SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

It’s for the good of the unions

I am currently reading a very interesting book, The Problem of Union Power, and I will be reviewing it soon, but I thought I would share with you an interesting section (pp. 21-22) on why the teachers’ unions pretend that their activities are for the good of the kids - when that it patently false. If you doubt this, consider for a moment the unions’ determination to keep bad teachers in the classroom. The author is a Stanford professor of political science who specializes in political institutions.

“In the grander scheme of things, it should hardly come as a surprise that union leaders are special interest advocates and that the teachers unions are special interest organizations. The same is true of all unions. And in the private sector, the unions themselves are quite transparent about it. What’s to hide? The United Auto Workers pushes hard to secure good wages and benefits for employees on the auto assembly lines, and it doesn’t pretend to be concerned, first and foremost, with the welfare of the millions of consumers who buy cars. The Retail Clerks Union is concerned about the wages, benefits, and job protections of supermarket cashiers, not about the welfare of the consumers who buy food. Unions are special interest advocates. They know it, and everybody knows it.

“The teachers’ unions, however, are in the public sector. And in the public sector the rules of the game are different than in the private sector. The unions still have incentives to be special interest advocates for their members. But as organizations of employees who work for government, they are heavily dependent on the political process and thus on gaining democratic support for what they do and want. So to behave wisely in this institutional setting, they have incentives to convince the voting public that they are not self-interested, but in fact are fundamentally concerned about children and quality education - and that whatever they do to promote their own interests is actually good for children and schools too.

“In the realm of politics, this camouflaging of special interests is quite normal. The teachers unions have incentives to do it. But so do all political interest groups, whether their interests are in guns or pharmaceuticals or telecommunications or agriculture. The drill is a familiar one: they all claim that the policies they favor are in the public interest, and they all routinely provide arguments (backed by cherry-picked evidence) about how ordinary Americans will be better off as a result. This is simply how the game of politics is played. The reality is that these arguments often have little or no bearing on why they take the policy positions they do. They know where they stand from the outset, because their stands are dictated by their interests. The arguments they make are simply tools for achieving those interests, and are chosen to try to convince other people to take the same stands. By and large, they often say anything that works. So as any sophisticated observer knows, it is best not to take what interest group leaders say at face value. To understand politics, we need to focus on what these groups do. And the way to explain what they do is to pay close attention to their interests. 

“All of this applies across the board to the teachers unions. When they argue, for example, that charter schools should be opposed because of their poor academic performance, they may or not be saying something accurate about the actual performance of charter schools. The more important fact is that this is not why they oppose charter schools in the first place. They oppose them because charters give kids alternatives to the regular public schools - allowing them to leave and threatening the jobs of unionized teachers. In the democratic arena, it obviously wouldn’t go over well for them to simply say that. So their challenge, for this educational issue and all others, is to look around for arguments - any arguments - that might convince voters and potential allies to support their predetermined position. The themes, accordingly, are all about what’s good for children and schools. Their special interests are carefully hidden inside a public interest package. That’s how the game is played.”