Monday, February 21, 2011

What's so important about labor unions?

If you have been watching the news this past week you have no doubt seen stories of the massive protests and strikes involving the teachers union in Wisconsin. In a nutshell, the Republican Governor Scott Walker is trying to kill the "greedy" unions. He has refused to negotiate with them. And why not? What have unions does for us?

A lot it seems.

For instance, let's take the case of teachers unions and their process of collective bargaining. There are currently 5 U.S. states that have outlawed unions and what follows are their places in national SAT/ACT scores:

South Carolina, 50th
North Carolina, 49th
Georgia, 48th
Texas, 47th
Virginia, 44th


In case you are wondering Wisconsin, with it's collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the nation.

As I wrote in a earlier post we are already lagging behind most other industrialized nations in our educational system.

How low are we willing to go?