feeling would have been lustily mutual. “Unions will go to the mat for the worst, lowest-performing people they represent because of the message it sends.” “To the bosses?” “Nah. To the members.” “I don’t get it.” “A union depends on solidarity,” my friend said. “That’s in its DNA. The way to demonstrate solidarity is to fight for the members who are losers. Say one of your old, burned-out teachers doesn’t get a merit bonus and the union says it’s OK with that. Well, that’s goodbye to solidarity. You’re going to lose. You never had a chance.” The incentives were stacked in favor of those union reps. My service on the school board was a part- time thing. Steamrolling civilians in contract negotiations was their life. And he was right, of course. The incentives were stacked in favor of those union reps. My service on the school board was a part- time thing. Steamrolling civilians in contract negotiations was their life. I finished my sentence on the school board and was released on good behavior. I paid my taxes and bitched, along with other parents, about the indifferent teachers on the faculty who would neither retire nor try harder. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Focusing, that is, on the teachers who did not receive bonuses for good work and what effect that might have on their morale, though “self- esteem” is probably the term that was used. We did not discuss the students and how they might prosper if a fire were built under a few lazy, long-term teachers... how sticking them in classes presided over by bored time servers was unfair to them (and, by the way, to the people whose taxes paid the salaries of burned-out teachers). The reps made it clear that there would be no compromising on “bonuses.” This was non-negotiable. The word “strike” was never uttered. And a shutdown of the school was, I knew, insupportable. The incentives of the townspeople were dilute. They had things other than merit pay for teachers to worry about. If asked, they would say that it was not a hill worth dying on... Keep the school open. THE LOWLIEST COMMON DENOMINATOR To the teachers – and these union reps, especially – this issue was not life or death, as the old joke has it, but more important than that. It was plain from their body language and professional scowls that the reps simply could not afford to lose this one. “And you know why?” a friend said to me that evening. He was a Boston Irish guy who had worked factory jobs, put himself through school, been lit on fire in Vietnam, and come out whole. He was an exec at the state’s nuclear power plant and a force in state Republican politics. Bernie Sanders would have hated him on principle. But then, the
American Consequences
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