

Unions - Garbage
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/unions/

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redthrowaway
Blaming America's dismal education system on teachers unions is a tired and
hollow argument. Mr. Adams would do well to consider the chronic underfunding,
push toward standardization at all costs, and political interference that
directly challenges science education.

Are unions good for a small, agile company? No. Are they necessary for
monolithic employers? Probably. The U.S. government employs 2 million
civilians. (ref:<http://www.bls.gov/oco/cg/cgs041.htm>) Withouts CBAs, etc,
this likely would not work particularly well. Having a organizational
structure that completely changes its goals, direction, and attitude towards
employees every four years probably doesn't help much.

~~~
gyardley
Instead of calling an argument tired and hollow, why don't you explain why the
argument is tired and hollow?

I'm not trying to score some cheap political points off you - I'd love a
response that makes me think a bit, because when I hear someone say 'teachers
unions are bad for education', my gut reaction is 'well, that's obvious',
since any system where pay is based on seniority and poor-performers are
difficult to fire has got to create perverse incentives. What am I missing?

~~~
redthrowaway
I'll preface this by saying that I am no fan of unions, although I recognize
their utility in some sectors and will go so far as to say that they have done
an incredible amount of historic good for the middle class.

Blaming teachers for failing educational standards has long been a tactic of
those who wish to see public education marginalized. What they fail to point
out, however, is that those countries with the best education systems also
have strong teachers unions. I'm not implying causality between the two,
merely correlation. It's certainly true that the structure of a union is not
one that tends to reward or punish based upon performance, but those who hold
unions to be the downfall of any organization place far too much weight on the
idea of monetary incentives.

Take Microsoft, for instance. Here's a company that has tried to implement
performance-based monetary incentives, and, by most accounts, failed widely.
It's not that people aren't incentivized by money, but rather that those who
are really good at what they do care much more about their impact than their
paycheque. They care more about doing something great and earning the respect
of peers they respect than a 5%/year raise.

The education system in America is shameful, something that it seems almost
everyone can agree on. The fact is, however, teacher unions are by no means
the major culprit. As I said earlier, chronic severe underfunding and a drive
toward standardization that values passing meaningless tests over education is
the true culprit.

As a member of HN, I think I can go out on a limb and say you're either fairly
technical, entrepreneurial, or both. Let me ask you: would you want to work
for a failing organization that had a terrible product, didn't invest enough
in development, and had ridiculous rules governing what qualified as success?
The trouble with finding great teachers who take charge of their students'
education is not the union, it's the system itself. The union may play a role
in that, but it's simply not a primary one.

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russellallen
Unions for armies aren't a problem because they might make the army less
efficient. They're a problem because they introduce a parallel and competing
chain of command and undermine the control of the civilian state over the men
with guns.

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vtail
While unions make it easier for workers to defend their rights, they make it
_much harder_ to create a meritocracy in the organization, and so much harder
to reward people based on their performance - just ask anybody who have ever
tried to transform an organization with a strong union. (Notoriously
ineffective PG&E comes to mind first).

Here is an example of how "easy" it is to fire a low-performing teacher:
[http://www.laweekly.com/2010-02-11/news/lausd-s-dance-of-
the...](http://www.laweekly.com/2010-02-11/news/lausd-s-dance-of-the-lemons/)

~~~
vtail
Here is a though experiment. How fast do you think Salman Khan, of
khanacademy.org fame, would advance in a US public school system?

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fogus
Duplicate of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1950695> that already has 63
comments.

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vitolds
Maybe instead of comparing military and education in terms of why unions are
allowed in one and not in the other, he should just make a comparison between
education and any private sector with functioning competition. I'd say the
benchmark for education should not be the military but rather retail. Imagine
schools as efficient as Walmart or Starbucks.

~~~
borism
if school was a Walmart, would teachers be shipped from China in Panamax
container ships?

~~~
vitolds
If they did a better job, they would.

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DanielBMarkham
_Imagine how things would be different if education were treated as a national
defense issue_

Good grief, Scott. The problem with unions and/or education is that we keep
trying to make one-size-fits-all solutions, eventually treating our children
(and teachers) like widgets in a factory. So the teachers and children have
started acting like we've been treating them. Further nationalizing it isn't
going to help any -- it'll just make matters worse.

Each student is a complicated problem on his or her own. That makes each class
an even more complicated problem. We need to be able to give people the
freedom and accountability to leverage local minima and maxima, not come up
with imaginations of how various global solutions might work. School boards
alone have too much concentrated power and make too many global rules. It just
gets worse the higher up the chain you go. The way we got here was through a
long string of really smart folks imagining what magic bullet might fix things
for everybody -- it will not be the way we get out.

EDIT: Interesting trivia point: one of the big pushes for centralized
education "reform" originally in the states was that in WWI the soldiers had a
hard time working the artillery. It was thought that we had better start
having national standards of education so that we could be assured future
soldiers would be able to fight effectively. Seems like we will never escape
well-meaning people using bad military analogies. La plus ca change...

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psyconn
I've heard an interesting argument that states education has become the number
one reason for one's under-achievements in today's society (like sinning in
the middle ages). The point is that education will always be bad and a LOT of
people have and idea (usually wrong) about how to improve it.

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ugh
By the way, civil servants (that includes teachers) have no right to strike in
Germany.

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electromagnetic
I have a strong dislike for unions, especially when people are forced to deal
with unionized companies for contractors.

I also feel sympathetic to those who are trapped in a union, who have been
making the same wage as everyone else for 30 years and are still forced to
walk out of their job for 8 months when talks break down so a union rep can
feel important and still relevant.

