Confessions of a Community College Dean addresses a debate: are teachers "workers" or "professionals"? One quote:
I’d argue that how one understands tenure will have a great deal to do with which position one takes. I’ve suggested before that it’s reasonable to have tenure or unions, but not both, and this debate helped me crystallize that sentiment. Tenure is a lifetime commitment by the institution. (Since the badly-misguided repeal of a mandatory retirement age, this is literally true.) To suggest that a lifetime commitment somehow doesn’t carry with it some sort of reciprocal obligation strikes me as narcissistic, if not laughable. Legally, tenure amounts to ownership of a job. Having tenure and a union amounts to negotiating against yourself, an ethically dubious proposition worthy of an Illinois governor. Being insulated for life against the vagaries of the economy is a privilege, and a rare one; for that privilege to bring with it a certain responsibility for stewardship of the institution is only fair.
I always thought of teachers as professionals, but not since the unions seduced some of them. And I have never really understood the concept of tenure at all, especially in a world in which profs and teachers can be paid quite well, and receive perks and pensions that most other jobs lack. I happen to be a partner in a firm, but the Exec. Committee could let me go tomorrow if they wanted to and I would be on the street like every other working stiff. Nothin' wrong with that.
