Who has an incentive to work against public unions? Public unions operate in a monopoly for which one business can not be undercut. And after all, public unions vote.

The 85% of us who don't belong to the teachers unions should vote against them. Unfortunately, the teachers unions have the democratic party in their pocket, and I am sure as hell never going to vote for today's republican party (yuck!).

Your estimate got me wondering what the true number is. I would guess it is a little low for non-teacher's union employees. But considering that government unions generally cooperate to form an oligarchy; from a few searches I find there are 25 million Americans directly employed by federal, state, and local governments. There are 15 million Americans who's is directly paid by government contracts. There are about 140 million Americans in the labor force, so we have 2/7 ~ 28% of the labor force directly dependent upon government.

I just meant for teachers unions, not all unions.

I am a government employee, btw, and I would happily vote against teachers unions (if I could vote issue-by-issue, not representative-by-representative)

They did have some success with getting the unions to make these kinds of concessions in D.C. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230336240457558..., allowing the schools to cut under-performing teachers instead of having to make cuts solely based on seniority.

Unfortunately, it looks like those efforts are stalled at the moment due to the mayor losing his re-election bid.

I agree with you though, the unions are a huge part of the problem with the education system in the U.S.

The answer is completely obvious - because the teachers unions are not actually the problem with the US education system. They are just a convenient scapegoat for some people to demonize.

Several teachers in my family - none of them would agree with you.

why?