Engaging in Economic Strikes

• Unions need to seriously consider the ramifications of calling a strike for improved wages or working conditions. If union officials, who are designated to act on behalf of its members, are not experienced and knowledgeable about the economic and social factors that may occur as a result of a strike, they may harm employees who engage in the strike. Employees cannot be fired for their decision to strike, but there is nothing that guarantees them a successful outcome when the strike ends.
  
  

Loss of Individuality

• Union members are not allowed to negotiate for themselves. They become members of a general bargaining unit, and the union represents them in negotiations. Even when unions promote policies with which members do not agree, they have no recourse. Unions sometimes push education policies that they believe are in the best interests of their members while the students may be left out of the equation as they put teachers ahead of students.
  
  

Ensuring Money and Power

• Union members pay union dues as a condition of their continued employment. The costs of union membership may vary, but the dues are still an expense to employees that they may not have otherwise. The average dues for the National Education Association are between $400 and $600, which raises $785 million in revenue for the association, according to figures in Kayla Bise's publication in "Foundations of Education and Instructional Assessment," a Wikitext developed by Old Dominion University. The union's large base and massive dues that they charge allow them to rally voters to defeat ballot initiatives and candidates they do not like.
  
  

Resisting Education Reform

• Some think unions advance the interests of their members and leave out the needs of the students. According to Patrick Gibbons' article on the Nevada Policy Research Institute, unions have been accused of resisting holding schools and teachers accountable for student progress, watering down academic standards, opposing teacher evaluations designed to measure improvement and delaying changes that would improve the quality of education. Gibbons says that union insiders like David Kilpatrick, a former top officer in the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, think that "...unions went from protecting teachers from malevolent management to becoming concerned only with their political power and money."