Today in Labor History—December 24

Today in Labor History—December 24

December 24, 1834 – Elizabeth Chandler, abolitionist, was born on this date.In 1825, when she was only eighteen years old, her poem, "The Slave-Ship", was published, leading Benjamin Lundy, a well-known abolitionist and publisher, to ask her to write for his periodical, The Genius of Universal Emancipation. Chandler called for better treatment for Native Americans and the immediate emancipation of slaves. Chandler was responsible for popularizing one of the most famous abolitionist images, the kneeling female slave with the slogan "Am I not a Woman and a Sister." (From the Daily Bleedand Wikipedia)

Woody Guthrie’s “1913 Massacre” Performed by Ramblin’ Jack Elliot

December 24, 1913 - Seventy-four people in Calumet, Michigan, were killed in the "Calumet Massacre." About 500 children and their parents were at a Christmas party for the children of striking copper miners, when someone yelled "Fire!" There was no fire, but dozens were trampled in the ensuing panic. Goons and scabs barred the doors, trapping people inside, exacerbating the injuries. The person who yelled “fire” was never identified, but many strikers believed it was a company guard. (From Workday Minnesotaand the Daily Bleed)

December 24, 1936 – On Christmas Eve 50 policemen beat up 150 strikers on the Houston docks. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—October 13

Roosevelt Portrayed As Hard On Boss--But He Threatened Troops Against The Workers

October 13, 1902 – Teddy Roosevelt threatened to send in federal troops as strikebreakers to crush a coal strike. (From the Daily Bleed)

Ferrer's Execution, Portrayed in Stained Glass by Flavio Costantini (from the Stelton Modern School Website)

 October 13, 1909 -- Francisco Ferrer, founder of the "Modern School" movement, was executed in Spain by the Catholic Monarchists. Ferrer was an anarchist educator who opposed the Church’s monopoly over education in Spain and created that state’s first secular, co-educational schools that taught poor and affluent children side by side. On July 28, martial law was declared throughout Spain, accompanied by brutal military repression. In September, Ferrer was captured and thrown in the fortress of Montjuich in Barcelona. During a kangaroo court he was convicted of fomenting the insurrection and was executed by firing squad on October 13, 1909. His execution led to worldwide condemnation and protests. George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as anarchists and radicals like Peter Kropotkinand Emma Goldman protested the execution. (From the Daily Bleed)

October 13, 1909 – Demonstrations were held throughout Europe in protest of the execution of Francisco Ferrer. Violent confrontations between protesters and police occurred in Paris, where over 500,000 people turned out. 20,000 demonstrated in Argentina and led to a General Strike. (From the Daily Bleed)

October 13, 1934 – In what was either its first and only principled stand or just one of its first of many expressions of economic nationalism, the AFL voted to boycott all German-made products in protest of Nazi antagonism to organized labor within Germany. (From the Daily Bleed)

October 13, 1947 – A Chilean mine-worker strike occurred during this month.(From the Daily Bleed)

October 13, 1985 - Over 1,100 mostly female and minority office workers went on strike against Columbia University in New York City, ultimately winning union recognition and raises. (From Workday Minnesota)

October 13, 1999 – Workers at a Del Monte subsidiary in Izabel, Guatemala, were forced to quit their jobs at gunpoint, as bosses attempted to prevent a strike. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—October 12

October 12, 1845 – The First Industrial Congress of US (first US national labor congress) met in  New York City. (From the Daily Bleed)

October 12, 1898 – Also known as “Miners Day,” October 12 commemorates the 14 miners who were killed in the “Virden Riot” of October 1898, when miners got in a shootout with mine guards attempting to bring in strikebreakers. The riot came in response to mine owners refusal to accept the 8-hour day, offer raises, abolish the company store and recognize the United Mine Workers. (From Workday Minnesota and the Daily Bleed))

October 12, 1902 – Fourteen miners were killed and 22 were wounded at Pana, Illinois. (From the Daily Bleed)

October 12,  1925 – 600 U.S. marines landed and took over police duties in Panama City, Panama, during a strike and rent riots. (From the Daily Bleed)

October 12, 1976 – Over one million Canadian workers demonstrated against wage controls. (From Workday Minnesota)

October 12, 1998 – Matthew Shepard died from injuries sustained after being beaten and tortured in a homophobic assault in Laramie, Wyoming. (From theDaily Bleed)

October 12, 2000 – Peruvian teachers fought police in front the building of Congress, in Lima, demanding the resignation of Fujimori. (From the Daily Bleed)

California’s Inflated Number of Non-Credentialed Teachers

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Everyone knows that the nation’s lowest performing schools (generally also the poorest) have the highest number of poorly trained or Non-Credentialed teachers. This common wisdom may very well be true. These are the toughest schools to teach at, with the greatest pressure for quick, miraculous improvements and the greatest expectations for teachers to work longer and harder to solve the schools’ myriad problems. Thus, it stands to reason that such schools would have higher rates of attrition and consequently have to hire more teachers each year than other schools. The need to hire many teachers in a short period of time would likely force many to hire some teachers who have not yet finished earning their credentials or who are teaching out of their subject area (also known as misassignments).

There has been considerable research to back up this hypothesis. In California, the data suggested that nearly 60% of the teachers in the state’s lowest-performing schools were not properly credentialed for the subjects they were teaching. This appalling statistic led to an intense effort to get these teachers properly credentialed or replace them with colleagues who already were properly credentialed.

The problem is that the data was wrong, very wrong. The actual number of improperly certificated teachers in the 2005-06 school year was only 29%, half the official number, according to an analysis by California Watch. While this is still a very high number that needs to be addressed, the faulty original statistic provided an inaccurate baseline for the state’s monitoring of the problem.

California watch examined the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) records in July, 2012, and found many duplications. The CTC later admitted that all the records had been duplicated and has since cleaned up its records according to the Bay Citizen.

Since the 2005-06 school year, misassignments have decreased dramatically and were down to 13% in the lowest performing schools for the 2010-11 school year, the most recent in which data is available, the Bay Citizen reports.

13% is still high and one might justifiably wonder why the state still has so many misassigned teachers in the classroom. After all, it has laid off 10,000s of fully credentialed teachers over the past four years. Why aren’t they filling vacancies and replacing the non-credentialed teachers with the growing pool of laid off credentialed teachers?

One reason is that low seniority teachers are sometimes replaced by non-credentialed long-term substitutes during layoffs, particularly in tough to fill positions with shortages of suitably credentialed teachers. While this example might seem asinine from the perspective of the students, parents and public, who all want the most qualified teachers possible in the classroom, it makes perfect sense to school districts grappling with large budget deficits. Substitute teachers cost a fraction of what districts must pay for their full-time tenured teachers.

This example should also seem ridiculous to teachers and their unions since it involves the replacement of dues-paying teachers with an underpaid non-union replacement workers. Yet the unions tend to defer to the districts, citing the districts’ rights under Ed Code to lay off workers during hard times and hire substitute teachers to fill in when teachers are unavailable. However, districts’ right and obligation to hire substitutes is intended to provide continuity and safety for children when a teacher is out sick or has a personal emergency, not to provide districts with a means to lower their payroll costs by firing qualified teachers.

Of course, if we really want the best fully credentialed and properly assigned teachers in every classroom, we need to pay teachers a hell of a lot more, give them a lot more autonomy and decision-making power, give up the testing and accountability mania, and generally treat them with a lot more respect and support. This would go a long way toward attracting people to the profession and keeping them there.

Today in Labor History—October 3

October 3, 1902 - President Theodore Roosevelt met with miners and coal field operators and tried to settle the 5-month long anthracite coal strike, the first time a president had personally intervened in a labor-management dispute. Three weeks later, the miners settled. (From Workday Minnesota)

October 3, 1915 – The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was founded. (From the Daily Bleed)

October 3, 1920 – The Modern School at Clivio, Italy was reopened and then shut down again by the government. (From the Daily Bleed)

October 3, 1932 – All 164 students at Kincaid High School in Illinois walked out on strike to protest their school’s use of scab labor to provide heating coal. (From the Daily Bleed)

October 3, 1945 – A seven-state Greyhound bus strike took place. (From theDaily Bleed)

October 3, 1967 – Woody Guthrie died of Huntington's disease at the age of 52. (From the Daily Bleed)

October 3, 1970— Baseball umpires called their first strike (against employers instead of players). (From the Daily Bleed)

Mural dedicated to the Hunger Strikers, Derry, Northern Ireland

 October 3, 1981 -- A hunger strike by Irish nationalists at Maze Prison in Belfast, was called off after seven months and ten deaths. Striking prisoner Bobby Sands, who was elected to parliament from his jail cell during the hunger strike, eventually died from his protest. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—August 21

Execution of the Girondists, woodcut, 1862

August 21, 1752 – French radical priest Jacques Roux (1752-1794) was born in Charente, France. He participated in the French Revolution and fought for a classless society and the abolition of private property, and helped to radicalize the Parisian working class. He became a leader of the far left faction Enrages and was elected to the Paris Commune in 1791. He demanded that food be available for everyone and argued that the wealthy should executed if they horded it. (From the Daily Bleed and Wikipedia)

Nat Turner's capture

August 21, 1831 - Nat Turner launched a slave revolt in Virginia that lasted two days and resulted in the deaths of 60 whites dead. In response, scores of African-Americans were lynched, including many who did not participate in the revolt. (From Workday Minnesota)

August 21, 1893 – Emma Goldman led a march of a 1,000 people to Union Square, where, told the crowd that workers have a right to take bread if they are hungry and to demonstrate "before the palaces of the rich." She was arrested the following week because her speech was “incendiary.” (From the Daily Bleed)

August 21, 1920 – Ongoing violence by coal operators and their paid goons in the southern coalfields of West Virginia led to a three hour gun battle between striking miners and guards that left six dead. 500 Federal troops were sent in not only to quell the fighting, but to ensure that scabs were able to get to and from the mines. A General Strike was threatened if the troops did not cease their strikebreaking activities. (From the Daily Bleed)

August 21, 1952 – A strike began against International Harvester by the United Electrical Workers.       (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—August 12

August 12, 1881 - The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners was founded. (From Workday Minnesota)

August 12, 1898 – Coal company guards killed seven and wounded 40 miners who were trying to stop scabs from taking their jobs in Virden, Illinois. (From the Daily Bleed)

August 12, 1933 – A General Strike brought down the Machado government in Cuba. (From the Daily Bleed)

August 12, 1936 -- The First International Brigades arrived in Spain to fight against Franco. (From the Daily Bleed)

British internationalistas' flag

Hungarian Internationalistas' flag

August 12, 1959 – Little Rock, Arkansas began to integrate two of its public schools, in response to a federal mandate, admitting a whopping six black students to two schools and even this was met with violence by segregationist mobs. (From the Daily Bleed)

The Little Rock 9 being escorted into Central High in 1957

August 12, 1978 – South Korean police stormed the YH Wig factory sit-in, arresting 180 and killing one. (From the Daily Bleed)

August 12, 1992 - The U.S., Canada and Mexico signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which took effect in January 1994. Since then, the U.S. has lost 3 million jobs, while wages in Mexico have plummeted. (From Workday Minnesota)

Today in Labor History—August 5

Chartist riot

August 5, 1842 – The "Plug Plot" riots began in England in response to high unemployment, high food prices and declining wages. There was a spontaneous strike wave of weavers and spinners culminating in a general strike. The riot got its name when the plugs were pulled out of factory boilers. The strikers were influenced by the Chartist movement, 1838-1848. (From the Daily Bleed)

August 5, 1931 - Roughly 1,500 unemployed men stormed the plant of the Fruit Growers Express Co. in Indiana Harbor, Indiana, demanding jobs to keep from starving. The company called in the city police, who routed the jobless with clubs. (From Workday Minnesota)

Public Enemy #1: Reagan declares striking air traffic controllers in violations of law

 August 5, 1981 – President Ronald Reagan fired the striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), declaring the work stoppage illegal. Reagan's action crushed the union and sets the tone for labor-management relations across the country for the ensuing 30 years, with employers beginning to take tougher stands against unions and increasingly relying on strikebreakers and mass firings. It also hastened the decline in union membership. (From Shmoop Labor History)

Today in Labor History—July 7

July 7, 1903 – The "March of the Mill Children" began, led by Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, from Philadelphia to Teddy Roosevelt’s summer home in Oyster Bay, Long Island. The goal of the march was to publicize the terrible conditions for children laborers and to demand a 55 hour work week.

July 7, 1882 - Striking longshoremen in New York City held a meeting to plan how to keep new immigrants from scabbing on them. They were successful, at least temporarily, as 500 newly arrived Jews marched straight from the ship to the union hall on July 14. The following day, 250 Italian immigrants stopped scabbing on the railroad and joined the union. (From Workday Minnesota)

Teachers Scab On Themselves in Pennsylvania

Chester Upland Teachers Will Be Working For Free, Indefinitely (image from Flickr, by danielmoyle)

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) slashed $900 million in state education funds last year, according to Think Progress. As a result, the Chester Upland School District in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, which gets nearly 70% of its funding from the state, expects a $19 million shortfall. The school district has told its teachers that by Wednesday it will not be able to pay their salaries. So the teachers, with the support of their union, have decided to work for free.

The school board and the unions both asked Corbett to provide financial aid for the district, but he refused. Pennsylvania’s Education Secretary Ron Tomalis said the district was being punished for failing to properly manage its finances. However, even if the district hadn’t mismanaged its finances, no worker should be expected to nor should they volunteer to work for free.  By doing so, not only have they become slave laborers, they have weakened their bargaining positions when revenue becomes available to start paying them again.

From the bosses’ perspective, if the workers are such true believes that they’d work for free, then they’d certainly work for less and do more if asked—something that was happening even before the district ran out of money. Last fall, Chester Upland laid-off 40% of its professional staff and about half of its unionized support staff, leaving class sizes of over 40 students. They also withheld pay hikes worth approximately $800,000 from its teachers, in violation of its contract with them.

Of course it is terrible that the district is out of money and that the children will suffer. However, it is not the teachers’ fault, nor their responsibility. Working for free doesn’t fix the problem, either. Kids will still be in overcrowded classrooms, which is both unsafe and pedagogically unsound. The schools will still be unable to afford supplies. And the teachers will gradually stop coming to work when their own bills start to pile up and other means of earning a living become available.

A scab is someone who undermines workers’ struggle to improve their pay and working conditions by replacing them on the job during a strike or by working for lower wages. Teachers who work for free are serving as scabs for their bosses. They are bailing their bosses out and giving them a free ride for their mistakes and corruption. They are helping the bosses to underpay and overwork them.

They are also undermining other workers’ struggles by sending the message that at least some workers are willing to work for free if they think they are providing a public good. Considering the deplorable condition of so many other state budgets, it would not be surprising to hear that other school districts and social service providers can no longer afford to pay salaries. The administrators of these agencies might very well look to Chester Upland for inspiration.

Is The OWS Movement Too Nice?

OWS Poster (Image from Flickr, by Takomabibelot)

Aside from the few allegations of protesters throwing paint, smashing windows, or spray painting buildings, the tactics of the OWS have been pretty peaceful, mellow and nice. Sure, it troubles some that they have persistently tried to live outdoors in public where their frustration and anger are clearly visible to all, or that they have shut down a few terminals of a few ports for a few hours, costing a few companies a few million dollars. But let’s be honest, when compared with protests of the past, particularly those occurring during the Great Depression and the numerous violent mining and train strikes between 1870s and 1920s, the OWS movement has been pretty damned pleasant and nonthreatening. Consider the following historical examples:

The Great Upheaval of 1877

“There was a time in the history of France when the poor found themselves oppressed to such an extent that forbearance ceased to be a virtue, and hundreds of heads tumbled into the basket. That time may have arrived with us.”

These words were spoken by a cooper to a crowd of 10,000 workers in St. Louis, armed with lathes and clubs, participating in the national wave of strikes known as the Great Upheaval.  Other speakers in St. Louis openly called for the use of arms and violence, not only to defend themselves against the violence of the militias and police hired by the bosses to suppress the Great Strike, but for outright revolutionary aims:

“All you have to do. . .” said one speaker, “is to unite on one idea—that the workingmen shall rule this country. What man makes, belongs to him, and the workingmen made this country.”

St. Louis Commune, 1877 Great Upheaval

The Great Upheaval began in the fourth year of the nation’s worst depression in history. It came in the wake of great accumulation and concentration of wealth by a few major capitalists, particularly the railroad owners. In 1862, Congress granted them huge swaths of land. In 1863, they passed the National Banking Act, which greatly increased the wealth and power of financial capitalists.

The Great Upheaval began in Martinsburg, WV, on July 16, 1877, when the B&O (Baltimore and Ohio) Railroad slashed wages by 10%. The train crews refused to work, drove out the police and occupied the rail yards. Local townspeople backed the strikers. When the militia was sent in to run the trains, the strikers and their supporters derailed the trains and guarded the switches at gunpoint. While they halted all freight movement, they continued to move mail and passengers, thus maintaining public support. When militia reinforcements were sent in, most mutinied or refused to fight, as they were sympathetic to the workers. (For more, see here, here and here).

1892    Frisco Mine was dynamited by striking Coeur D’Alene miners after they discovered they had been infiltrated by Pinkertons and after one of their members had been shot. Prior to this, the mine owners had increased work hours, decreased pay and brought in a bunch of scabs to replace striking workers. Ultimately, over 600 striking miners were imprisoned without charge by the military in order to crush the strike. (Sources: Wikipedia; Fire in the Hole)

1899    Bunker Hill: Bloody strikes had been going on at this and other Idaho mines over the course of the 1890s. The mine owners had been using scabs, Pinkertons, armed goons, soldiers, lock-outs and other tactics to squeeze the workers and crush their union. In retaliation, the miners loaded a train with dynamite and delivered it to the Bunker Hill mine in 1899, killing one scab and one WFM member. (Sources: Laborers.org; Wikipedia)

1920    Matewan Battle: Ten people were killed when coal company officials in Matewan, West Virginia, tried to remove striking union workers from company housing, sending agents from the Baldwin-Felts detective agency. Sheriff Hatfield, who supported the miners’ right to organize, tried to arrest the detectives who, in turn, tried to arrest Hatfield. Unbeknownst to the detectives, they had been surrounded by miners. When the smoke had cleared, there were 7 dead detectives (including Albert and Lee Felts) and 4 dead townspeople. In the time leading up to the Battle of Matewan, numerous miners had been assassinated by vigilantes, goons or detectives. (From Workday Minnesota, Wikipedia, Daily Bleed and Matewanwv.com)

Miners with Bomb Dropped by U.S.

1921    the Battle of Blair Mountain: 20,000 coal miners marched to the anti-union stronghold Logan County to overthrow Sheriff Dan Chaffin, the coal company tyrant who murdered miners with impunity. The Battle of Blair Mountain was one of the largest civil uprisings in U.S. history and the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War, lasting 5 days and involving 10,000-15,000 coal miners confronting an army of scabs and police. The battle began after Sheriff Sid Hatfield (an ally of the miners and hero from the Battle of Matewan) was assassinated by Baldwin-Felts agents. Much of the region was still under martial law as a result of the Battle of Matewan. Miners began to leave the mountains armed and ready for battle. Mother Jones tried to dissuade them from marching into Logan and Mingo Counties, fearing a bloodbath. Many accused her of losing her nerve. The miners ignored her and a battle ensued between miners and cops, private detectives, scabs and eventually the U.S. military. The uprising was quashed after aerial bombardment by the U.S. government. (From Workday Minnesota, Wikipedia and the Daily Bleed) (From the Daily Bleed)

January 3, 1931 Roughly 500 farmers marched into the business section of England, Arkansas, to demand food for their starving families after their crops were ruined by a long drought. The farmers threatened to take the food by force if it was not freely provided to them, one of scores of such incidents that occurred during the Great Depression (and surprisingly have not happened more frequently during the current one). (From Workday Minnesota)

January 4, 1933 – Angered by increasing farm foreclosures, members of Iowa's Farmers Holiday Association threatened to lynch banking representatives and law officials who instituted foreclosure proceedings for the duration of the Depression. In April, 600 farmers battled the sheriff and his deputies to prevent a foreclosure. A group of farmers dragged a district judge from his chair, put a rope around his neck, and threaten to hang him unless he promised not to issue any more eviction notices. That same month, state officers in Crawford County were beaten, prompting the Iowa governor to declare martial law in three counties and send in the National Guard. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—December 24

December 24, 1834 – Elizabeth Chandler, abolitionist, was born on this date. In 1825, when she was only eighteen years old, her poem, "The Slave-Ship", was published, leading Benjamin Lundy, a well-known abolitionist and publisher, to ask her to write for his periodical, The Genius of Universal Emancipation. Chandler called for better treatment for Native Americans and the immediate emancipation of slaves. Chandler was responsible for popularizing one of the most famous abolitionist images, the kneeling female slave with the slogan "Am I not a Woman and a Sister." (From the Daily Bleed and Wikipedia)

Woody Guthrie’s “1913 Massacre” Performed by Ramblin’ Jack Elliot

December 24, 1913 - Seventy-four people in Calumet, Michigan, were killed in the "Calumet Massacre." About 500 children and their parents were at a Christmas party for the children of striking copper miners, when someone yelled "Fire!" There was no fire, but dozens were trampled in the ensuing panic. Goons and scabs barred the doors, trapping people inside, exacerbating the injuries. The person who yelled “fire” was never identified, but many strikers believed it was a company guard. (From Workday Minnesota and the Daily Bleed)

December 24, 1936 – On Christmas Eve 50 policemen beat up 150 strikers on the Houston docks. (From the Daily Bleed)