Do Teacher Unions Deserve the Bashing?

Card check [a.k.a. the Employee Free Choice Act] is about power. Management has it, workers don't, and business doesn't want that to change. Consider the remarks made by Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott at an analyst meeting on Oct. 28, when he was asked about the possible coming of card check: "We like driving the car and we're not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us."
--Thomas Frank, The Wall Street Journal

The economic crisis, particularly the Big 3 meltdown, is offering the right what they see as a new opportunity to break unions and destroy any advances workers might have expected under a progressive government. They may be temporarily in disarray politically, but the right never forgets their primary mission --- protecting the wealthy. And they are very good at advancing that agenda whether in the majority or the minority. Under the Shock Doctrine, they have a perfect opportunity to end the union movement in America and they'll certainly do their best to take advantage of the moment.
--Digby, Hullaballoo

I tend to think that collective bargaining for employee rights, wages, and benefits is a good idea - so I'm sympathetic to unions.

Call me crazy: health insurance, a living wage, protection against being fired for having a high salary,  protection of academic freedom - these are the things that make schools better places to work than Wal-Marts.

I guess if you own a school, just like if you own a Wal-Mart, unions might suck. They make you spend money on your people instead of on remodelling your corner office, buying that private jet, expanding your franchise, whatever.

So that's my prejudice: unions protect the working class from the owning class.

But lots of folks out there seem to think the problem with the achievement gap isn't the poverty, the broken families, the guns and drugs in the streets, the minimum wage laws that make an honest job a path to poverty, the overcrowded classrooms and underfunded schools, the low-quality teachers attracted by the low-paying teacher salaries, the junk food and junk culture in the great middle-to-low socio-economic swath of America.

Nope. They seem to think it's all the fault of teacher unions.

Give me a school that's free of unions, and I'll give you a better school. That seems to be the sentiment of everyone from Steve Jobs to Bill Gates to the KIPP charters to Michelle Rhee to Joel Klein to Teach for America.

And I don't buy it.

Yesterday was weird. A commenter was making all sorts of fairly rude comments in several threads to several people. I butted in simply to urge a bit of civility - "attack the ideas, not the people" sort of thing. And lo, I get in a private email a message saying something to the effect of,

The union in my area refused to sign a contract that made them submit grades by computer instead of pencil and paper. Sometimes things aren't what they seem.

My response? Why are you bashing people in threads left and right, but being secretive about your views (and more interestingly, evidence) on unions? Let's talk openly about unions.

So school me: Am I wrong to think teacher unions deserve our support? Why or why not?

Extra credit for suggestions of how unions can/should be improved, how they are/are not scapegoated in the media, etc.

Image by tsweden