Unions are reasonably good at protecting workers whose jobs involve the daily risk of having molten steel dropped on them or getting arm chewed off in a machine. However, the value of a union for government workers, especially professionals like teachers, is a little harder to define.
This year's strike-season seems to have passed without any major labor disruptions impacting DuPage school districts, but that outcome can never be taken for granted. The presence of collective bargaining agreements add an administrative burden that limit each school's options in adapting to student needs.
Districts do not have any room to decide whether to enter into a contract. Illinois law requires them to negotiate a union contract with their teachers. But do educators really need the same kind of collective bargaining protections that were developed for 19th Century factory workers?
Teachers are doing the single most important job in local government and they ought to make good money for it. At any wage, faced with a choice between managing a bunch of Kindergarteners and picking up roadkill off the highway, well...gimme that bag and back the truck over here. I'm not going in that classroom.
Most DuPage County districts pay their teachers well. More power to them.
How much credit can the union claim for the strong relative compensation DuPage teachers enjoy? Hard to say.
But that union contract also comes with terms that limit schools' ability to make changes to curriculum, adapt to classroom management needs, or to deal with rare teacher who isn't pulling their weight. Worst of all, if a district wants to innovate to better assess teacher performance and reward excellence, that's a dead-stop.
In coming years, many DuPage districts locked into contracts in which teachers are seeing several percentage points of raises each year are going to face some stark decisions. Raises that are coming at twice the rate of inflation cannot be sustained, especially when personnel are overwhelmingly the largest chunk of the budget.
Even if the money could be found, justification may be hard to come by in an environment with 10% unemployment, plummeting home values, and taxpayers who are seeing their wages drop.
Do a quick Google search and find your district's teacher contract. It's interesting reading. You can find an example from Elmhurst, here.
This would be an excellent moment for Springfield to loosen union controls and give districts more freedom to innovate.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Tags: dupage, dupage county, education, local politics, politics, schools, teacher unions, teachers, unions
