"Teachers Unions: Are They Needed?"
by Stephen P. Blum, Esq.,
President of the Ventura Unified Education Association (VUEA)

Teachers, like other members of the working class, benefit from union membership. A look into history provides some insight.

America was founded in 1776. Our founding fathers created a government based on democracy and an economic system based on capitalism. Neither system has been “pro worker”. For example, for almost 100 years America allowed slavery. The American slave system was hardly a “pro worker” system.

The latter half of the 19th and the early 20th century saw a few Americans like John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Cornelius Vanderbuilt acquire great wealth while most Americans worked six days a week and 12 to 14 hours a day to eek out an existence. Americans workers were powerless and poor. The blight of workers who worked in coal mines, sweat shops, company towns, and many other places across the US was pathetic.

In the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s, laborers began to organize to improve their lot in life. Fabulously wealthy owners put up great fights to deter workers from organizing and cutting into their enormous profits. In spite of beatings, killings, and other hardships, unions where formed. With the use of various tactics such as strikes, unions forced owners to pay a deceit wage, to provide decent working conditions, and to create the 40-hour work week.

Teachers unions began to form in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Previously, teachers had associations with virtually no power. Teachers could be dismissed at the whim of administration or the school board. Teachers were let go for giving the wrong student a bad grade, getting married, or find themselves pregnant.

Unionism has been a problem for capitalists. Capitalists desire to make as much money as possible by maximizing profits. To do this owners must pay their workers as little as possible and cut costs where ever they can. Many companies desire to pay low wages, to not provide health benefits, and offer poor working conditions in order to increase profits. Conversely, unions desire to increase the wages of workers, provide good health and welfare benefits, good working conditions, and a reasonable work schedule.

Unions and capitalist owners are natural adversaries. They both want the same dollars. They both want power. Power is finite. When some one or some group gets some, someone or some group loses some. In the mid-20th century, labor unions gained power. Those who lost power have been fighting to get it back. They have made sizeable inroads. At its high point, union members made up 35% of all workers in America. Today this number is approximately 13%.

Many of the powerful labor unions from the 20th century have faded. As a result, today the teachers’ union is largest union in the USA. There are over 3 million members in the National Teacher’s Association. This has put a large target on the teachers and their union.

A great deal of time and money has been spent to discredit public education in America. Those who seek to bust the teachers’ union often use the voucher idea in their attempt to achieve this goal. They refer to the public school monopoly as bad. They criticize teacher unions for protecting bad teachers. Police departments, fire departments, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Coast Guard are monopolies. Are they all bad, too? Should we create competition for our army in order to improve it?

The goal of these people who seek to discredit public education is not to improve education. The goal is to break teachers and their unions. To create private schools in which teachers get paid less. This will in turn take away the power they do not believe teacher unions should have and redistribute money back into their hands.

American democracy requires a well-educated citizenry to survive. America needs a highly motivated, high quality, experienced force of teachers to maintain this system. Unions have helped to make this possible. Good teachers will not work for Wal Mart wages. Unions have made things better for teachers and America has better teachers as a result.

In spite of all the negative propaganda the foes of public education have proffered, the American public education system has been an enormous success. The American system offers all citizens the chance for a quality education. America is the richest and most powerful nation on earth. American ingenuity and know how have led the world for decades. America achieved this lofty position because of its public education system, not in spite of it.

Today America’s public education system suffers from overcrowded schools, overcrowded classrooms, and a deprivation of the necessary tools. Excess bureaucracy is also a huge waste of funds. The public’s confidence in the system has been eroded.

Americans need to put the public good in front of the almighty dollar. We need to put the good of the country in front of the pursuit of wealth. America needs to put he “US” back in America and rally around institutions. We need to support our schools, our teachers, our policeman, fireman, servicemen, and other public service providers. We need to pay them and all other workers a living wage. We need to provide health insurance for all our citizens.

The goal of America should not be to make a few Americans enormously wealthy. The goal should be to work together to ensure the US of A remains the greatest of the world’s nations. Greed is not the answer. Working together to make our institutions better, our citizens healthier, wealthier, and wiser, and our country greater is the common goal we should all strife for.

February 11, 2007