I’m stickin’ with the union.

Last Saturday, I was at the gym, working off some holiday cheer on an elliptical machine.  My particular personal torture device was positioned right in front of a large-screen TV which was – sadly – tuned to the misnomered Fox News Channel.  Every Saturday, this channel apparently features a business and financial shout fest “round table” show, where a panel of supposed “experts”  (which includes a professional wrestler in a suit; yes, a real WWE “superstar”) debate the economic issues of the day.

So, anyway, I’m ellipticaling away, listening to the “workout mix” on my iPod, and, I kid you not, just a minute or so after listening to the Dropkick Murphys’ version of the old union standard “Which Side Are You On?”, the headline on the story on the TV in front of me says, in typical hyperbolic, ungrammatical Faux News fashion, “Expel Teachers’ Unions?”

The debate on this issue focused on a recent Rasmussen poll which asked the following questions (with reported results):

#1: Should the Secretary of Education be an advocate for teachers or an advocate for students?

19%  Teachers

66%  Students

15%  Not sure

[Notice: no option to answer "both." Curious, that, no?]

#2: How important are social factors outside of school in determining a student’s performance in school – very important, somewhat important, not very important, not important at all?

62%  Very important  [Duh.]

29%  Somewhat important

6%  Not very important  [You're kidding, right?]

1%  Not important at all  [Pfft]

1% Not sure

#3: Who is more important to a student’s success in school – parents or teachers?

72%  Parents

20%  Teachers

8%  Not sure

[Again notice: No option for the most obvious answer, "both."]

#4: Are teachers’ unions more interested in the quality of education or in protecting their members’ jobs?

23%  Quality of education

66%  Protecting their members’ jobs

12%  Not sure

[Again.  Notice the pattern here?  Yeah.  Thought so.]

#5: Are public school teachers paid too much, too little, or just about the right amount?

8%  Too much  [And when do I get to vote on YOUR salary?]

55%  Too little  [Thanks for that.]

33%  About the right amount  [Compared to whom, exactly?]

5%  Not sure

Note: Margin of sampling error, +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. **

Of particular interest to the crew of (entirely, ‘natch) conservative voices on this particular program was the response to question #4: Are teachers’ unions more interested in the quality of education or in protecting their members’ jobs?

So allow me to fill in the blanks here.

First off, that question is a classic example of a push poll.  There’s an agenda behind the question, and so the question is formed with an inherent bias so as to guarantee the desired outcome.  The wording of the question is obviously skewed.  It’s not a valid objective question from the get-go.

But one still wonders where this is coming from.  Don’t wonder too hard.  It should be obvious.

In case you haven’t noticed, the American Right has once again declared war on organized labor.

And they’ve always been at war with public education.  So by attacking teachers’ unions, they get a two-fer.

Teachers’ unions ARE about the quality of education which is provided to the students in America’s public schools.  Protecting our members is all about a concern for the quality of education that we can provide for our students.  Most workplace issues for teachers directly or indirectly effect the lives of their students.  That’s just common sense.  And then there’s this: Teachers’ unions, for the uneducated, are made up of teachers.  Contrary to the apparent beliefs of many of those who expound upon this subject without knowing what they are talking about, the overwhelming majority of people who occupy leadership positions in teachers’ unions do so at the local level, which means they are also full-time educational professionals.  Their union work is part-time stuff.  Which means they spend most of their waking time working on teaching your kids.

Well, okay, “your kids” is a generalization.  The biggest, loudest, most-listened-to critics of public education in America (”gov’ment schools”) are folks like Rush Limbaugh (who has no children), Sean Hannity (whose kids attend private school), Glenn Beck (whose wife apparently homeschools their offspring), and politicians who really don’t speak from experience, only from an ideological position which not only despises public education on principle but which also loathes organized labor.

Teachers unionize for lots of reasons, too many to list here, now.  Teaching in America began as a profession which once was dominated by unmarried females, so they are traditionally underpaid and institutionally abused, compared to other professions (although we are making big strides in terms of catching up).  And yes, we are professionals.  We are licensed by the states, and we must maintain our licenses, thanks in part to NCLB, just as lawyers and physicians and accountants and other professionals have to.  Unlike those folks, however, we are also public employees, and like other public employees - like police officers and fire fighters and other service professionals – we have the right to organize and collectively bargain.

We do this because we can, and because we must, to protect our jobs.

Folks who don’t like this can make this system go away by paying us much, much more than we make now and by doing other things to protect our job security. 

If you don’t want that, don’t begrudge us our unions.

So why do we teachers need a union?  Okay, here’s an example.  This is the kind of stuff I deal with every day as a union official.  This is strictly a hypothetical example, mind you:

A young teacher (let’s call her Ms. Frizzle) enters her classroom at 7:00 am every day, and by 9:00 am, every day, like clockwork, she has a raging headache.  The pain continues until about 6:00 pm each day, after she’s been home for, say, an hour, when the headache goes away by itself.  On weekends, over breaks, and during the summer, she doesn’t have this problem.  Ms. Frizzle has been to see her physician, who reports nothing unusual in terms of her health.  The doc recommends, however, that her classroom be checked for mold, because this is a common problem in public buildings and her symptoms indicate that there might be mold in there someplace.  She does the google and finds reliable information to document this, which she prints out and takes to school to show to her supervisor, the building principal. 

Ms. Frizzle meets with her principal and asks him about maybe checking into it.  The principal says that this headache stuff is “all in her head,” and he chuckles at his own joke.  Besides, he says, the building was inspected for mold the previous summer and checked out clean.  He then says to the teacher that maybe she’s just too stressed out, and wonders aloud about her competency as a teacher.  Maybe she just can’t handle “today’s kids,” he says.   And is everything okay at home, he asks?

Ms. Frizzle, who has just recently received her tenure,  now fears for her job.  But she also remembers hearing that her local teachers’ union formed a health and safety committee the previous year to look into similar complaints in other buildings.  (They have a right to do that – you can look it up.)  She asks her building rep about that.  The building rep tells her to document her symptoms for the next two weeks.  The rep also asks teachers in the same hallways as Ms. Frizzle about headaches.  Turns out the teachers whose classrooms are directly adjacent to Ms. Frizzle’s room are having similar problems.  One has even been to a neurologist.  They, too, start documenting their issues.

(Understand that a not-so-hypothetical aspect of this scenario would be that if Ms. Frizzle was NOT tenured, she would never think of reporting this problem to her supervisor.  Until they receive tenure, public school teachers in New Jersey can be fired on the whim of a principal or administrator.  Tenure takes three years to earn, in the same district.  Another reason we need our union.)

The building rep takes the complaint to the union’s leadership.  Two weeks later, after collecting all the evidence, the grievance chair calls the building principal. The principal resists, claiming the same stuff he laid out for Ms. Frizzle (sans the personal comments, which the grievance chair keeps in his back pocket for future reference…).  The grievance chair requests a room inspection with the help of the head custodian for the building.  The principal balks.  The grievance chair says he knows that employees have a right to ask for this: does the principal know that?  The principal says his custodians are too busy.  The grievance chair says, fine.  There will be a grievance on the principal’s desk within 24 hours.  If the principal rejects the grievance, it will be taken to the superintendent and then to the local school board.  And if that doesn’t work to get some action, a call will be made to the office of PEOSH, New Jersey’s state version of OSHA for public employees.  He tells the principal that those folks will send their  inspectors in upon request.  And he – the principal – can’t keep them out.

Next morning, bright and early, a crew of custodians and folks from the Buildings and Grounds section of the district administration are in all three classrooms, at the request of the principal, pulling down ceiling tiles and poking around in the classroom heating systems and duct work. 

And guess what they find?  C’mon, guess.

Yeah.  Loads of the stuff.  And the KIDS were breathing in in, too.  EVERY DAY.  Turns out the nurse has documentation as to the number of kids from these three rooms who have been complaining about headaches and nausea and sinus issues for over a year.  To get those complaints, the kids had to be sent to the nurse’s office. 

Which meant they missed class.  Class time.  Instruction.

LEARNING.

And Ms. Frizzle is protected in her role as whistle-blower.  She gets her health back and can now spend all her time teaching her kids.  Pain-free.

Because she’s in the union.

So, class, the correct answer to #4 is BOTH.  Because they amount to the same thing.

Any other questions, Ramussen folks? 

Because I have a few for you.

(**: I’ll leave out the fact that I had to edit out three mechanical errors in the quoted sentences you see here.  The over-paid teacher in me couldn’t resist.)