Teacher’s Pest

No 2nd grade teacher needs tenure.

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Philip K. Howard, a prolific author and advocate for simplifying American government, joins the Remnant for the first time to discuss his new book, Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions. The resulting conversation plays out like a Remnant greatest hits, offering insights on subjects as well-trodden as institutions, our dysfunctional parties, and the banging of spoons on high chairs. Come for some fiendishly nerdy ramblings on the nature of public sector unions, but stay for some hopeful thoughts on how America’s legal and legislative systems could be improved. 

Show Notes:

– Philip’s website

– Philip’s new book, Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions

– Philip previews the book in National Review…

– …and in Reason

– Rachel Maddow’s “Lean Forward” ad

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Comments (31)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Ethan Cordray

    I'm speaking from the perspective of someone in a state (Missouri) that doesn't seem to have systematic problems with excessively-powerful public-sector unions. When I worked for the state government, and in publicly-funded higher education, I was never represented by a union.

    However, in both of those situations -- especially working in higher ed -- I could really see the appeal of forming a union. There were many problems with the way administrators treated employees, and loads of dysfunctional, morale-destroying, and arguably exploitative labor practices. So I'd like to "steel-man" the case for public-sector unions a bit.

    I get Jonah's argument that union protection is more obviously helpful in physically dangerous labor-intensive industries like mining. But frankly, there's no organization -- public or private -- in which bosses won't sometimes exploit their workers if they have the power to do so.

    The general principle of a labor union, public or private, is to equalize the power relationship between between employers and employees. Employers (aka management) who directly control wage levels, job assignments, and other budget functions, naturally have more concentrated bargaining power than individual employees. While free market operations on the labor-market side impose natural limits on how much an employer can get away with exploiting this imbalance (to the extent that free-market conditions exist -- labor is in reality much less fungible than it is often imagined to be in economic theory), the imbalance remains.

    Collective bargaining, in principle, equalizes this imbalance by effectively incorporating individual employees into a single firm. This firm essentially pools the labor resources of its constituent members into a single package, and then sells that package as a whole to the firm that needs that labor.

    The result of this equalization should be *greater* market efficiency, not lesser. The labor-buying firm can reduce its transaction costs by having a reliable pool of labor under predicable pre-negotiated contractual terms. And the unionized employees can achieve a correct market-equilbrium compensation rate that reflects the real productive value of their labor.

    Of course there are a lot of ways that this can go wrong in practice. Unions, being firms, can develop their own internal exploitative managerial class that pursues its own self-interests at the expense of its "shareholders" (i.e. members). Unions can collude with their partnered companies. Unions can, like any firm, seek regulatory capture to entrench their power and stifle competition.

    This, it seems to me, is the true problem with the coastal and municipal public-sector unions that this episode was about. These unions have achieved significant degrees of regulatory capture, and thus have no competition and no check on their monopoly power as labor-suppliers. As Mr. Howard explained, they often have the power to hire their own bosses within the public bureaucracy, and to control their own state oversight by dominating the electoral process. These are huge problems, and they certainly have caused major dysfunctions in the places where this has happened.

    But *neither* of these problems is an *inherent* consequence of the existence of public-sector unions. It is entirely possible to have a unionized public-sector workforce, but to avoid the degeneration into regulatory capture.

    Now, I'm certainly open to the argument that public-sector unions are uniquely well-positioned to achieve regulatory capture, compared to private-sector unions. But this still does not mean that they inevitably cause problems. It simply means that we should take special regulatory care to prevent this danger.

    To sum up: if we understand the real economic nature of unions -- that they are firms for selling labor, with the same economic incentives as all firms) -- then we can appreciate their contribution to market efficiency in the sale of labor. And if we do that, we can better understand how to address the specific risks of excessive public-sector union power, without condemning public-sector unions in total as a bad thing.

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  2. Francislyo

    I guess our experiences are very different. Where I live, tenured teachers have a very robust work ethic and overwhelmingly work very hard. The job is tough - we lose our (urban) teachers at a high rate. Post-Covid student behavior is even worse than previously.

    The police officers in my city are overwhelmingly dedicated and courteous. They do not seem to have a blue wall of silence.

    I think we can all agree that we should oppose reinstating a teacher after he serves time for selling cocaine. So fix the excesses. But if we seize on such straw men to denigrate and fail to protect our teachers and police officers, why would these overwhelmingly great people want to work for us?

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    Mister D

    If you think a second grade teacher doesn't need tenure, you haven't met many school administrators.

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    1. Aaron H Frank

      I've met administrators and teachers and even teachers at ed schools.

      Any employee can be pilloried and tormented by an unfair boss or an unfair system. That is called life. It can and does happen all the time.

      Why should second grade teachers be immune from that (would that we all could be).

      Is there a way to protect good second grade teachers without making bad second grade teachers immune to disciplinary action?

      We have a health teacher in our system who refuses to acknowledge the existence of h pylori when teaching her class about ulcers because the film strip she has always used is 50 years old (yes it is a film strip) and woefully out of date.

      Most of our teachers are good, caring, and hardworking.

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    George.Skinner

    One problem with public sector unions that didn't get touched on was the flawed incentive structure for politicians negotiating with unions. Politicians often put undue focus on winning the next election. Union unrest threatens to make voters unhappy, which threatens their ability to win the next election. So, why not just give the unions what they want, keep them happy, and kick problems forward for somebody else to deal with?

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    Tracie

    I enjoyed the origin story per public sector unions, and basically agree that they've become machines.

    However, the author pointed out that Chicago mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson is funded by the CTU (teacher's union) but failed to mention that his competitor - Paul Vallas - is backed by the FOP (police union.)

    I'm a Chicago voter who may have voted for a non-union candidate had one been available. Vallas also has financial backing from the business community, and Lakefront property owners in general, so why he needed the FOP's endorsement as well is unclear to me. I doubt the FOP would have *ever* endorsed the outgoing Mayor Lori Lightfoot or Johnson, so Vallas would have done fine without that endorsement - which tainted him in my view. (I basically threw away my vote to a minor candidate named Kam Buckner.)

    A voter turnout map shows that it was highest at the periphery of the city, where city workers tend to live.

    https://blockclubchicago.org/2023/03/01/how-could-a-vallas-johnson-runoff-end-did-your-ward-show-up-to-vote-7-maps-charts-to-help-us-understand-the-election/

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    Perry Clark

    PKH getting fired may have been, for him, in at least one sense, a “liberating” event. It “allowed” him to pursue other avenues of self-actualization, and take chances in pursuit of personal happiness he wouldn’t have taken otherwise, etc., at least by his own reporting.

    But he seems to assume that his experience is, in all the important ways, typical of what most people did, do, or will experience when they’re fired, and this simply isn’t the case.

    It’s fair to say, I think, that the “liberation” of being fired is a sensation dependent upon realizing that one is, for at least some real and significant period of time after the firing, financially secure, that one’s family isn’t unduly stressed or threatened, etc.

    Hey, if I’m gonna get a golden parachute (or I at least now have some other precious-metal passive anti-gravity device), go ahead and fire me. I’ll be free to do all sorts of things BECAUSE I don’t have to worry about losing my home, suffering family discord, becoming destitute, having no health insurance, etc., etc., etc.

    But, if for the last seventeen years I’ve been working full-time and then some to pay the mortgage, clothe the kids, feed the lot of us, and pay for stuff that health insurance and our dental plan (ha!—what a joke THAT is!) don’t or won’t, and occasionally try to save a little for a vacation or retirement, and if I lose my job, our health insurance is also gone (after a few months of transition coverage at best), etc., don’t fire me. Please. I don’t want that kind of liberation.

    Need we remind Mr. Howard of Maslow’s heirarchy of needs? Which starts at the foundational level with what are sometimes called ‘physiological needs’—food, water, clothing, shelter; followed then by safety. Upon attaining these—let’s call ‘em basic needs—one’s focus turns to belonging and love. These are generally found within and from the family and close friends. Any time an individual finds these basic needs and needs for belonging and love are threatened—by job loss or anything else—that person is pushed back down the pyramid of needs. Liberation just ain’t in it.

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    KP

    An interesting example that neither of you mentioned was Arkansas’s new law boosting teacher pay while removing certain employment guarantees.

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      Ethan Cordray

      They probably didn't mention it because they're both East Coast guys, and they tend to forget that Arkansas is a real place.

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        KP

        Yeah. We’re used to it.

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    WorkDog

    The statement from the guest that talks about the "blue wall," how police are trained to not intervene regarding other officers, is false. Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement training - training where officers are being trained to intervene with other officers - is being taught to some of the largest agencies in America. As far as zero accountability goes, tell it to all the officers I know that have been fired or indicted.

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    Vc1311218

    I worked in the private sector in a management position for 15 years. I was anti-union.Then I accepted a position as an education assistant in an Ohio public school which is still a public union state w/collective bargaining. Becoming a union worker was quite a change for me. Eventually, I took on a leadership position in my local union because it is the only way I can currently influence basic parameters of my employment. Also–and I think my members would tell you this–I am a middle of the road, common sense leader. I have–much to dismay of some of my members–shut down frivolous grievances. But, I have championed and won some important victories. I am a walking contradiction.

    So, I agree with many of the points made in this podcast. And, I believe that the union political machine is strong in many areas. But, NY, NJ, Chicago–those are union strongholds; they aren’t necessarily what is happening nationwide.

    Jonah makes the distinction that a union is more valid if there is danger on the job. I would submit that working in the schools is a very dangerous job these days. Parents don’t believe their children ever do anything wrong. They threaten lawsuits at every turn. Like today’s incident in Denver, we have had students whose safety plan is to be patted down each day. There is no accountability for students because parents/voters will not allow it. The fear of a school shooting is an underlying stress that permeates our jobs. We are trained in police and military counter tactics. We are working with students who have family lives that are often deeply dysfunctional. Sprinkle in social media, societal changes, the after effects of COVID lockdowns–and everyone in a school system–not just teachers–are operating as amateur psychologists/social workers without the training, let alone the compensation. Most of my union does not get full time health benefits because the District specifically sets hours just under the minimum mark. We grieved this; we lost.

    My point? While there are many valid problems with public sector unions, there are valid reasons they exist. Nor are they all as powerful as portrayed in this podcast. I seriously laughed out loud at some points of the podcast.

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      Ethan Cordray

      Great point. I live in a state, Missouri, with very little public-sector union power. This whole discussion seems like it's basically a regional problem for large coastal centers. And it certainly may be a big problem there! But it's not really a serious problem around here.

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    2. Meg E

      I totally agree. Students are trying to bait us into discussing controversial issues and then recording us. I don’t understand how in this period of hyperpolarization how tenure for teachers is not necessary. Most of us are working very hard. There will always be people who slack off no matter what the job and whether there is tenure or not.

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    3. Ackemma1

      I know a teacher who had her head slammed into the floor by a student.

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    Ben Connelly

    I just read The Death of Common Sense back in the fall! Really enjoyed it. I was wondering exactly where Philip fell on the political spectrum and this helped me answer that question. I was even sort of worried he’d gone towards the New Right. A lot of them would do well to read his book based on the way they talk about rights and the common good etc.

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