looool amazing, good job screwing yourselves NY protesters.
Maybe now they'll go somewhere with lower taxes and people who like having jobs.
Unemployment rate is something like 4.3% in NYC
I guess there's a huge amount of complexity here tbh. I've written and deleted about 10 things so far!
If the locals didn't want it and it was going to be pricey for Amazon anyway, it's probably the best decision for all involved.
looool amazing, good job screwing yourselves NY protesters.
Maybe now they'll go somewhere with lower taxes and people who like having jobs.
Unemployment rate is something like 4.3% in NYC
I guess there's a huge amount of complexity here tbh. I've written and deleted about 10 things so far!
If the locals didn't want it and it was going to be pricey for Amazon anyway, it's probably the best decision for all involved.
I mean there is also the fact that Cuomo damn near gave them a blank check and they were getting so much state money it would be a very long time before their tax bill was a positive number. Probably better than Foxconn in that it would actually be built but still one of those stupid subsidized business via government things.
I think its good that we, as the working class, finally develop a sense that "jobs!" arent the only thing that matters or should be looked out for.
Also that maybe NYC doesn't need to give away $3billion in tax incentives for a business to move there / get property developed. Especially not one of the richest companies in the world.
You know, I'm glad to see the pay hike. I hate that it comes in this way, because imo a strong teacher's union is ultimately bad for kids - it takes too long to remove bad teachers and your kid only gets to be in 3rd grade once (or twice if the teacher is really bad, but still). But pay increases will attract and retain talent, and that's positive for everyone.
This is not a problem caused by unions, it's a problem caused by managers/administrators who are unwilling or unable to do their job, and by a teacher education system with low standards that has not produced a consistently high caliber of graduates.
The two main reasons I've ever seen for bad employs sticking around because of unions:
1) Lack of documentation by management. Generally it's hard to fire people because you need to establish cause. People don't like to have to do the work to establish cause.
2) They are working to rule. Technically they are doing exactly what is required of them under the contract. Which is annoying but also, like, write a better contract then. This is a trade of services for money not a fucking calling of your heart.
looool amazing, good job screwing yourselves NY protesters.
Maybe now they'll go somewhere with lower taxes and people who like having jobs.
Did you see all the incentives that these municipalities were rushing to give Amazon? It was like pro sports stadium grift on steroids. These deals harm communities, and it's good that grassroots pressure told Amazon to kindly fuck off.
I live in NYC and until recently lived pretty close to the proposed new Amazon HQ. I wasn't a big fan of the move. Primarily because of the tax breaks involved. For comparison Google is planning to add 10k more jobs in NYC without any tax breaks at all.
You know, I'm glad to see the pay hike. I hate that it comes in this way, because imo a strong teacher's union is ultimately bad for kids - it takes too long to remove bad teachers and your kid only gets to be in 3rd grade once (or twice if the teacher is really bad, but still). But pay increases will attract and retain talent, and that's positive for everyone.
My wife works in a charter district where there is no union at present.
Bad teachers who can't control a classroom, teach content or meet testing benchmarks have survived for years if they can be counted on to show up for work.
The pay is better then public because the hours are worse.
Anyone who stays in teaching flees for suburban public districts usually - they always take the paycut for the quality of life improvements and after a decade of this no one she's known has come back to the charter world.
Unions are essential for all working people until Constitutional level reforms are put in place.
You see bad employees stick around in non-unionized workplaces too, just for different reasons. It's usually about knowing a guy in those cases.
You know, I'm glad to see the pay hike. I hate that it comes in this way, because imo a strong teacher's union is ultimately bad for kids - it takes too long to remove bad teachers and your kid only gets to be in 3rd grade once (or twice if the teacher is really bad, but still). But pay increases will attract and retain talent, and that's positive for everyone.
My wife works in a charter district where there is no union at present.
Bad teachers who can't control a classroom, teach content or meet testing benchmarks have survived for years if they can be counted on to show up for work.
The pay is better then public because the hours are worse.
Anyone who stays in teaching flees for suburban public districts usually - they always take the paycut for the quality of life improvements and after a decade of this no one she's known has come back to the charter world.
Unions are essential for all working people until Constitutional level reforms are put in place.
You see bad employees stick around in non-unionized workplaces too, just for different reasons. It's usually about knowing a guy in those cases.
Or management just being shitty and wanting to avoid conflict.
Like my girlfriend's non-unionized school that has several teachers that come in late daily and constantly foist off all their work onto others. They've been around for years because the management is completely timid and wants to pretend everything is fine instead of dealing with the problems at the school.
They did get rid of one guy who was sexually harassing other teachers.
They didn't fire him, though, just didn't renew his contact at the end of the year.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I think its good that we, as the working class, finally develop a sense that "jobs!" arent the only thing that matters or should be looked out for.
Also that maybe NYC doesn't need to give away $3billion in tax incentives for a business to move there / get property developed. Especially not one of the richest companies in the world.
And let's be real that property will be developed anyway. It's not like they were proposing to move to the middle of nowhere (despite the idea that everything in NYC not Manhattan is the middle of nowhere)
There are teacher shortages across the US. Lack of benefits and low salary are causing teachers to look elsewhere for work. Suddenly those "bad" teachers are better than no teachers. Also quantifying "bad" is incredibly hard.
The biggest thing is worklife balance. My wife works essentially 12 hour days when school is open. 5 of those hours are more stressful than my whole year.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
edited February 2019
This is a huge victory and will hopefully empower organizing against similar behavior which amounts to corruption and theft by self-interested cabals of politicians and developers - though Amazon still walks away with all the free oppo research that cities did on themselves trying to deliver the sloppiest BJ to get that monstrosity, so there's that.
Considering also that the cost per job in terms of giveaways would range from $48k (Amazon's estimate) to over $112k, NYC could literally pay 100,000 of the unemployed a living wage and still come out ahead, without the disastrous effects on housing prices, commuter infrastructure, etc.
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
Honestly, I think this is good for Amazon workers, too. A lot of nasty business practices come out of New York, and the cost of living there would make things messy.
Forgive my relative ignorance on this- what are the factors contributing to more labor action/strikes in the past couple years?
Tipping point of capital taking too much for too long/lower unemployment finally breaking through wage stickiness/a resurgent left-labor partnership/capital’s judicial wins reducing union participation leading to more dramatic action/etc?
I guess it means something that this is all mostly public unions striking...
There are a lot of theories on this - women are leading a lot of the organizing, which has to do with demand for labor in feminized sectors such as teaching, nursing, and home health aids increasing in contrast with other sectors like manufacturing. I also attribute it to a generation without Red Scare propaganda or a strong socialist boogeyman abroad that has experienced first-hand the failure of capitalism to deliver on what was promised in exchange for the grave concessions - 'yes, you'll work hard and your boss will take your surplus value, but you'll have a family and a house and nice consumer goods etc etc'. I don't know that there's a real sense of class consciousness, but folks have long felt that 'They' are fucking 'Us' over and the attempts to scapegoat immigrants, minorities, overseas manufacturing, welfare queens, etc etc are falling on increasingly-deaf ears as people have more access to more compelling narratives which make them question the social order as dictated by the ruling class.
I think some of this is also simple economics. Years of no raises and pay freezes dating back to before the '08 crash coupled with constantly rising rents, healthcare, and consumer prices across the board means that people either act or get forced out of the labor market due to not being able to afford to both work and pay their bills.
You know, I'm glad to see the pay hike. I hate that it comes in this way, because imo a strong teacher's union is ultimately bad for kids - it takes too long to remove bad teachers and your kid only gets to be in 3rd grade once (or twice if the teacher is really bad, but still). But pay increases will attract and retain talent, and that's positive for everyone.
This is not a problem caused by unions, it's a problem caused by managers/administrators who are unwilling or unable to do their job, and by a teacher education system with low standards that has not produced a consistently high caliber of graduates.
I work in North Carolina, and teachers unions are illegal here but you also get the same complaints about bad teachers. Of course, you also get the same complaints about teachers and their unions, because Southern conservatives are convinced that teacher unions are the cause of their bad educational systems despite most of them banning them decades ago.
My mom worked at a private school, with no union. She was sexually abused and had no recourse.
I don't think giving the administration the ability to abuse people with impunity helped make it a more enriching experience for the kids.
Edit: she left, and was lucky enough to be able to afford to spend a year looking for work thanks to my dad's income. She found a position at a public school with a strong union.
She had a lot of shit to complain about at that school, but she never had to decide whether it was worth being abused in order to maintain an income.
Oh c'mon Spool, get real this is total bullshit and you know it. You always get the whining 'buuuuuut Unions make it too hard to get rid of bad workers!!!' It's the same tired drivel that gets trotted out when someone wants to whine about tenure. Because job security is Bad and not to be tolerated!
It means that an employer actually has to follow the rules terminate someone. Which isn't hard to do, and more importantly protects the good employees too, which is the important part.
Oh c'mon Spool, get real this is total bullshit and you know it. You always get the whining 'buuuuuut Unions make it too hard to get rid of bad workers!!!' It's the same tired drivel that gets trotted out when someone wants to whine about tenure. Because job security is Bad and not to be tolerated!
It means that an employer actually has to follow the rules terminate someone. Which isn't hard to do, and more importantly protects the good employees too, which is the important part.
9 times out of 10 a supervisor drags their ass on addressing a problem person because it requires 10 minutes of paperwork and they decide to just scream at the person instead as if that solves it.
This happens at UPS, this happens in healthcare, this, I assume, happens in schools too.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
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Gabriel_Pitt(effective against Russian warships)Registered Userregular
guess there's a huge amount of complexity here tbh. I've written and deleted about 10 things so far!
If the locals didn't want it and it was going to be pricey for Amazon anyway, it's probably the best decision for all involved.
It _probably_ wouldn't have been a screwjob on par with what Foxconn is doing in Wisconsin, but there was a huge disparity between what was being offered up for the privelege and what them locating there actually would've brought in.
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HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
edited February 2019
On Amazon: as someone who was born and raised in the Puget Sound area and has seen the changes Jeff Bezos's internet empire has made to Seattle since it Got Big, I can tell you that Amazon is objectively evil. The company has fucked up my city and region in so many ways I could write a fucking book about it. Suffice it to say, NYC didn't need them and won't suffer without the jobs they might have brought.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
On Amazon: as someone who was born and raised in the Puget Sound area and has seen the changes Jeff Bezos's internet empire has made to Seattle since it Got Big, I can tell you that Amazon is objectively trash for a city. The company has fucked up my city in so many ways I could write a fucking book about it. Suffice it to say, NYC didn't need them and won't suffer without the jobs they might have brought.
One need only look at the Seattle city council bowing to pressure from Amazon to overturn the minimum wage hike to see why no city should want them.
I'd be curious to see evidence for teacher quality being pushed down by strong unions rather than the low wages and bad working conditions that strong unions protect against.
In this paper we consider more than three decades of research on teachers’ unions in the United States. We focus on unions’ role as potential rent-seekers in the K-12 educational landscape, and specifically how teachers’ unions impact district and student outcomes. We review important methodological improvements in the identification of union impacts and the measurement of contract restrictiveness that characterize a number of recent studies. We generally find that the preponderance of empirical evidence suggests that teacher unionization and union strength are associated with increases in district expenditures and teacher salaries, particularly salaries for experienced teachers. The evidence for union-related differences in student outcomes is mixed, but suggestive of insignificant or modestly negative union effects. Taken together, these patterns are consistent with a rent-seeking hypothesis. We conclude by discussing other important union activities, most notably in the political arena, and by noting that recent changes in state laws pertaining to teachers and teacher unions may provide context for new directions in scholarship.
Oh c'mon Spool, get real this is total bullshit and you know it. You always get the whining 'buuuuuut Unions make it too hard to get rid of bad workers!!!' It's the same tired drivel that gets trotted out when someone wants to whine about tenure. Because job security is Bad and not to be tolerated!
It means that an employer actually has to follow the rules terminate someone. Which isn't hard to do, and more importantly protects the good employees too, which is the important part.
9 times out of 10 a supervisor drags their ass on addressing a problem person because it requires 10 minutes of paperwork and they decide to just scream at the person instead as if that solves it.
This happens at UPS, this happens in healthcare, this, I assume, happens in schools too.
The other deep secret of public schools is that "bad teachers" are often the result of gross mismanagement and abuse from principals and other administrators. Supervisors don't want to start documenting the teachers failings, because they don't want to experience what would happen if the process revealed their own behavior.
Rahm Emanuel's recent conversion to "maybe the principals are the real problem" is an insight that many educators have come to over the years.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
Did you have a specific argument you'd like to make, beyond quoting that abstract?
Did you have a specific argument you'd like to make, beyond quoting that abstract?
The argument that increases in teacher experience do not lead to increases in teacher performance, therefore unions seeking higher compensation for experienced teacher is rent seeking is novel. Also, the article links to references that articles that are far more nuanced than the broad statements in the argument (unless you consider "There is a U curve where teacher performance rises with experience and then flattens late career" to be equivalent).
Teacher salaries vs student outcomes is not at all the way I would measure the positive or negative impacts of teacher unionization.
One of those is a quantifiable amount that can be agreed upon by all involved and is simple to bargain about and manipulate.
The other is barely-quantifiable at best and deeply influenced by factors entirely outside of the control of any individual teacher, or the union as a whole.
And I feel like it's weird to say a union is rent-seeking if it manages to improve outcomes for union members. The point of a teachers union is to make teaching a more bearable job.
Teacher salaries vs student outcomes is not at all the way I would measure the positive or negative impacts of teacher unionization.
One of those is a quantifiable amount that can be agreed upon by all involved and is simple to bargain about and manipulate.
The other is barely-quantifiable at best and deeply influenced by factors entirely outside of the control of any individual teacher, or the union as a whole.
And I feel like it's weird to say a union is rent-seeking if it manages to improve outcomes for union members. The point of a teachers union is to make teaching a more bearable job.
The paper makes a lot more sense of you think of the reseachers starting with the premise that unions are bad then working backwards.
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
edited February 2019
the idea that union demands that teachers make more money is consistent with rent-seeking is asinine, especially without some discussion of fairness in compensation, as rent-seeking as a concept inherently implies that the extra value being sought is undue, and double especially since the abstract itself says that more experienced teachers benefit from this effect more, which is the whole point of working, and wages, and *gesticulating wildly* this entire stupid system of labor extraction
the idea that union demands that teachers make more money is consistent with rent-seeking is asinine, especially without some discussion of fairness in compensation, as rent-seeking as a concept inherently implies that the extra value being sought is undue, and double especially since the abstract itself says that more experienced teachers benefit from this effect more, which is the whole point of working, and wages, and *gesticulating wildly* this entire stupid system of labor extraction
Like, if the argument is that late career teachers lose effectiveness due to reasons, then the response isn’t to argue for flat salaries across the career (lol wut?), which is the implication. It’s to adopt the military policy of generous early retirement for those who have served and put in their time.
Oh c'mon Spool, get real this is total bullshit and you know it. You always get the whining 'buuuuuut Unions make it too hard to get rid of bad workers!!!' It's the same tired drivel that gets trotted out when someone wants to whine about tenure. Because job security is Bad and not to be tolerated!
It means that an employer actually has to follow the rules terminate someone. Which isn't hard to do, and more importantly protects the good employees too, which is the important part.
all I have is the following two anecdata points
1) shepherded three kids K-12 and never even heard of a teacher getting fired, for any reason
2) fired some people myself, it's expensive and time consuming to properly document termination with cause.
Oh c'mon Spool, get real this is total bullshit and you know it. You always get the whining 'buuuuuut Unions make it too hard to get rid of bad workers!!!' It's the same tired drivel that gets trotted out when someone wants to whine about tenure. Because job security is Bad and not to be tolerated!
It means that an employer actually has to follow the rules terminate someone. Which isn't hard to do, and more importantly protects the good employees too, which is the important part.
all I have is the following two anecdata points
1) shepherded three kids K-12 and never even heard of a teacher getting fired, for any reason
2) fired some people myself, it's expensive and time consuming to properly document termination with cause.
1) is because most of the time, attrition does the job for administrators - the 1-5 year retention rates are horrid. It's also because for many schools the choice is sadly between a bad teacher and no teacher. We're facing a massive teacher shortage, because of the shitty way we treat teaching as a profession in the US.
As for 2), that's also part of the job as an administrator. This is literally arguing that it's too hard for administrators to do their jobs properly, which is an argument that shouldn't be taken seriously.
Oh c'mon Spool, get real this is total bullshit and you know it. You always get the whining 'buuuuuut Unions make it too hard to get rid of bad workers!!!' It's the same tired drivel that gets trotted out when someone wants to whine about tenure. Because job security is Bad and not to be tolerated!
It means that an employer actually has to follow the rules terminate someone. Which isn't hard to do, and more importantly protects the good employees too, which is the important part.
all I have is the following two anecdata points
1) shepherded three kids K-12 and never even heard of a teacher getting fired, for any reason
2) fired some people myself, it's expensive and time consuming to properly document termination with cause.
1) is because most of the time, attrition does the job for administrators - the 1-5 year retention rates are horrid. It's also because for many schools the choice is sadly between a bad teacher and no teacher. We're facing a massive teacher shortage, because of the shitty way we treat teaching as a profession in the US.
As for 2), that's also part of the job as an administrator. This is literally arguing that it's too hard for administrators to do their jobs properly, which is an argument that shouldn't be taken seriously.
for 1) so at 20ish kids per class, 4 classes a day, we're talking a couple hundred kids fucked out of an education while we let retention rates do their thing? That's abysmal. All these arguments seem to heavily favor the longterm public (union) benefits, rather than the harm to individual kids in the course of dealing with problems. A 5-year plan for recruiting good elementary teachers means your 4th graders are in high school before it realizes benefits.
2) no it's just a thing that it's quite hard to identify a bad teacher and also not easy to fire one with cause, plus the teacher needs to be so egregiously bad that a parade of substitutes is the better option, which it's maybe not. Why shouldn't "it's hard to fire people" be taken seriously? Because it's someone's job to do the hard thing? It's still hard!
It's complex and high-stakes. "School administrator" as a job title isn't exactly bringing in the top talent either in a lot of cases.
I mean, if it's hard to identify a bad teacher, you generally don't want the firing process to be quick & easy, right?
As mentioned, though, you want better teachers? Better benefits, respect, and $$$. Unions will probably be important to helping any of those actually stick, so if you look at the aggregate unions still are beneficial.
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Maybe now they'll go somewhere with lower taxes and people who like having jobs.
Unemployment rate is something like 4.3% in NYC
I guess there's a huge amount of complexity here tbh. I've written and deleted about 10 things so far!
If the locals didn't want it and it was going to be pricey for Amazon anyway, it's probably the best decision for all involved.
I mean there is also the fact that Cuomo damn near gave them a blank check and they were getting so much state money it would be a very long time before their tax bill was a positive number. Probably better than Foxconn in that it would actually be built but still one of those stupid subsidized business via government things.
Also that maybe NYC doesn't need to give away $3billion in tax incentives for a business to move there / get property developed. Especially not one of the richest companies in the world.
MWO: Adamski
The two main reasons I've ever seen for bad employs sticking around because of unions:
1) Lack of documentation by management. Generally it's hard to fire people because you need to establish cause. People don't like to have to do the work to establish cause.
2) They are working to rule. Technically they are doing exactly what is required of them under the contract. Which is annoying but also, like, write a better contract then. This is a trade of services for money not a fucking calling of your heart.
Did you see all the incentives that these municipalities were rushing to give Amazon? It was like pro sports stadium grift on steroids. These deals harm communities, and it's good that grassroots pressure told Amazon to kindly fuck off.
You see bad employees stick around in non-unionized workplaces too, just for different reasons. It's usually about knowing a guy in those cases.
Or management just being shitty and wanting to avoid conflict.
Like my girlfriend's non-unionized school that has several teachers that come in late daily and constantly foist off all their work onto others. They've been around for years because the management is completely timid and wants to pretend everything is fine instead of dealing with the problems at the school.
They did get rid of one guy who was sexually harassing other teachers.
They didn't fire him, though, just didn't renew his contact at the end of the year.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
And let's be real that property will be developed anyway. It's not like they were proposing to move to the middle of nowhere (despite the idea that everything in NYC not Manhattan is the middle of nowhere)
The biggest thing is worklife balance. My wife works essentially 12 hour days when school is open. 5 of those hours are more stressful than my whole year.
Considering also that the cost per job in terms of giveaways would range from $48k (Amazon's estimate) to over $112k, NYC could literally pay 100,000 of the unemployed a living wage and still come out ahead, without the disastrous effects on housing prices, commuter infrastructure, etc.
Um, what? Could you be a little specific?
I think some of this is also simple economics. Years of no raises and pay freezes dating back to before the '08 crash coupled with constantly rising rents, healthcare, and consumer prices across the board means that people either act or get forced out of the labor market due to not being able to afford to both work and pay their bills.
I work in North Carolina, and teachers unions are illegal here but you also get the same complaints about bad teachers. Of course, you also get the same complaints about teachers and their unions, because Southern conservatives are convinced that teacher unions are the cause of their bad educational systems despite most of them banning them decades ago.
I don't think giving the administration the ability to abuse people with impunity helped make it a more enriching experience for the kids.
Edit: she left, and was lucky enough to be able to afford to spend a year looking for work thanks to my dad's income. She found a position at a public school with a strong union.
She had a lot of shit to complain about at that school, but she never had to decide whether it was worth being abused in order to maintain an income.
It means that an employer actually has to follow the rules terminate someone. Which isn't hard to do, and more importantly protects the good employees too, which is the important part.
9 times out of 10 a supervisor drags their ass on addressing a problem person because it requires 10 minutes of paperwork and they decide to just scream at the person instead as if that solves it.
This happens at UPS, this happens in healthcare, this, I assume, happens in schools too.
It _probably_ wouldn't have been a screwjob on par with what Foxconn is doing in Wisconsin, but there was a huge disparity between what was being offered up for the privelege and what them locating there actually would've brought in.
One need only look at the Seattle city council bowing to pressure from Amazon to overturn the minimum wage hike to see why no city should want them.
Here's an article on this topic
The other deep secret of public schools is that "bad teachers" are often the result of gross mismanagement and abuse from principals and other administrators. Supervisors don't want to start documenting the teachers failings, because they don't want to experience what would happen if the process revealed their own behavior.
Rahm Emanuel's recent conversion to "maybe the principals are the real problem" is an insight that many educators have come to over the years.
The argument that increases in teacher experience do not lead to increases in teacher performance, therefore unions seeking higher compensation for experienced teacher is rent seeking is novel. Also, the article links to references that articles that are far more nuanced than the broad statements in the argument (unless you consider "There is a U curve where teacher performance rises with experience and then flattens late career" to be equivalent).
You asked for evidence and I provided an interesting article on the topic.
I don't particularly have any arguments to make, I felt that the abstract alone was sufficiently interesting for the thread, but I suppose not.
this is an unmitigated victory for New York
One of those is a quantifiable amount that can be agreed upon by all involved and is simple to bargain about and manipulate.
The other is barely-quantifiable at best and deeply influenced by factors entirely outside of the control of any individual teacher, or the union as a whole.
And I feel like it's weird to say a union is rent-seeking if it manages to improve outcomes for union members. The point of a teachers union is to make teaching a more bearable job.
The paper makes a lot more sense of you think of the reseachers starting with the premise that unions are bad then working backwards.
Like, if the argument is that late career teachers lose effectiveness due to reasons, then the response isn’t to argue for flat salaries across the career (lol wut?), which is the implication. It’s to adopt the military policy of generous early retirement for those who have served and put in their time.
all I have is the following two anecdata points
1) shepherded three kids K-12 and never even heard of a teacher getting fired, for any reason
2) fired some people myself, it's expensive and time consuming to properly document termination with cause.
1) is because most of the time, attrition does the job for administrators - the 1-5 year retention rates are horrid. It's also because for many schools the choice is sadly between a bad teacher and no teacher. We're facing a massive teacher shortage, because of the shitty way we treat teaching as a profession in the US.
As for 2), that's also part of the job as an administrator. This is literally arguing that it's too hard for administrators to do their jobs properly, which is an argument that shouldn't be taken seriously.
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for 1) so at 20ish kids per class, 4 classes a day, we're talking a couple hundred kids fucked out of an education while we let retention rates do their thing? That's abysmal. All these arguments seem to heavily favor the longterm public (union) benefits, rather than the harm to individual kids in the course of dealing with problems. A 5-year plan for recruiting good elementary teachers means your 4th graders are in high school before it realizes benefits.
2) no it's just a thing that it's quite hard to identify a bad teacher and also not easy to fire one with cause, plus the teacher needs to be so egregiously bad that a parade of substitutes is the better option, which it's maybe not. Why shouldn't "it's hard to fire people" be taken seriously? Because it's someone's job to do the hard thing? It's still hard!
It's complex and high-stakes. "School administrator" as a job title isn't exactly bringing in the top talent either in a lot of cases.
As mentioned, though, you want better teachers? Better benefits, respect, and $$$. Unions will probably be important to helping any of those actually stick, so if you look at the aggregate unions still are beneficial.
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