Unions may have fought against it, but many have not succeeded. Those teachers now get paid on performance metrics. Those metrics punish teachers at schools in low income neighborhoods; leaving those schools devoid of good teachers. Those metrics punish teachers working with at-risk kids. Leaving those kids without access to good teachers. But I digress, that's a different conversation. My actual point is, these teachers, even though they get paid on metrics, are still unionized because there are more benefits to unionization than salary. Ask any charter school teacher.
> People who have worked and doing the same job for 30 years are payed more than twice as much as newcomers to the field. The existence of a teacher's union is actively harmful to new teachers.
These were called "steps". And it was a way to encourage teachers to stay teachers. When new teachers signed on, they were given their step salary schedule and they knew exactly how much money they would be making at any point in their teaching career. To suggest this is punishing new teachers is ridiculous. If you don't like the salary schedule, you shouldn't have taken the job. Aside from that, many school districts have already moved away from stepped salary schedules to a flat salary with COLA increases negotiated by...you guessed it...the union.
A unionized labor force can bargain for any kind of contract it wants. Paid by seniority? Do it. Everyone paid the same? Go for it. Merit based pay? Not a problem. But without a union, "Here's what I'll pay you. Don't discuss it with your co-workers. Or else."
>To suggest this is punishing new teachers is ridiculous. If you don't like the salary schedule, you shouldn't have taken the job
If a young teacher in LA County is frustrated that their school is rewarding low performers with double their salary simply because of time, your suggestion is they "shouldn't have taken the job"? Despite the fact that the Union has negotiated with the entire school district, and they have no choice but to leave the county at the very least if they want something different?
You see how the Union is actively harming the younger teachers by taking away their choices, right?
>But without a union, "Here's what I'll pay you.
This is not a valid argument. The so-called "low performers" (good luck fairly defining that!) are not getting rewarded. They did their job and got paid exactly as expected. That's not a reward.
If a young teacher with no kids decides to work an extra 4 hours a week to do some bullshit laptop inventory project for administration...that's on them. She should get compensated as hourly, but schools just don't have budgets for these kinds of endless tasks. When it comes time for evaluations though, this young teacher will be evaluated as "high performer" and the older teacher who has 3 kids waiting at home and has to leave on time everyday will be evaluated as a "low performer".
> your suggestion is they "shouldn't have taken the job"? Despite the fact that the Union has negotiated with the entire school district, and they have no choice but to leave the county at the very least if they want something different?
I'm sorry, but no one goes into teaching without knowing what the meager pay structure is like. In my 23 years of working for a top 5 largest school district I've never heard a teacher complain about another teacher's base salary. Teachers go into teaching for the long haul.
> That's why US tech salaries are so low these days right?
This has nothing to do with salary height. It has to do with employees' ability to bargain for fair wages AND fair working conditions. Right now there are exploited workers in the tech industry (looking at you, game dev) that are in dire need of exactly the kind of help labor unions can offer.