Unionism needs to get rid of the stupid and get more of the smart

I grew up in an union town where good people understood that they were stronger together than they were as individuals when it came to affecting change in the American political arena and elsewhere.

The United Auto Workers gave many in my family, mostly first-generation Mexican-Americans who worked in Pontiac's auto plants, a stake in America, a sense of belonging and a movement through which their aspirations and experiences could be struggled for and heard as a collective voice in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.

Those roots, of which I am proud, make me incredibly grateful for unionism and the progress it's made for so many Americans.

But I cannot take any more stupid unionism.

When I say stupid, I mean unionism led by fear and selfish interests living in the past.

This fall some of Michigan's most powerful unionists have the opportunity to stop practicing stupid unionism.

I refer to the Detroit Federation of Teachers union, which is in heated negotiations with the Detroit Public Schools' Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb over the future of thousands of underserved Detroit students.

Detroit children are some of the poorest, most vulnerable children in North America. It is gut-wrenching to watch as the school district squanders their lives by providing them substandard schools.

To be sure, teachers are not the heart of this district's problems. Just take a look at the dysfunctional school board and its predatory practices, and that is clear.

However, the teachers are the heart of the district's way forward. Teacher quality is the No. 1 predictor of student achievement. Southeastern Michigan's future is partly tied to Detroit's educational success -- and teachers will lead it or take us down with them and their failing district.

That's why no one should underestimate this teacher contract's importance. The Bobb administration must get a contract that makes student performance -- not teacher protectionism -- its top priority.

Bobb's team needs flexibility to staff classrooms with the best educators available. Poor children who have already fallen behind in school need better or just as good teachers as Birmingham and Ann Arbor have yet so often, research shows, they get the worst.

Can anyone, really, defend that morally unacceptable status quo?

Smart unionism

Now some will defend all unions. More will attack unions, arguing that the U.S. should kill them off.

An America without unions is a scary idea. Just ask anyone whose company is hemorrhaging jobs and whose child is sick and needs health care. The only reason why many Americans still have things such as health insurance, eight-hour work days and unemployment is because of unions. And globalization challenges us to consider these issues anew.

Consider a new report, released appropriately on Labor Day, by the Michigan League for Human Services. It found that one in every five Michigan jobs do not pay enough to keep a family of four out of poverty -- about $22,000 a year.

Four of the six occupations with the most jobs fall into that category. Those are retail sales, cashiers, waiters and waitresses, and fast food or food prep workers.

"We know that many of these jobs are held by breadwinners -- not just students or teen-agers. A parent working full-time, year-round should be able to meet basic needs, but these very common jobs do not allow that," said Sharon Parks, the league's president and CEO.

The standard argument -- with which I agree -- is that in a new era of globalization, such lower-wage service workers have to retrain and retool for higher-skilled jobs.

There is another, darker side to the globalization story, however: The U.S. isn't creating enough good jobs to replace its faltering middle class. And many of the jobs we do create have lousy wages.

For that reason, we need a smart unionism that will help our country enact public policies that rebuild the middle class and people who want to be in it -- and kill off the old unionism that is dragging down so many good workers and school children with it.

Amber Arellano is a Detroit News editorial writer who writes a weekly online column. Contact her at aarellano@detnews.com">aarellano@detnews.com