Tenure more or less gives the educator a vested right in the job, he/she can be forced out with a little ingenuity. As in any other line of work. I once worked for the highway department and in this office there was a totally incompetent engineer whom they sent out to do stuff that only required an inspector to handle. He got all the s-—details, and did those so poorly that only the kindness of the boss kept him from being transferred. Anyone with pride would have been long gone.
American workers no longer have the luxury of “pride” anymore; there are mortgage/rent payments, dentist visits for kids, etc.
If tenure wasn’t such a lock on lifetime employment, then why do places like NYC keep hundreds of teachers out of the classroom on full salary? They admit it is because of the legal costs associated with terminating them (due to their tenure); it is UNlike any other job. Public school unions have single-handedly turned NJ into a gubmint worker state in a few decades, where no American (or corporation) would dream of setting up shop; too many alternatives without the nanny-state costs. In the meantime, NJ is becoming a state of illegal aliens and the permanent underclass (the illegals are needed to fill the public school seats formerly occupied by American children - that is why there is no enforcement of immigration laws in NJ); not exactly the revenue sources necessary for the socialist utopia. We’ve already laid off hundreds (if not thousands) of cops across the state due to fiscal issues (the teachers have a stronger union, so they kept their jobs + raises while cops/firefighters have to find work now in the southeastern states if they’re fortunate); the money that fed the government workforce is gone.
NYC is run in a very similar fashion; recall when the city was asked how soon they would replace the 343 firemen killed on 9/11, the initial response was “We won’t”. They already needed to scale back the force (and that was probably related to how much space in the WTC and elsewhere in the city was vacant anyway); these jobs are simply no longer justified in these numbers anymore.