Nobody ever sees what the union has done to help, because it then isn't a fight and it isn't news.
I've voted for a contract that cuts my salary every year for the last four years because the economy sucks. The teachers teach more kids, my caseload goes up, we all work more hours and take on more responsibilities with less and less supports and often buy our own supplies. All that despite the narrative of how teachers are lazy SOBs who are sucking the soul out of students. And there are no Union Bosses, the people who run the union are the same people who teach the kids. I've personally known the president of my local union for 5 of the last six years because I worked with them or their spouse and the current union president is an elementary school teacher and they've all taught while doing their union job mostly in their "off" hours. And we don't get "days off.". We get "days we don't get paid for and can't work during if we wanted to." "Summer Vacation" is something the kids get. We get laid off for the summer.
What my union gets me right now is not-fired because some parent has their hair on fire because I am not going to move their precious darling to the honors history class because he wasn't high enough of the recommendation list to get a seat on his own merits. It gets one of my coworkers not-fired because our admin doesn't like her personally and another not-fired because she got a horrible infection that nearly killed her and did force her to miss 6 weeks of school.
And frankly the narrative about the terrible horrible selfish public unions run by Union Bosses is pretty much a load of crap. Our contracts are locally negotiated between the local union and the local administrators and the state and national bodies are made up of the local union members as well.
People have somehow gotten the idea that money magically appears from the ether to pay for stuff. I have bad news, if people want services, they have to pay for them and the money doesn't come from the ether, it comes from their pockets and it goes to people who are providing those services. And I'm a highly educated person who spent years of my life learning the complex skills and experience required to do my job, forgive me if I think I should be paid enough to afford to buy a not very large house and maintain my car properly.
no subject
I've voted for a contract that cuts my salary every year for the last four years because the economy sucks. The teachers teach more kids, my caseload goes up, we all work more hours and take on more responsibilities with less and less supports and often buy our own supplies. All that despite the narrative of how teachers are lazy SOBs who are sucking the soul out of students. And there are no Union Bosses, the people who run the union are the same people who teach the kids. I've personally known the president of my local union for 5 of the last six years because I worked with them or their spouse and the current union president is an elementary school teacher and they've all taught while doing their union job mostly in their "off" hours. And we don't get "days off.". We get "days we don't get paid for and can't work during if we wanted to." "Summer Vacation" is something the kids get. We get laid off for the summer.
What my union gets me right now is not-fired because some parent has their hair on fire because I am not going to move their precious darling to the honors history class because he wasn't high enough of the recommendation list to get a seat on his own merits. It gets one of my coworkers not-fired because our admin doesn't like her personally and another not-fired because she got a horrible infection that nearly killed her and did force her to miss 6 weeks of school.
And frankly the narrative about the terrible horrible selfish public unions run by Union Bosses is pretty much a load of crap. Our contracts are locally negotiated between the local union and the local administrators and the state and national bodies are made up of the local union members as well.
People have somehow gotten the idea that money magically appears from the ether to pay for stuff. I have bad news, if people want services, they have to pay for them and the money doesn't come from the ether, it comes from their pockets and it goes to people who are providing those services. And I'm a highly educated person who spent years of my life learning the complex skills and experience required to do my job, forgive me if I think I should be paid enough to afford to buy a not very large house and maintain my car properly.