Some teachers are more equal than others. In all seriousness US labor unions have been infamous for going blatantly being gerontocracy on the ground they have been paying dues for the longest.

Given stuff like 'contractually they are bound to lay off multiple newer teachers before they lay off the one a year from retirement'.

While screwing over your loyal members isn't good treating the new ones like dirt is also a death spiral move - I know that everyone in High School who worked a job with a union hated it - the consensus was that they were paying a cut and openly screwed over in favor of everyone else.

I’ve never been in a union, but I’m sure not all unions are created equal. I wonder if unions get in a position where there’s no non-union competition they start to operate in the best interests of the union and not the interests of the people they represent. /shrug I’d love to hear more from the OP about this, fwiw.

Unions value the collective.

As such, there are people within unions that may not benefit at a certain point in time. For example, someone who has seniority will benefit from being there a long time-perhaps at the expense of a younger member, that may possibly be more talented. When that younger member grows old, it will benefit that member. A lot in silicon valley may scoff at that idea - but we've all seen ageism in our workplace, probably more so than others.

It's similar to insurance - just because you don't need it RIGHT NOW doesn't mean you won't in the future. So everyone who doesn't need it pays for the people that do. When you need it, it is there.

If the best interest of the union is not the same as the best interest of the union members (teachers in this case, presumably), there's something seriously wrong.

For the most part, the interests of the teacher's union, and the interests of its constituents are aligned. There's a few edge cases where they aren't.

The same can be said for any form of democracy, though.