The Case Against the Unions

Union shop stewards like to point out that the STARTING salaries are much lower than the median, average and highest -- because of its own union members' exploitation of its own newest (newcomers) members -- who also have to take on the toughest assignments and do all the dirty jobs, that those in seniority, no longer have to do.

But if you pay all teachers equally, the money designated for education -- it's over a $100,000 a year. But those with seniority, get two or three times as much -- for doing less, if anything at all anymore, per the union's own rules.

That's why the teaching "profession" is awful -- not because the people (employers) are taking advantage of the teachers, but because their own colleagues and peers are. Everybody should be paid the same for doing the same job, and since the problem is recruitment of talent from other fields, you want the STARTING salary equal to those with the most seniority -- doing as little as possible, which demoralizes the entire staff, so that the best and the brightest leave, while those who cannot get a job doing anything else, remain.

That is the familiar problem of education in Hawaii, and ultimately government.