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."
