Over at Quick and the Ed, Kevin Carey turns in a lengthy post, replete with percentages and bullet points, that draws lessons from Ed Sector’s newest report, Waiting to Be Won Over. His second sentence shocks, then awes, then shocks again:

In recent decades, America has experienced a steady de-unionization of the private sector workforce. This is a real problem, particularly in an era of declining economic security and increasing inequality (problems that partially stem from de-unionization itself).

To assert that the loss of jobs in, say, Michigan and Ohio stems from de-unionization certainly has originality going for it, if not much veracity. To maintain that the steady decline of Ford and General Motors—neither of which can compete with Japanese car makers in large part because they pay something like $2200 more in labor costs per car than does Toyota—is the product of de-unionization is... well, it’s definitely new. 

Further down the post, Carey writes about public sector unions and notes “the fact that most teacher are quite open to reforms of traditional labor arrangements that many teachers unions fail to actively support at best, and oppose at worst.”

His first example is that “55% [of teachers] agreed that the process for removing teachers who are ‘clearly ineffective and shouldn’t be in the classroom’ is ‘very difficult and time-consuming.’” Somehow, this statistic doesn’t transport me to joyfulness. That just over half of k-12 educators find “very difficult and time-consuming” the Byzantine process of attempting to fire a public-school teacher is, instead, a tad depressing. It doesn’t say much for the teachers themselves, 45 percent of whom are either dishonest, asleep much of the day, or subscribe to wholly different codes of fairness than your average American. 

Carey concludes thusly:

The message seems to be that teachers are open to a number of good ideas that could improve the way they’re paid and evaluated, but those reforms can’t and shouldn’t be implemented in a way that’s fundamentally antagonistic their labor rights or idenity in terms their union. That doesn’t immunize teachers unions from criticism when they oppose commonsensical reforms that most of their members support. But it does point to a collaborative reform strategy—which is as it should be.

Alas, this paragraph says nothing—and one wonders if the author is perhaps deluding himself by thinking that the “collaborative reform strategy” he advocates is anything other than the shuffling of deck chairs on the Titanic. That teachers are receptive only to educational reforms that fit the agendas of their unions—agendas that are inarguably designed to increase union membership, solidify union political power, and ensure that teachers don’t work too hard—is not progress of any sort. It is the ingredient list for a stalemate that prolongs the current coma of public schools.

Update: Kevin Carey calls the above a “bizarre reading” of his words. Dismissive adjectives are fun but sometimes struggle to achieve specificity or real meaning, much like Carey’s original post in question, which claws at logic but can’t quite grasp it.

Carey is ostensibly perplexed about why I write about Michigan and Ohio. He never mentioned Michigan or Ohio; why, then, would I mention them? What I’ve done, you see, is supply real-world examples to counter Carey’s vague assertion that “declining economic security and increasing inequality” are the results of private sector de-unionization—a claim that would seem to go against basic economic theory. I merely put forth two states where job growth has in fact been strangled by private sector unions, and in the case of Michigan, the United Auto Workers is to blame (which is why I refer to General Motors and Ford, two companies that typically produce automobiles). Just recently, Toyota surpassed General Motors for the first time ever in the number of cars sold. Toyota’s plants in union-free Alabama are booming, and workers there make more per hour than do UAW unionized workers in Michigan. Those who find this paragraph bizarre are encouraged to consult a ninth-grade English teacher, who, one suspects, will explain that providing actual examples rather than off-the-cuff lines about economic inequality, mean and monicled capitalists, etc. is a fine strategy for building a convincing argument to support one’s point.  

Carey perhaps consulted this teacher, because he puts forth an example of his own:

Meanwhile, a growing percentage of the labor force is employed by corporations like Wal-Mart that actively employ blatant and often illegal union-busting tactics—when they’re not busy giving money to organizations like the Fordham Institute.

Most people like Wal-Mart, especially poor people, who can actually afford to buy stuff there. I’m unsure whether Fordham receives money from Wal-Mart or its ilk, but if we do, I’m miffed because our office could sorely use a better coffee maker, and Wal-Mart probably stocks many fine models that it could donate.  

Carey writes on. He’s baffled (Baffled! Befuddled! Utterly bewildered!) by my post’s conclusion. He writes:

To repeat: teachers unions are often against tougher evaluation systems, against making it easier to fire ineffective teachers, against moving away from the single salary schedule to differentiated pay plans. Our survey indicates that most teachers are, by contrast, in favor of those reforms.

But Carey himself wrote earlier that teachers are in favor of those reforms only when the reforms do not antagonize educators’ “identity in terms of their union,” whatever that means. That teachers are concerned about their union identities (again, I’m not sure what is a teacher’s union identity; is it an alter-ego, like Mr. Hyde?) is not real progress. That teachers are willing to support education reforms only when their unions find such reforms agreeable is not real progress. These situations are, instead, signs of an anachronistic professional structure, and it’s not a structure that deserves defending.