Meanwhile, in my humble opinion, Trump shows off the future leaders of his death squads … for money.
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I guess you missed the New Yorker article (The Rubber Room | The New Yorker) about teacher’s unions effectively protecting “unsuitable” teachers among their number.
The job of all unions is to protect their members, not judge them. That is their purpose. If the union is powerful enough to protect against management abuse, it will also use that strength to protect against those members accused of wrong-doing.
It’s like getting upset because defense lawyers who bravely take on the justice system to get their innocent clients off also do their best to get their guilty clients off as well.
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I think a line can be drawn there, though: a union would be wise to protect its members at large from their worst members because otherwise they will lose bargaining power when the public abandons support for them (or even forms consumer unions to fight against them).
But in the case of governmental security personnel, I can see a case for forbidding unions.
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I was thinking more in terms of pay, but you make a good point. Administrators in public education are notoriously hard to remove, regardless of performance or illegal activity. Large payouts to terminate their contracts early make the front page in local newspapers.
When it comes to salary, increases for the police budget tend to go through with little comment. The exception is in smaller municipalities, which have been consolidating costs by sharing with their neighbors or eliminating departments and relying on the state police. The same is not true for teachers, and it seems like issues take much longer to be addressed.
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Because all those other reasons unions exist are things governments would never do to their employees. /s (in case it wasn’t obvious).
The problem isn’t unionization. The problem is how we treat qualified immunity. The problem is in the complicity of departments to protect each other – the union doesn’t decide not to check the new guy from next county to see why he got fired from there.
Do LE unions wield a lot of power? Some do. But a large part of it is a magic trick. Anything the brass can blame on the union to give cover for their own desire not to act means it looks like somebody cares about getting rid of bad players (“we’d love to fire him, but union rules…”), when half the time everybody’s in it together.
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A union’s job is to make sure their members’ rights are protected, not to defend their members’ actions regardless of any wrongdoing they may have committed. I am a proud member of a teachers’ union but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t automatically and enthusiastically jump to my defense if I assaulted a student or something.
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The union at my kids’ school would and in fact has.
I really hate this timeline, where I can’t even unequivocally support unions without caveats.
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It’s not obvious? Police are useful to those in power, while teachers are not. How’s a corrupt teacher going to help maintain your power?
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Enthusiastically? I doubt it. But until the moment you were convicted, I’m pretty certain they’d fight to ensure that you were not subject to any penalties until you were convicted.
And if you were not guilty of the assault, they’d be heroes.
It’s easy to imagine that we know who is guilty without a trial, but replacing judge and jury to decide who to defend is not a union’s job.
Being deadly serious here. Why would you expect to be able to unequivocally support any organization or individual? I might agree with people I consider absolute heroes 90% of the time, but feel they are mistaken about the other 10%. Groups and individuals I consider abhorrent I probably agree with 30% of the time.
And I’ll guarantee that any human being that considers me on the same wavelength will find lots of things about which I am wrong or unethical. Hell, I’m packed with unethical positions because I’m greedy.
I understand the desire to sort the world into right and wrong, after all, the human brain is always trying to sort us into tribes of the perfect and the evil. But we all know that doesn’t map particularly well to real life, leaving us vulnerable to ignoring the faults in our allies (and more importantly, ourselves!) and ignoring commonalities with those we oppose that might enable us to bring them closer to our views.
Thus I don’t think it’s particularly healthy to even want to find someone/something with whom we’re completely simpatico. It’s too close to a young person’s intense desire for the “perfect” romantic partner.
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treating cops like janitors means treating the public like scum that needs to be cleaned up
there are lots of people in our society who don’t bargain collectively
any “worker” with powers over others that can be abused needs to be easy to dismiss and replace
pointing guns at people is a privilege, not a right
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Don’t worry, the rest of the world doesn’t think that either.
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Some older people in post-communist countries still glorify the USA, but it is becoming increasingly rare.
Corporations look higher - not at the teachers, but the institutions and materials. Some gain their power by keeping people as ignorant as possible, taking over control of the curriculum, testing, and textbooks. Still, some parents and people in power need corrupt teachers to further their own agenda with under-performing, privileged students or support for shady spending activities.
In my state, the value of property is linked to the schools. A house in a “good district” sells for more than a similar one in a “troubled district.” Those rankings are tied to test scores and student achievements, and tax spending supposedly supports that. Cue the rampant cheating - supported by corrupt teachers who turn a blind eye. Also, the property tax system has been corrupt for a long time. When taxpayers push back against it the most popular tactic has been to blame the need to fund pensions - instead of the mismanagement, administration greed/salaries, and practice of raiding/underfunding pensions that form the trifecta for those who want to create budget shortfalls.
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I wish more people would learn this at an early age. The all-or-nothing attitude expressed by people (especially involving work or politics) never fails to astound me. Unfortunately, they tend to have just enough power to make sure we all get stuck with the consequences of their decisions (or bad reactions to reality).
Worse, that pursuit of perfection could cause them to wind up exhausted, depressed, or some combination of the two if nothing ever lives up to their fantasy. It might help to train children to hope for the best but prepare for the worst, because nothing is perfect and life is unpredictable. As Gilda Radner (as Roseanne Roseannadanna) used to say, “It’s always something.”
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You seem to be ascribing a rigid and entire worldview on me, based on one sentence in an online forum…while ignoring the sentence before it, which in comparison does not seem to bother you at all.
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My apologies. The sentence was mostly a convenient trigger for a screed which I think affects all of us (certainly myself) to one degree or another. I should have made it more general.
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Has anybody here read any of John Shirley’'s Eclipse series? Old school cyberpunk, and quite prescient. I genuinely am concerned about organized white power maniacs in charge of the surveillance state, military, and synthetic biology technology. Not so good.
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