teachers.
Second, is a rhetorical question. Most Americans agree that when cops perform badly or have disciplinary problems, they should be terminated. That opinion is probably held by Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals. That being said, if there is a bad teacher, Democrats keep supporting unions that keep these folks employed. We also hear Democrats talk about the danger of police unions protecting their own (think blue shield laws), but they don't hold the same standard to teacher unions who are with your grandchildren and children 1,000+ hours a year.
The hypocrisy is shameful, stunning and not surprising.
So dear readers and listeners, read Mr. Will’s opinion piece. Get the book he reviewed. Get involved. Common sense governance needs to become vogue again.