Mitt Romney pretty much ignored education for most of the Presidential campaign, but suddenly he has become concerned with the damage teacher unions are doing in public schools. In his latest stump speech he declares parents will have more voice in choosing their children’s schools, because “parents have no unions.”

Governor Romney has no clue what goes on in public schools, but he knows that teachers’ unions will not vote for him, so he can afford to demonize them.  Public service unions, in particular, are considered enemies of progress in Romney’s world.

Indeed public service unions in some cities and states have bargained their way into oblivion.  Sometimes they have treated their contracts as sacred documents, never subtracting, always adding. Sometimes they have protected those who deserved to be fired. But those days are gone.

No public service employee on the ground level is getting rich in these days of enforced austerity, so it is time to remember why public service is unionized in the first place.

For those who did not buy their way into it, public service is exactly that—service.  Those who choose to teach in public schools or walk a beat in the police force or risk their lives fire-fighting, could earn much more in private employment.  Even public school teachers, who earn more than many of their private school counterparts, could move into higher brackets by starting out in the banking or computer or insurance industry and using the literacy and numeracy skills from a solid liberal arts education.

As a teacher educator I meet both teenagers and middle-aged candidates for teaching in advising conferences as well as the classroom every day.  They understand the nature of service and the challenges of even finding a teaching position in this economy. But they have a vision of “making a difference,” they love the subjects they teach, and they want to impart that love to students.  No one has ever asked me how much they will earn by teaching.

You might say that visionaries like these really need a union.  Because they are committed to service, they are embarrassed to bring up anything that sounds like “What’s in it for me?”  Many teachers have issues with their unions, because they think teachers should be above grubbing for dollars.

No doubt Mitt Romney favors such teachers, because they will work for a pittance.  But I wonder what the parents and spouses of these teachers think? I wonder what veteran teachers think when they are disappointed in contract after contract, their district pleading poverty? I remember a entire decade of school district poverty in the 1980’s when teachers were routinely laid off and class sizes grew every year. Those were the years of Block Grant funding of education.

In 2012 politicians are less interested in squeezing teachers by cutting federal budgets, than they are dismantling the unions that advocate for their benefits.  The business model of education demands that the personnel budget line shrink, so those who do not send their children to public schools are not inconvenienced with taxes.  Not surprisingly those who benefit directly from public school funding have no trouble supporting tax increases, realizing that teachers have to eat, too.

So public service unions are needed just to represent what teachers and social workers and public safety employees are ill-disposed to represent for themselves. They are always reminded and mindful that they chose service, and that choice implies less compensation. They remind themselves “they are not in it for the money,” while those anticipating retirement remind their younger colleagues that there is a life after teaching, one that needs provision.

There is a difference between service and servitude.  Public service unions have been dedicated to marking that difference in negotiation after negotiation.  Only those who have avoided that service or, in some cases, bought their way into it, are willing to obscure that distinction.  But no one should treat public service employees as less than the professionals they are, and if unions are needed to protect them, than we must negotiate with unions and respect their role in public service.