What Teachers' Unions Stand For

It should be clear.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

Unions represent their members. It’s that simple. Ask whose interests an air traffic controllers’ union serves, and a person will say, “Air traffic controllers.” Same with dockworkers and longshoremen. The purpose of these unions is to advocate for their members. They work to increase pay, working conditions, and benefits. And often they do so even if it makes the world worse for the rest of us. Yet, many Americans have their head in the sand when it comes to teachers’ unions. Smart, intelligent people will insist that teachers’ unions have not teacher’s interests at heart, but the interests of students.

This is absurd.

Teachers’ unions are absolutely, positively, not putting the well-being or welfare of their students first. They are interested in the welfare of teachers. And that’s not a bad thing. Power to teachers for banding together and bargaining collectively to increase their lot in life. Do you think that prison guard unions have the interests of inmates at heart? Of course not! Prison guard unions put the interests of prison guards first. As they should. That’s what the union is for. Just as we would expect a union to not be interested in bettering the lives of management or administration, one should not be fooled into thinking a union is focused on bettering the lives of an organization’s customers.

Yet with teachers’ unions, people leave critical thinking behind them. Most Americans, myself included, have fond memories of their favorite teachers throughout their bucolic childhoods. It makes sense to believe that since our favorite teachers obviously care about their students, the teachers’ unions must as well. Again, to borrow from the prison guard analogy, the same parallel holds. From my experiences teaching in a maximum security prison, I can confirm that some prison guards are very invested in the well-being of the inmates under their supervision. These guards seek to create a safe environment for inmates, an environment that puts the incarcerated in the best position to be law-abiding and successful citizens after release. Other guards are there counting the days to their retirement and couldn’t care less about those serving time. The same spectrum exists for teachers. Some are invested in their students. Others are collecting a paycheck. Do not mistake the intentions of the individuals who are devoted to their craft for the intentions of organized labor. That is folly.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in Chicago. The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has long been one of the most powerful unions in the country. Their public relations machine should be studied by students at the best business schools in the country. It excels. For years, the CTU has successfully convinced the public that if only more resources were funneled to teachers, schools would improve. They have convinced the public that they have students’ interests at heart. The facts tell a different story.

The litany of failures of the CTU is legion. First, look at the results given the inputs. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has had money shoveled into its insatiable maw for decades. Today, the district receives around $30,000 per student, far higher than the national average and on par with many private universities. The results from all that money are dismal. A depressing 75 percent of students failed to meet or exceed state reading standards during the 2022-2023 school year. Worse yet, an appalling 82 percent failed to meet or exceed math standards. That is nearly five in six students! Not to be dissuaded, however, as the CTU president has made clear that these standardized tests are “rooted in white supremacy”. My mistake. I now understand that an organization with a $10 billion budget (that’s right, billions with a “b”) should not face any accountability whatsoever, as accountability is a form of racism. This is the same union president, by the way, that fought against school choice while sending her own child to a private school. I don’t know about you, but if I found out the head of an airline mechanics’ union insisted their kid took the train, I would begin to have doubts about flying.

Beyond those failings, the rest of their demands are equal parts quixotic and screw-you. Despite the appalling performance of their students, the union is currently asking for a 9 percent raise. This is on top of their incredibly generous pensions and $95,000 average salary, far higher than the $72,000 median income for a household in the city. This is particularly galling given that Chicago schools have a chronic absenteeism rate, where to be chronically absent means to miss at least 10 of the roughly 180 days of the school year, of 41 percent. It isn’t 41 percent of the students who are chronically absent, it’s 41 percent of the teachers. Hard to expect teachers to be able to achieve much when they are missing work left and right. Hard to expect students to show up when even their teachers aren’t. Even the normally pro-union Chicago Tribune finally said enough is enough to that.

At times the CTU seems hell-bent on fulfilling the caricature of a union equivalent of an Ebenezer Scrooge (the total lack of such a character in popular culture says a lot in itself). Frederick Douglass Academy High School on Chicago’s southside used to have 500 students. Now it has 34. Yet, closing the school would be, again in the words of the CTU president, “destructive and racist”. If there was ever a case to close down a school, being over 90 percent empty would seem to be an easy call. Yet the CTU insists that schools that are failing, empty, or both, must stay open, regardless of their obsolescence.

On top of all that, to pay for their 10 billion dollars, Brandon Johnson, the current mayor of Chicago and former CTU lobbyist (talk about putting the fox in charge of the henhouse), wants to pay for the CPS's current budget deficit by taking out a high-interest loan. This was too much for the education board, which resigned en masse when told of the plan. This was an education board, by the way, that was appointed by the same mayor. Of course, why wouldn’t Mayor Johnson want to give the teacher’s union everything they want? That very union was the largest contributor to his election campaign, donating an astonishing $5.7 million. Along with showing what the union’s true interests are (do you think students benefit from giving a king's ransom to a politician?), this is legalized corruption. The union gets someone elected, and he responds by giving the members of the union anything they ask for. Then the union donates more money to the mayor. And around and around we go.

This is scandal on top of scandal on top of scandal.

A union president who sends her own son to a private school. A union that claims in 2020 it’s racist to keep full schools open but in 2024 it’s racist to shut down empty ones. A union that donated millions to a single politician. Students who are failing to learn much of anything. Teachers missing school so often that Tom Sawyer would blush. Through all this, the union asks for more. This is not a group that is interested in serving its community. This is a group that is serving its members.

To be fair, the CTU is known for being one of the more aggressive teachers’ unions. Their demands are the result of decades of perhaps too much success. Yet it is important to note that while the CTU is extreme, they share the same principal goal as any other teachers’ union: to advocate for teachers. And why should it be otherwise? It’s right there in the name.