The Collective Bargaining Crisis

Being of a certain age, I remember the when unions were proud, necessary organizations that really had the workers' best interests at heart.  I believe that unions are as much responsible for the creation and rise of the American middle class, of which I am a part, as any entity in American history.  As an educator, I've seen how collective bargaining improved working conditions for teachers and helped protect them from innocent mistakes or the whims of arbitrary administrators.  Therefore, I take no joy in stating that the current state of the collective bargaining process from the union side, particularly in the public sector has become bloated, corrupt, top heavy and not in the overall best interests of the country, the membership, and certainly not the student. Not when the Governor of New York, who must lay off 1,500 educators can't trim from the rolls the hundreds of incompetent (or worse) teachers sitting in "rubber rooms" sometimes for years because of "Last In, First Out" rules.  Not when public sector unions in major cities donate hundreds of millions to get lawmakers elected and then sit down with those same politicians when it's time to "negotiate".  Not when Detroit is closing half its schools and increasing class size to pay for benefits and the teachers union there is intransigent.  Not when school districts write glowing recommendations for bad teachers so they can pawn them off on other unsuspecting school districts because, by union rules, it is virtually impossible to remove them from the classroom. Not when the new PA Convention Center additions have just opened in Downtown Philadelphia to accommodate larger groups but prospective clients are reluctant to reserve there because they have to negotiate with 6 different unions to do things like clients using their own laptop if it is used to register participants.  I take no joy in saying that collective bargaining has become the problem, not the solution in flashpoint states like Wisconsin, Ohio, and Indiana where the citizens have pushed back.  Two good articles ilustrate my point.  This, from the Wall Street Journal and here from Journalist Kyle Olson about Teacher Tenure.  I still think that unions are a necessary counterbalance to look out for the interests of their membership, however the frameworks of the negotiating process will need to be altered in order for unions to survive.