The current Chicago teachers strike is the first major
teachers strike in years. Indeed, there have been few major strikes in any
industry over the past decade, with a general trend of declining job actions
and union membership over the past thirty years and a corresponding downward
spiral in wages and living conditions. In Michigan, for example, there were 454
teacher strikes between 1967 and 1980 (an average of 35 per year), resulting in
substantial wages gains, but only 18 per year in the 1980s,
according to William Boyd, David Plank, and Gary Sykes.
The
National Educators Association (NEA)
has lost over 100,000 members since 2010.
In contrast,
during the post-World War II era, strikes were common in the U.S. In the period
from 1945-1946, 400,000 miners and 750,000 steel workers went on strike in
the largest strike wave in U.S. history. At one point during this period
there were 1.6 million workers simultaneously on strike. By the end of the
year, more than 4.5 million workers had engaged in strike actions. (Sources: Daily Kos,
New York
Times, Marxists.org,
Counter
Punch). The Chicago strike is the largest strike in the past year.
The “death”
of unionism, or its declining membership and influence, is generally blamed on
union busting politicians (e.g., Scott Walker, Wisconsin, or Reagan’s mass firing of the
PATCO air traffic controllers), or outsourcing and downsizing by the
bosses, (which reduce the number of union jobs and thus the number of unionized
workers). Indeed, the Taft-Hartley Act (1947), which made the General Strike
illegal, was a serious blow to workers’ power (there hasn’t been an effective
General Strike in the U.S. since then). However, another major cause is the
unions themselves, which have, for the most part, relinquished their most
powerful weapon—withholding labor—in exchange for increasing reliance on
political action (e.g., lobbying, initiatives, phone-banking for candidates)
and behind-the-scenes deals with the bosses.
It is
important to recognize that job actions are a form of direct action in which
the workers have direct control over the action, how long to continue, how
aggressively to pursue it, and what kinds of compromises (if any) to accept. Political
action, in contrast, requires that they give up their power and control to
second and third parties. The union bosses, not the rank and file, generally
determine which campaigns and candidates to support, even though the campaigns
are funded with the dues paid by the rank and file. Once a candidate has been
chosen, it is not a sure thing that that candidate will win and, even if he
does, there is no guarantee he will do anything the union wants. In fact,
because the politicians’ interests are more closely aligned with those of the
capitalist class, it is unlikely the politicians will do much at all in support
of workers other than a few modest reforms that allow them to maintain social
and economic hegemony and continue reaping huge profits.
One
particularly refreshing aspect of the CTU strike is that teachers are not just
fighting for increased pay (which they certainly deserve). They are also
fighting against deplorable working conditions (dilapidated and unsafe
facilities, large class sizes, inadequate health and social services for their
students) and an abusive evaluation system which would cause teachers to be
laid off en masse because their students’ test scores didn’t rise sufficiently.
And they are engaging in this fight even though the president of their parent
union, Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers, has cut deals
with politicians to allow similar evaluation “reforms” in other school
districts.
Likewise,
the fight against using student standardized tests to evaluate teachers is a
direct challenge to the Obama Administration, which has been pushing for
similar “reforms” across the nation, and to the leadership of both the NEA and
AFT, which both gave early support to Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign,
despite his support of high stakes exams, privatization and charter schools.
Strikes are,
of course, a risky endeavor. If you lose, you could find yourself worse off
than before or even jobless. They are difficult to organize and maintain (e.g.,
strike funds generally cannot sustain workers for long; scabs might be brought
in to do the work and keep the system functioning, thus undermining the effects
of walking off the job). Public sentiment can be manipulated to oppose the
workers and support the bosses’ goals.
This is
particularly challenging for those in the “helping” fields, like teachers and
nurses, where walking off the job can easily be spun to seem like a selfish and
greedy act that harms their constituents (i.e., students and patients). Indeed,
many in the “helping” fields, particularly teachers, see themselves first as
advocates and benefactors for their students and only secondarily, if at all, as
workers. This tendency makes it very hard to get teachers to walk off the job
and it leads many to accept declining pay, benefits and working conditions so
long as the bosses claim these concessions are necessary for the wellbeing of
the students.
Yet teachers
are workers. The overwhelming majority rely on their paychecks to put food on
the table for their families. They do not go to work solely because they want
to help children, though this may be why they teach rather than something else.
Teachers, like all workers, necessarily have an adversarial relationship with
their bosses, even when those bosses seem nice or appear to have similar
interests (e.g., the wellbeing of children).
This is
because they do not truly have the same interests. For one, the administrators
have the power to fire teachers and to impose demands on them. Teachers do not
have this power and must make considerable sacrifices and compromises to
appease their administrators or risk losing their jobs and the ability to feed
their families. Teachers are, like all other workers, dependent on their
salaries for their own survival and thus are wage slaves.
Our Working Conditions Are Your Children’s
Learning Conditions
- While
teachers’ interests often do not coincide with those of their administrators
and school boards, they often do coincide with those of their students. Here
are just a few:
- Decent pay
helps attract and retain the best quality teachers, which is certainly in the
best interests of students. While everyone wants to get the best deal for their
money, including the taxpayers, one needs to consider the quality they are
getting. Better quality almost always costs more. If teachers are not paid a
decent wage they will look for work elsewhere.
- Evaluation “reforms”
that emphasize using student test data are terrible for kids since the scores
have almost no meaningful or consistent correlation with teacher quality.
Teachers who work with low income, special education and ELD students tend to
get lower average student test scores. According to Karen Lewis, president of
the CTU, the Chicago plan for making student test scores worth 25% of teachers’
evaluations could result in 6,000 teachers losing their jobs over the next two
years. By anyone’s calculations, this would be a disaster for kids. How can CPS
find 6,000 highly qualified teachers in two years?
- Smaller
class sizes make it easier for teachers to give individualized one on one
attention to students. Smaller classes means fewer papers to grade, which means
teachers can put more time into each paper, providing more detailed and useful
comments. Smaller classes are easier to manage and thus are safer for students.
This is particularly important in physical education, science and some of the
industrial arts course.
There's a lot at stake for teachers and other workers with the current strike in Chicago. A victory could provide the confidence and momentum for other unions to start resisting the standardized test mania, demanding wage increases, and fighting for better working conditions through job actions. A loss for the CTU would likely lead to even fewer teacher strikes in the future and a further evisceration of the teachers unions.
