Also, it’s going to be a very long and slow process, but the teachers’ union and public education are on the same path as manufacturing jobs in this country.

Years ago, my best friend worked at Kroger foods. He told the story of a co-worker who was caught stealing and eating a sandwich. They tried to fire him, but he ended up keeping his job because the union supported him.

In the teachers union, your pay is not based on competence, attitude, effectiveness, but on how long you’ve taught.

Your money is taken from you and given to the political candidate of their choice, regardless of your wishes and/or political leanings.

The unions have done it to themselves.

On the plus side, they help with things like safety in the workplace, wages and (sometimes) the fair treatment of their workers. I don’t think that most employers would mistreat their workers if not checked, but I think there would be alot of them. Before the argument of “Well, you could just change jobs” comes up, not all of us are able to just keep changing jobs because of unfairness or abuse issues. Many people can do that, but I’m not one of them, nor are most of the people I know.

On the negative side, unions seem to get corrupted easily. They start to look after their own backsides (high salaries, perks, etc) instead of the employees’. Some of those union execs act as if the employees are weapons to use against the employer.
Another thing is that a union employee is not easy to get rid of. You need a long paperwork trail of malfeasance and you’d still need to fight the union tooth and nail.
Finally, unions seem to use those millions of dollars of union fees as their own personal piggybank, especially when it comes to politics. They tend to spend the money on politicians who will benefit THEM and not necessarily their union members.

Unions are like keeping vicious dogs. They may be necessary in bad neighborhoods, but they need to be restrained.