Yes, here in Ontario, Canada, the salary rate is quite low, but over time ramps to $60-80K. This tends to limit new enrollments at the low end via Teacher Colleges, but is so large at the top end that budgets are starved. As a kid in HS in the 50's the scale was a lot flatter. This has led to a lower presence of teacher staff in halls and stairwells (where we had a teacher in every hall segment and stairwell). Now the halls/stairwells are under supervised and this has tended towards many teacher free areas where it becomes 'Lord of the Flies' territory. I can see a growing role for AI in subject supervision on an individual basis to follow detailed student progress with explanatory input/repetition, as needed, perhaps with a dual screen setup where the teacher is able to monitor and have input above and beyond what the AI is capable of. My reason for this POV is teachers are spread thin and often are not aware of the people who might be lagging(and who often lose heart = drop out). I expect this idea has already begun to grow, and I hope AI pushback does not limit this concept.

The members vote for that. 10:1 there are a lot of old members who didn't want to give up what they had and didn't think 2 steps ahead when they're the minority and lose their pension because they screwed over the younger workers.

I think the biggest issue with unions is they are not thinking of the big picture. Stuff like a government violates the unions rights and no one bats an eye(there was no general strike when Regan violated the air traffic controller rights) and that lets the unions be divided and conquered.

Ultimately, people are voting and choosing this.

In order to bring understanding to this discussion, we can separate unions into two types: vertical unions and horizontal unions.

Vertical unions are hierarchal. They have administrative staff that are not necessarily workers and they reproduce the characteristics of our electoral system in a smaller scale. This includes corrupt elected officials who have back deals with companies, etc.

The horizontal unions are non hierarchical. They are based on the practice of anarcho syndicalism. The union is just a collection of smaller unions, each has autonomy to make their own decisions. The delegates can be recalled at any time. All staff are workers and decisions are collectively being made.

For horizontal unions, the person you are responding to is correct. You and your colleagues are the ones that decide how it is going to run.

For vertical unions, you are correct. A few influential members have all the power.

You are both correct but just not talking about the same thing.