The schools in my town have never had a teachers union and we have always had the best students and the highest paid teachers in the region.
But after the school board voted to reopen schools (in spite of the coronavirus) some local teachers have started to form a union.
Engineers don’t have a union, and Doctors don’t have a union, Dentists don’t a union, But some professionals seem to think that they are special and need a union.
A union makes sure that crummy teachers get the same pay as good teachers, & makes sure they can’t get fired except in the most extreme cases; but that’s not how it works in the professional world.
The top engineer in the world makes the top money and the rest of us will make something less, depending on our abilities experience luck et cetera. It’s the same way with orthodontists or orthopedists or thoracic surgeons.
Our code of ethics requires us to go on the basis of merit in everything we do. Collective bargaining is not an option to cover up for nonuniform Participation or performance.
In a company of people these things are taken care of internally.
What you do not do is divide a company of engineers against itself such that it will work at cross purposes. This is totally unrelated to monetary compensation. It is a matter of pride in what we do, just the same as if one was an army ranger. It’s all for one and one for all.
Unfortunately when you get into huge projects like NASA, The Money overrules engineering judgement.
I worked for a small engineering company with only 10 people, and we were creating fancy buildings, but we weren’t putting men on the moon.
(We did design a replica space shuttle but that’s another story.)
There was never a structural failure due to our work. If there ever is a structural failure on one of our jobs it will be due to another error.
So . . . how come the best funded engineers and builders in the entire world managed to blow up a space shuttle?
Politics. The Big Failure was all the product of politics from beginning to end.
And I think politics will be the downfall of our local school district as well.