While I'm no fan of teachers' unions or teachers being over-protected from consequences, it's a two way street here. Without a teacher's union, those same non-unionized teachers are extremely easy targets for abuse from their administration. It's extremely easy at a non-union school to vengefully pick apart a teacher's life- just take five minutes to make a phone call accusing the teacher of some sort of sexual impropriety or other impropriety in the classroom, and that teacher's life can be forever impacted.
With unions: teachers are less performance-monitored, harder to fire and more difficult to punish. "Tenure" and bureaucracy make teachers more able to be lazy, uninspired and useless in their profession.
Without unions: teachers are more underpaid, given inferior benefits, and have little or no defense against ridiculous accusations (that in this possession are very often life-altering). Poor pay, abusive treatment, bad benefits and a dangerous workplace make teachers more able to be burned out, overworked, uninspired and useless in their profession.
So... it goes both ways. Neither is that great. Let's keep that in mind.
With unions: teachers are less performance-monitored, harder to fire and more difficult to punish. "Tenure" and bureaucracy make teachers more able to be lazy, uninspired and useless in their profession.
Without unions: teachers are more underpaid, given inferior benefits, and have little or no defense against ridiculous accusations (that in this possession are very often life-altering). Poor pay, abusive treatment, bad benefits and a dangerous workplace make teachers more able to be burned out, overworked, uninspired and useless in their profession.
So... it goes both ways. Neither is that great. Let's keep that in mind.