You found the exception rather than the rule. My first contract in union-shop Illinois was for the handsome, union negotiated sum of....$18,650...that's including the stipend. Other contracts in the area were comparable. Chicago paid the most, but factor in cost of living and that Chicago contract had the same purchasing power as the one I had in a rural 5A school. That same year, here in Texas, the absolute minimum I would have made would have been $26K...and we all know almost all districts pay above state minimums (3 years later my first Texas contract was $34K at a 3A school). The year I came to Texas, Illinois' average starting pay was still under $25K.

On top of that, and I've mentioned this before, there was a union meeting during teacher orientation...specifically for all the new teachers who were REQUIRED to join the union, or get fired. In this meeting, we were informed that contract negotiations had broken down, and in two days there was going to be a strike vote...and we were expected to walk out and picket if a strike was voted for. Silly me, I asked what the sticking point was in the contract. Well, the school wanted all the teachers to be on duty by 7:35 every morning. The union thought that unfair and wanted the report time to be 7:38, and wouldn't budge. Everything else regarding salary or contract language was agreed upon. THE UNION WANTED TO CALL A STRIKE VOTE OVER THREE MINUTES!!! This was during the time when the workers at Caterpillar had been on strike for quite a long time because management wanted to increase the prescription co-pay from $2 to $5 (note: their co-pay was set up so that if you only had one prescription or 1000 to pick up, you only paid the $2...and management didn't want to eliminate that). Our strike vote failed by one vote...had one more person voted to strike then all of us new hires would have been on the picket line, with no money at all coming in unless we had parents helping, complaining over three minutes. I have also seen teachers who had a legitimate grievance against the school get thrown under the bus by the union as a bargaining chip.

Tell me again about how great unions are.