The latest from the teachers union is that it wants to take over the job of deciding whether to fire a teacher who is doing an inadequate job. This notion was advanced by the president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, in a speech to the Association for a Better New York. She called for what the union termed a “radical restructuring of the teacher discipline process.” One incompetent teacher in our schools is one too many, Ms. Weingarten avers.

According to Ms. Weingarten, it has been management, not the union, that has been delaying the resolution of teacher discipline cases. So she proposed that the Education Department “stand aside” and “let the union work with a struggling teacher.” If the union “can’t help that teacher within 90 days,” Ms. Weingarten said, “we will recommend that he or she no longer teach.” Once she sells this deal she’s going to try to get someone to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.

On the merits, Ms. Weingarten’s proposal can be ranked as one of those classic definition’s of chutzpah, like the lad who murders his parents and pleads for mercy because he’s an orphan. The union actually put out a press release with the headline, “Teachers Union Urges End to Delays in Discipline Process.” We can’t imagine a businessman or -woman accepting the reversal of roles between management and employees that Ms. Weingarten is proposing.

This point will not be lost on the governing authorities. The chairwoman of the City Council’s education committee, Eva Moskowitz, who last year held a brilliant set of hearings casting light on the absurdity of the 800-page contract through which the teachers union entangles both the taxpayers who pay them and the pupils whom teachers are supposed to be teaching, sent a wire making the basic point.”Co-management of the school system doesn’t make sense,” she said. “If principals are going to be held accountable for their schools, they need to be able to make basic personnel decisions.”

“A conflict of interest” is how Ms. Moskowitz characterized the notion that the teachers union ought to be able to evaluate and train its own members. And she also pointed out one of the most galling elements of the entire educational setup in the public schools, which is that “parents can’t hold the UFT accountable.” The truth is that many parents have come to enormously admire individual teachers in the public schools in New York City, and not just in isolated cases but in thousands of cases.

But the union has come to stand between the parents and the teachers as it does between the students and teachers and the taxpayers and the teachers. And now Ms. Weingarten wants it to usurp a clear management responsibility and prerogative. The fact is that Ms. Weingarten’s proposal has nothing whatsoever to do with improving the city’s schools and everything to do with her fundamental strategy with respect to the negotiations on a teachers contract. She wants to run out the clock on the Bloomberg administration.

It’s not a bad strategy from the point of view of the union, which chose to interpret the rejection by voters of the mayor’s proposal to ban party primaries as the death knell of his administration in general. But it has its risks. The mayor is starting to reorient his administration. He’s set to announce today that the $400 property tax rebate that he’d suggested could now be made an annual rebate. Whether he can win some trust with a second candidacy promising tax cuts remains to be seen. But it’s by no means clear that when his credibility is tested against the teachers the union will win.