Unions and Accountability

Of all the major sports, baseball has most subjective interpretation of the rules than any other sports. More often than not, balls and strikes are argued, although it’s technically against the rule to do so. Thanks to the instant replay on TV, it shows how many times the umpires are wrong on their calls.

While the baseball admits that wrong calls are made often, not much is being done to correct this, other than instituting a video replay to determine the home run/foul ball only. I believe the main reason why bad calls are made is that more than any other sports, there are many bad umpires in the Major League Baseball (MLB). Why is that? It’s the policy formulated by a power union.

Unlike the rest of the industry, umpires from MLB do not have a performance review system in place and the seniority rules within the rank. Even the worst umpire is not subject to performance review, unless it’s something criminal, if he has seniority in the union.

I am not a union basher, quite the opposite. I believe union system has brought workers rights a long way. However, some policies just are not right. I believe that each person must be accountable for their own work performance. I think there should be an evaluation system that rates each umpire each year and only the top certain percent should be allow to continue with their work the following year. There are plenty of people who qualify to fill in the gap, such as college or minor league umpires, who may be better suited for the job.

This is equally true of our teacher. As much as I have respect for teachers, their union and the tenure system is flawed. I can personally give an example of a teacher I had in jr. high school. She just wasn’t very good at the subject she was teaching. I had to correct her often in class for her mistakes. This is a student correcting the teacher! Yet, she had the tenure so she went on to teach for many more years.

With the budget cuts, many teachers are being let go from their jobs. Of course seniority is the first criteria in determining who goes and who stays, last hired, first to go. However, I have read that some of the criteria for determining who gets laid off is very random and arbitrary. For example, somewhere in New Jersey, if two teachers were hired on the same day, one with the high number of their last two digits of social security number would be laid off. I mean, really? No check for qualification, or subject needs? Just randomly choose someone on a inane criteria?

This is one policy I certainly do not agree with. Hey unions, give a little concession to make it better for everyone. It’s not all about the money you know.