>>Professional bureaucrats.

>My mom was a negotiator for the teacher's union for about a decade. She was a para-professional, working with disabled students, for about 20 years.

Nothing you said really contradicts the parent post's claim that the people working in unions are "Professional bureaucrats". If your mom was working with disabled students for 20 years, then switched to being a bureaucrat for the next 10 years, she's still arguably a "Professional bureaucrat".

That's not how it worked. The union role took a few hours a month, in addition to her para job. A handful of meetings, usually in evenings after a normal workday. It would never have been considered her primary job, more like a task within her job at the school.

I suspect your Mom is an extra-ordinary super-hero sort, and more power to her. However, here in the Western USA, urban public schools are a disaster -- the bigger the district, the bigger the disaster -- and the union is not innocent in continuing that. no easy answers

100 percent agreed there are no easy answers. I was arguing against the pointless emotional rhetorical garbage like "professional bureaucrats" and "holding children hostage". No, not everything is perfect, but the solution to that is to find and address real problems, not scream stupid insults until everything falls apart.