Recently, the term "Collective Bargaining" has been used often in the news in relation to events happening in the state of Wisconsin. This term simply refers to the practice of representatives negotiating salaries and benefits for a larger group. The basic idea has several advantages. The employer can negotiate with the representation and then does not have to spend large amounts of time and energy negotiating with each individual member. This actually is a savings to the employer. Very large organizations would have to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars just to pay for the time spent negotiating with every single employee. Collective bargaining also provides an advantage to the group of employees. When employees bargain as a large group they wield more power to negotiate higher salaries and better benefits. I have no particular problem with this method of negotiating employment contracts. It is perfectly legitimate and practical.
The real problem comes with the philosophy often held by those who are in favor of the "Collective Bargaining" mentality. Collective bargaining is usually employed by groups of public employees (teachers, police, firefighters, etc.). The representative bargaining group is usually composed of a union contingent. Often, an Us vs. Them mentality plays a key role in these negotiations. The employee union often enters negotiations expecting the employer to want to short-change them at every possible turn. The employee union, then, tries to leverage to squeeze out every possible available cent in either salary or benefits. Public employees often think that higher salaries and better benefits are not available because the employer simply chooses not to allow them to obtain them. This actually demonstrates a sad lack of understanding between private- and public-sector economics.
I have no problem with a bargaining unit requesting higher wages or increased benefits. The problem comes when groups of public employees forget where their salaries come from. Public-sector employees have a limited pool of resources from which their salaries can be drawn. Public employees need to remember that they work for the taxpayers. Whenever the salaries of public employees increase that increase must come from tax money. At some point, a continued increase in salaries and benefits overruns the available tax money. Two options then exist: raise taxes or reign in public employee salaries.
I will always agree with many of my colleagues that teachers, by and large, are underpaid. What many of my colleagues forget is that they do not work in a private sector economy-- an economy where the market often rewards individuals according to their actual market worth. Public school teachers, police, firefighters, and other public employees work in a public economy. A public economy is restricted and static. It is an artificial economy. It does not have the ability to grow to meet fluctuating market demands. Public employees, then, will never truly have the ability to be "paid what we're worth". The public economy is not designed to do that. In the private-sector economy I can earn more money by doing high quality work and thus attracting more business. Not so in the public sector. In the public sector every individual employee is seen as having the same "worth" as every other employee. High quality teachers are on the same pay scale as low quality teachers.
In the end, it is not a matter of paying teachers what they are worth. It is a matter of paying teachers what an "average" teacher is worth and can be afforded in a static, publicly funded economy. If teachers, or other public employees, want to be paid what they are worth then they will have to do away with collective bargaining. Only then will high quality employees be able to be recognized apart from their lower quality colleagues.
