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www.NewHeightsEducation.org<br />
How Teachers Unions<br />
Are Like<br />
Overbearing Mothers<br />
Personal choices and commitment can<br />
create personal wealth<br />
where unions cannot.<br />
www.NewHeightsEducation.org<br />
Speaking generally, the average yearly household income in the United States was over $73,000 in 2014. For those without<br />
degrees, the American economy is in a place of such prosperity that simple decisions like finishing high school and staying<br />
married open the way for affluence. Personal choices and commitment can create personal wealth where unions cannot. As<br />
such, they are not needed in the 21st century.<br />
Continuing on with the allegory, as Mrs. Fidget filled fictitious needs, she became a burden to her children. It would have been<br />
far better for the Fidget family had their clothing gone to a laundromat or lunch come from a restaurant. Regardless, their<br />
mother made it, so the children were obliged to eat it. With pensions, money would be better spent on immediate needs or<br />
invested in personal retirement accounts. Regardless, unions bargain for pensions, and so workers are obliged to give their<br />
money to a lackluster retirement fund.<br />
Nebulous Atrophy<br />
Mrs. Fidget’s laundry and meals were subpar. They are pensions, grid-based pay scales, rigid work rules, and onerous regulations.<br />
As one example, Chad Alderman explains the mediocrity of teacher pensions. He says,<br />
States are paying an average of 12 percent of each teacher’s salary just for debt costs. If states didn’t face these large debts, they<br />
could afford to give that money back to teachers in the form of higher salaries—an average of $6,801 for every public school<br />
teacher in America.<br />
As such, the guilt trip in defense of unions asks for thanks for a mediocre product.<br />
By Daniel Buck<br />
Friday, April 12, 2019<br />
Every year, the union reps make their rounds and talk to every teacher in the district. This year, my building’s representative<br />
sat in a student desk across from mine and asked if I had any feedback or thoughts I’d like to share. I summarized my discontent,<br />
to which she gave a thoughtful rebuttal. The conversation proceeded as expected—respectful but unfruitful.<br />
As she walked out, she apparently could not resist a quip: Since other teachers paid union dues, but I didn’t, she said, perhaps I<br />
should consider that I profit at my colleagues’ expense.<br />
That jibe is a common refrain in defense of unions. They provide a common good, the argument goes, defending worker rights<br />
and bargaining for compensation. Thus, I have an obligation to provide money from my paycheck. Another snide remark<br />
directed at me phrased it as “all the benefits I reap from the unions I so disdain.” It’s a deft little guilt-trip that crumbles with<br />
the slightest application of pressure.<br />
Like the guilt-ridden relationships in the Fidget household, perhaps the most onerous effect of unions is the nebulous atrophy<br />
they cause in any industry. It’s an all-pervasive conflict between employees and their employers. It’s blocked reforms like<br />
school choice, merit-based pay, or other market-based initiatives that promise to improve industries. It’s the artificially raised<br />
wages that shrink demand and thus the number of potential jobs. It’s the sense of entitlement for jobs they create, through all<br />
of their messaging, that lowers expectations.<br />
In sum, the defense my rep gave would stand if a union’s representation were both necessary and beneficial. Then, it would be<br />
incumbent upon me to provide monetary support in return for a valuable service. As it stands, they fall short of those requirements.<br />
They may have been helpful once as dear Mrs. Fidget, but their passing would leave workers and their industries to<br />
breathe more freely.<br />
Source: The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)<br />
https://fee.org/<br />
Needing to Be Needed<br />
In his book The Four Loves, while discussing familial love, C.S. Lewis provides a fictional anecdote that works to frame a rebuttal<br />
to this argument.<br />
I am thinking of Mrs. Fidget, who died a few months ago. It really is astonishing how her family have brightened up… Mrs. Fidget<br />
very often said that she lived for her family. And it was not untrue. Everyone in the neighborhood knew it… she did all the<br />
washing; true, she did it badly, and they could have afforded to send it out to a laundry, and they frequently begged her not to<br />
do it. But she did. There was always a hot lunch for anyone who was at home… She always sat up to “welcome” you home if you<br />
were out late at night… you would always find the frail, pale, weary face awaiting you like a silent accusation.<br />
Mrs. Fidget created fictitious needs for her family, wasting her own energy and binding her children with a guilt-ridden adherence.<br />
Lewis writes that she “needs to be needed,” and so all of her selfish do-gooderies could not create a healthy family<br />
dynamic. Unions are Mrs. Fidget—creating non-existent needs to the chagrin of their constituents.<br />
Is a Union Necessary?<br />
Regarding the non-existent needs, unions may have once been necessary institutions. During the Industrial Revolution, an era<br />
when workers had no individual clout, unions protected them from corruption between capitalists and government officials.<br />
Lewis’ allegory continues to provide insight here, though. He writes that “we feed children in order that they may soon be able<br />
to feed themselves… [we] must work towards [our] own abdication.” And so, while workers once needed unions, the American<br />
economy has grown to a place where collective power is no longer required.<br />
Speaking for my field, teachers don’t need a union to defend them. They have advanced degrees, and many come to the field<br />
with former work experience; thus, they have secondary or even tertiary employment options. Like educators, many other professions<br />
require skills and intellectual capital that give them bargaining power, which line workers lacked at the turn of the<br />
century.<br />
86 86 <strong>NHEG</strong> | GENiUS <strong>Magazine</strong> MAGAZINE | <strong>September</strong> | www.geniusmag.com<br />
- <strong>October</strong> 2019<br />
<strong>September</strong> - <strong>October</strong> 2019 | <strong>NHEG</strong> <strong>Magazine</strong> 87