Comment by croutonwagon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by croutonwagon | Hacker News Reader

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My wife is a member of a non-striking teachers union..

I've always wondered what their ultimate collective bargaining power is if the single thing that grants them their leverage (to strike) is off the table from day 1. Shes never been able to answer.

Its not shocking that they rarely even settle for a fraction of what is asked and are just "thankful" when the government and politicians are so kind to budget them raises.

Best part....Due to the policies put in place during the 08 crash, salaries and raises were severely restricted. The government last year decided to "make up for it" by changing the base salaries for NEW teachers. So now a brand new teacher just out of college makes about as much (within a couple thousand) as much as my wife, who has a masters and has been teaching for about a decade.

Thats the issue with people that are passionate about something. It happens in IT as well. Many will work for peanuts because they like it and "experience". And my companies have been put off that I describe myself as a mercenary. I work for money and have absolutely no emotional ties to team, company or organization.

"I've always wondered what their ultimate collective bargaining power is if the single thing that grants them their leverage (to strike) is off the table from day 1."

While they can't strike, they can do the absolute bare minimum, which is what happens in a lot of professions (police, fire) where they can't legally strike. I'm not saying it's as effective as an actual strike, obviously, but with how much extra time teacher give beyond normal working hours, cutting it down to just working during business hours makes a school noticeably worse.

> I've always wondered what their ultimate collective bargaining power

To be fair, unions don't exist solely as threats to employers. The ability to bargain collectively still results in better/fairer outcomes in most situations. Most of the time, employers want to compensate their employees in good faith. Most of the time, employees want to work for a team who get rewarded more or less fairly and not compete in a cutthroat arena where everyone has to bargain for themselves.

But yes: non-striking unions are absolutely not going to have the kind of corrective power in the face of genuine imbalance that real organized labor does.

> non-striking teachers union..

These sorts of unions happen in health, nursing in particular. And then the members end up overworked, underpaid and exploited.

My profession has a strident and aggressive union which I have not always agreed with, but they have improved pay and conditions (and have organised strikes).

I don't know the particulars of your wife's union contract but in my union (college faculty union) we can't go on strike while under contract. Our contracts are up for renewal every two years and when the old contract expires we can go on strike and we have in the past.

Depending on how it's structured, she may be able to bounce to a different city/county/state (depending on logistics) for a year or two. Much like in industry, how leaving (and potentially coming back) can get you far more of a raise than staying.

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