{"id":278368,"date":"2010-02-04T11:20:02","date_gmt":"2010-02-04T16:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.35328"},"modified":"2010-02-04T12:05:29","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T17:05:29","slug":"how-unions-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/278368","title":{"rendered":"How Unions Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a valiant attempt to defuse the ideological conflicts between the reformist and traditionalist wings of the liberal education wonketariat, Matthew Yglesias<\/a> argues that this disagreement is not not ideological at all.  Rather, it is an artifact of past decisions about educational structure:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Take, for example, the hot issue of teacher compensation. The
\ntraditionalist view is that teachers should get paid more for having
\nmore years of experience and also for having more degrees. The reform
\nview is that teachers should get paid more for having demonstrated
\nefficacy in raising student test scores. This is an important<\/em> debate, but I think it’s really not an ideological debate at all<\/em>.
\nI think the only reason it’s taken on an ideological air is that unions
\nhave a view on the matter and people do have ideological opinions about unions in general<\/em>.
\nBut if we found a place where for decades teachers had been paid based
\non demonstrated efficacy in raising student test scores, then veteran
\nteachers and union leaders would probably be people who liked that
\nsystem and didn’t want to change to a degree-based system. Because
\nunions are controversial, this would take on a certain left-right
\nideological atmosphere but it’s all very contingent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This
\nis a very interesting thesis, but ultimately I think it’s wrong.  There
\nis a reason that unions kill merit pay, and it’s not because they just
\nhappened to solidify in an era when merit pay was out of fashion.<\/p>\n

To
\nstate the obvious, unions negotiate ironclad contracts to cover dozens,
\nhundreds, or thousands of workers.  Once they take effect, those
\ncontracts are rarely renegotiated, and they apply to every single
\nworker no matter what the situation.  So unions are always going to be
\nlooking for the simplest, least subjective metrics by which to measure
\ntheir members.  Furthermore, they will be looking for metrics which are
\nnot under the control of the other side.  The school board cannot
\nchange how many years you have in service, or whether or not you have a
\ndegree.  But it can change the curriculum, or the tests.<\/p>\n

Obviously,
\npeople who are not in unions write employment contracts, which are
\nsimilarly hard to write.  But non-union employment contracts operate in
\nan environment where both sides often hope to continue the relationship
\nbeyond the initial term.  This offers quite a bit of good-faith
\nflexibility, because people who are too rigid about the exact letter of
\ntheir contracts are apt to find that their contract isn’t renewed. 
\nEven in contracts with a very definite term, there are reputational
\nconsiderations.  That’s just not how unions operate, because the union
\ncan’t be fired by the employer.  When the contract expires, you’re
\ngoing to negotiate another contract.  The result is that people in
\nnon-union employment contracts can tolerate quite a bit more ambiguity
\non both sides than people in a collective bargaining situation.<\/p>\n

The
\nunhappy corollary of this is that the metrics will not only tend
\ntowards simplicity and ease of measurement; they will also tend to
\nreward mediocrity.  Again, this is not an accident of history.  A
\ncollective bargaining unit run by a “majority rules” system is always
\ngoing to look for a system that rewards the median or modal worker, not
\nthe best.<\/p>\n

A merit pay system can work in one of two ways.  It
\ncan benchmark teachers against the average, and reward the people who
\nachieve the most improvement. Or it can set some minimum standard and
\ngive a bonus to any teacher who bests that standard.  (You could set
\nthree tiers, or what have you, but the concept is basically the same).<\/p>\n

In
\nmy opinion, the first system is probably going to best maximize
\nproductivity (though this is an interesting discussion for another blog
\npost).  But it would never pass a union vote, because the majority of
\nteachers wouldn’t benefit from it, and those who did would have to work
\nharder.  The second system might pass.  But the union would make heroic
\nefforts to water down the benchmarks until the majority of their
\nmembers were receiving at least some “bonus” pay.<\/p>\n

But compare either system to what now exists in our nation’s schools.  Every single teache<\/i>r can stay on for years unless they do something direly wrong.  Every single teacher<\/i>
\ncan get a useless education degree, which basically requires a pulse. 
\nThey have a system that spreads benefits absolutely evenly among all
\ntheir members.  <\/p>\n

How would any alternative gather majority
\nsupport from the union members?  I mean, you can add on resistance to
\nchange, which I think is significant.  But even if they were picking a
\nnew system from scratch, the seniority + degrees system is clearly
\ngoing to satisfy many more members than either of the merit pay
\nalternatives.  It would probably be the majority choice no matter
\nwhat.  And of course, over time, teacher’s unions select for the sort
\nof people who prefer this arrangement to competitive merit pay for one
\nreason or another<\/p>\n

Unions
\nare set up to minimize frictions and maximize benefits for the bottom
\n55%.  That’s how they work everywhere–in schools, and out.  That’s how they have to work<\/i>.  No amount of cajoling, no number of white papers, is going to change that.

\n

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\n\"\"<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a valiant attempt to defuse the ideological conflicts between the reformist and traditionalist wings of the liberal education wonketariat, Matthew Yglesias argues that this disagreement is not not ideological at all.  Rather, it is an artifact of past decisions about educational structure: Take, for example, the hot issue of teacher compensation. The traditionalist view […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-278368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}