From a 2016 eduhonesty.com post about unions:

“I’d like to note one positive aspect of teaching, as it was traditionally practiced: The union contract took into account how much education a teacher had finished and how many years he or she had worked. That determined teacher pay. Women with 2 years experience and 50 credits beyond a bachelor’s degree received exactly the same pay as men with the same credentials. You might make extra money by coaching or sponsoring a club, especially at the high school level, but overall men and women could expect to receive the same compensation. If a woman needed maternity leave, she was not crippling her career by taking two months off, either.” (From a previous post.)

I don’t think I ever hammered this point home and I should have done so. We regularly hear stories on the news about gaps in pay and benefits between men and women. The gender gap is an established fact of life in the corporate world. When I worked in the corporate world, I encountered that gap regularly — insurance adjusters and then bond analysts of the other gender made more money. I can remember the one exception who was hired with me to analyze bonds. Perhaps because we came from the same school with the same credentials at the same time, we received identical pay. But at other times, my life experience was discovering someone with less experience and education made more money because “he could project authority.” I’m sure that translated to “he was not a small woman.”

Here’s a weird, sideways fact, readers, that merits at least brief consideration, from The American Psychological Association (https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/standing):

“When it comes to height, every inch counts–in fact, in the workplace, each inch above average may be worth $789 more per year, according to a study in the Journal of Applied Psychology (Vol. 89, No. 3).

The findings suggest that someone who is 6 feet tall earns, on average, nearly $166,000 more during a 30-year career than someone who is 5 feet 5 inches–even when controlling for gender, age and weight.”

The gender implications are obvious.

As I write this, I am thinking about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The following is from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ruth-Bader-Ginsburg:

“Hired by the Rutgers School of Law as an assistant professor in 1963, she was asked by the dean of the school to accept a low salary because of her husband’s well-paying job. After she became pregnant with the couple’s second child—a son, James, born in 1965—Ginsburg wore oversized clothes for fear that her contract would not be renewed. She earned tenure at Rutgers in 1969.”

I find it interesting that in 1970 Ginsburg became professionally involved in the issue of gender equality as it related to “women’s liberation,” a catch phrase often linked to bra burning back then by forces trying to block any movement toward equality. She rapidly published two law review articles on the subject and began teaching a seminar on gender discrimination. I don’t find it a great surprise that she became a leading figure in gender-discrimination litigation during the seventies — and as I read between the lines of her biographies, I understand how this passion arose.*

RBG knew all about gender discrimination. I believe she also understood the power of tenure. Once tenured, she ripped into the gender discrimination. Ruth Bader Ginsburg being the woman she was, I am sure she’d have gone to fight for gender equity regardless, job security or not. But job security provides a platform of safety that makes honesty easier.

I started this post with paychecks because equal pay for equal work tends to resonate with people. And women who are older or retired, as I am, often connect strongly on this topic. We have our stories — the boss who explained that Maury was getting more money than me because he was going to have to support a family –– although he was just out of school and wasn’t even engaged to his girlfriend at the time. And then there was the boss who let me know that my young, male counterpart in a small software company had gotten a bigger raise than I had because he had enthusiasm and he was there later than I was and I honestly don’t know what else — except I was just sunk, because I had to pick my girl up from preschool so I could not stay late. The part that blew me away: My sales were higher than his, a documented fact attributed to my probably working a more prosperous region — except he had California and the West Coast and we were selling software in the early nineties. Give me a break! I thought. Except no one gave me a break, and when my second child was born, I just quit and I was glad to go. That boss called months later to tell me how much he had appreciated my good work. Was he surprised I had walked away? Maybe he needed me to explain the idea of a “no-win scenario” to him — the scenario where you compete with a bunch of single young men while taking care of your new baby and preschooler, too.

As I say, women my age and older tend to have our stories. I don’t want that last one to seem like a sad story, either. I absolutely loved being a stay-at-home mom for over a decade, even if finances were sometimes a bit tricky. Drinking coffee with friends in parks while children played, watching Power Rangers and Captain Planet, huddling under blankets during soccer games, eating ice cream, stopping for cheese fries while juggling different softball practices, and playing Logical Journey of the Zoombinis. What’s not to love?

And then I made another career change. I went back to school when my youngest turned 13 to earn my teaching certification. Two years later, I entered teaching.

Suddenly I became part of a union. I wasn’t subject to gut-wrenching, whimsical salary scales. I was older then, too, and grateful I didn’t have to worry about the fact that I was receiving more money than younger people with less education, enthusiastic job hunters who could definitely work more cheaply than me. I knew if I did my job, my position would not vanish because some MBA had determined the district could save X dollars per year by hiring a new graduate with fewer college credits in my place. I have known too many people in their fifties who suddenly were written out of their corporate lives, shocked to discover that their thirty-plus years of service somehow didn’t count when the wrong people added the numbers up.

Fair wages, job security and excellent benefits: that was my experience of the union.

Fair wages and job security.

Fair wages and job security.

Fair wages and job security.

I can’t say it enough.

And in 2020 — a whole new issue that unions have been attacking with varying degrees of success:

JOB SAFETY!

I should observe that I also receive a pension. I have excellent health care, even now that I am retired, at reasonable cost. A large enough group of people can negotiate top-quality insurance and other benefits. My union keeps sending me mailers about deals on cars, appliances, dental insurance, etc.

That hit job that was done on unions in the not-too-distant past? It was a hit job. The truth is that inept and lazy teachers are extremely rare. The requirements of the position are too demanding, many of them unseen and not understood by people not working in schools. More importantly, kids without enough to do can be guaranteed to make a teacher miserable. Kids know if a teacher is blowing them off — and they make anyone who isn’t working completely miserable.

I should also note that tenure isn’t lifetime job security, a fiction that deserves to be explicitly addressed. Tenure just means you can’t be fired capriciously. You must be fired for cause — and there are rules and oversight in the procedure. That’s what everyone ought to have, and it’s what many people don’t have nowadays.

Eduhonesty: Support your union. Support the idea of unions, wherever you are. Fair wages and job security for hard-working employees should be regarded as a right, not a piece of luck. Union contracts protect workers. Height, weight, color, sexual orientation and other nonwork-related characteristics shouldn’t have a damn thing to do with salary. (O.K., I grant NFL linemen are their own category…) And being part of a large, powerful organization able to demand safe working conditions can be helpful or even crucial — especially now.

In COVID-19 times, unions have negotiated and are negotiating for safe working conditions for teachers. Who else will go out of their way to protect teachers? School boards? Not all of those boards. State governments? In one word: Florida. Although I could come up with a few other choice words, both states and expletives.