Today in Labor History—November 27

November 27, 1937 – The ILGWU-commissioned the kitschy musical "Pins & Needles" opened on Broadway, with a cast made up entirely of International Lady Garment Worker Union members. Rehearsals were held at night and on weekends, and performances were all on Fridays and Saturdays to appease their bosses (i.e., keep their jobs). In 1962, a 25th anniversary edition of the score was released featuring Barbra Streisand. (From Workday Minnesota)

California’s Wimpy Students

For the second year in a row, California students have tested poorly on statewide physical fitness tests. Only 31% of students received healthy scores in all six of the areas tested areas, according to state schools Chief Tom Torlakson. Scores had been steadily rising for years and then started to drop two years ago. (For more, see the following article in the Los Angeles Times)

Today in Labor History—November 26

November 26, 1868 – Ignoring orders to kill only warriors, an Army contingent led by General Custer massacred 103 Cheyenne in their sleep — during the "Battle of the Washita," Oklahoma Territory. (From the Daily Bleed)

November 26, 1883 – Emancipationist and former slave Sojourner Truth died on this date in Battle Creek, Michigan. (From the Daily Bleed)

November 26, 1911 -- Paul Lafargue, son-in-law of Karl Marx, died on this date. Lafargue wrote “The Right to Be Lazy” in 1893 while in prison. (From theDaily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—November 25

America, Love It or Leave It (By Force)

November 25, 1919 – A strike for union recognition by 395,000 steelworkers continued throughout November. The strike began on September 22 and collapsed on January 8, 1920. The strike was used by the feds as an excuse to deport approximately 250 anarchists, communists and labor agitators to Russia on November 24, marking the beginning of the so-called "Red Scare." (from the Daily Bleed)

November 25, 1946 - St. Paul teachers, led mostly by women, walked out of their classrooms in American’s first organized teachers’ strike. 1,165 teachers and principals (all represented by the same union) remained out until Dec. 27 in what they called the “strike for better schools.” (From Workday Minnesota)

Today in Labor History—November 24

Future Slayer of God, Charles Darwin, Age 7

November 24, 1859 -- Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species was published. (From the Daily Bleed)

November 24, 1875 - The Cigar Makers International Union, Local 144, was chartered with Samuel Gompers as president. (From Workday Minnesota)

Mollie Steimer c1918 (public domain)

 November 24, 1921 – Mollie Steimer, after doing 18 months for handing out leaflets, was shipped off to Soviet Russia along with three other radicals (Jacob Abrams, Samuel Lipman, & Hyman Lachowsky). In the U.S., they were victims of the Red Scare, for handing out leaflets opposing the deployment of U.S. troops against Soviet Russia. However, they were also soon victims of the Red Terror in Russia. Steimer was deported from the USSR in 1923 for aiding “criminal elements.” (From the Daily Bleed)

November 24, 1927 – On Thanksgiving Day 1927, California troops battled 1,200 inmates when Folsom prisoners revolted. One prisoner was shot and five others were later hanged. (From the Daily Bleed)

November 24, 1947 –Chicago newspaper printers' strike began in opposition to the recently passed anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act. (From the Daily Bleed)

Today in Labor History—November 23

Francois-Noel Babeuf (public domain)

November 23, 1760 – French revolutionary Francois-Noel Babeuf was born on this date in St. Quentin, France. Babeuf was a communist leader in the French Revolution and a member of the Conspiracy of Equals (along with Jacque Roux and Jean Varlet) until he was betrayed to the Directory, captured and executed. (From the Daily Bleed)

November 23, 1831 – The Silk Workers' Revolt in Lyon continued, with workers occupying the Town Hall and an insurrectionary government was formed. (From the Daily Bleed)

Western Federation of Miners Poster (public domain)

 November 23, 1903 – Army troops were sent to Cripple Creek, Colorado to put down a rebellion by striking coal miners. 600 union members were thrown into a military bullpen, and held for weeks without charges. When a lawyer arrived with a writ of habeas corpus, General Bell, who led the repression, responded "Habeas corpus, hell! We'll give 'em post mortems!” (From theDaily Bleed)

November 23, 1935 - Mine Workers President John L. Lewis quit the American Federation of Labor to the lead the new Congress of Industrial Organizations, which was rapidly organizing workers in steel, auto, rubber and other major industries. (From Workday Minnesota)

Data Driven Nonsense from Harvard and the Gates Foundation

A new Gates-funded Harvard study has found that Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) teachers vary substantially in quality (more than in other districts) and that it disproportionately places inexperienced teachers in lower performing classrooms (as in other districts). The study, Human Capital Diagnostic, was done by the Strategic Data Project (SDP), which is connected with Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research.

The biggest problem with this study is that it is a bunch of nonsense.

Let’s start with the authors’ most profound claim: The best teachers in LAUSD provide the equivalent of eight additional months of instruction during the school year compared with the district’s worst teachers. Since their research was based entirely on student scores on the California Standards Tests (CSTs), a high-stakes exam used to rank schools, and the top teachers in the study were the ones with the largest student gains on these tests, what they are really saying is that the best teachers provided the equivalent of eight additional months of test prep.

Big wow!

The authors state that there is “no specific cut-off for determining whether an effect size is large or small,” but they assert that a standard deviation of 0.2 is considered large in education research. The study found that the difference between a 25^th and a 75^th percentile teacher is one-quarter of a standard deviation (0.25). This would be significant if it was based on a meaningful measurement of teacher effectiveness. Unfortunately, all it really says it that some teachers are better than others at squeezing out student gains on an otherwise lousy exam. It does not tell us whether their students are becoming self-motivated, independent learners or competent critical thinkers and problem-solvers. Furthermore, the study provided no explanation for how it determined that 0.25 standard deviations was equivalent to eight months of instruction.

The authors also claim that Teach for America (TFA) and Career Ladder teachers have higher effects on their students than other novice teachers by 0.05 and 0.03 standard deviations and they even attributed a gain of one to two months in additional learning to these relatively small standard deviations. They make similar claims for National Board Certified teachers, whose students test gains were 0.03-0.07 standard deviations higher than those of other teachers. Yet, if a standard deviation of 0.2 is considered large in education, then a standard deviation of 0.03-0.07 ought to be considered small or even insignificant.

While the standard deviation may be insignificant, the fact that this was being researched in the first place is not. TFA provided 13% of new hires to the district over the past six years (according to the study’s authors) and it would be of great interest to the district’s administrators to show that the investment was worthwhile. So let’s assume for the sake of argument that the difference between TFA recruits and other novice teachers was significant. What would this mean? TFA teachers may in fact be more willing than other novice teachers to work long, unpaid overtime hours and substitute quality student-centered instruction for “drill and kill” style teaching, both of which could produce higher test scores without improving the quality of student learning.

Perhaps a bigger problem with this study (like all studies and reforms based on student test data) is that numbers are not the only relevant type of data in education and sometimes not even the best. Ester Quintaro, writing for the Shanker Blog, talks about the “streetlight effect,” from the parable of the drunk who searches for his lost wallet under the streetlight, not because he lost it there, but because the light is better there and it would be easier to find it if it happened to be there. Student test data is easy to access now that it is required of every district in the U.S. under No Child Left Behind (NCLB)—it is under the streetlight.  Yet, at best it is only a proxy or very rough estimate of teacher quality since it only considers a small part of what teachers are expected to do.

Quintara also correctly points out that NCLB has helped to institutionalize what counts as data. “Scientifically-based research” is now limited to standardized test scores, which, as it turns out, are not particularly scientific. Case studies, ethnographies, teacher observations and portfolios, and other qualitative data are considered unacceptable.

One promising finding from the study was that teacher performance after two years was found to be a good predictor of future effectiveness. In other words, the current system of giving tenure to teachers after two years of good evaluations makes sense. Teachers are not getting worse after two years. Novice teachers are not better than veterans and should not have the right to bump them during layoffs and LAUSD is not top heavy with a bunch of cranky veterans who can no longer teach.

Today in Labor History—November 22

Live Free or Die Fighting, Canuts Uprising, Lyon Silk Strike, 1831 (public domain)

November 22, 1831 -- The revolt of the silk workers was continuing in Lyon, France. Workers seized arms and fought the military. Approximately 100 died, 69 of them civilians. 263 soldiers were wounded. (From the Daily Bleed)

In this book, Bernays Argued That The Manipulation of Public Opinion is a Necessary Part of Democracy

 November 22, 1891 -- Dr. Edward L. Bernays was born in Vienna, Austria. Bernay, a nephew of Freud, is considered by many to be father of public relations. He is also credited with getting women to smoke and helping United Fruit to overthrow Guatemalan President Arbenz. (From the Daily Bleed)

November 22, 1909 - The “Uprising of the 20,000,”occurred in New York, as female garment workers went struck for better pay and an end to sweatshop working conditions. 19-year-old Clara Lemlich, who led the strike, said she had no patience for talk and called for her coworkers to join in a General Strike. Their strike won some gains for workers, like a raise and a reduction in work hours to 52 hours per week, but did not end sweatshop conditions in the industry. During the strike, a Judge told arrested picketers,"You are on strike against God."

In the black of the winter of nineteen-nine
When we froze & bled on the picket line,
We showed the world that women could fight
& we rose & won with women's might.

Hail the waistmakers of nineteen-nine
Making their stand on the picket line,
Breaking the power of those who reign,
Pointing the way, smashing the chain.

 (From Workday Minnesota and the Daily Bleed)

Unions Collaborate With Obama to Squeeze American Workers

Image from Flickr, by DonkeyHotey

With the country moving ever closer to the “fiscal cliff,” the Obama Administration is doing everything it can to strike a “grand bargain” that appeases the ruling elite. The grand bargain is a euphemism for an austerity package that will maintain low taxes for the wealthy and subsidies for their business by slashing social spending and services that help keep the rest of the country from sinking further into poverty.

Union leaders met with the president on Tuesday to give their support for his plan which will include large cuts to social programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps and other welfare programs, the WSWS reported this week. Because there is broad support for most of these programs, the President is depending on the unions to help quell popular opposition and avert the kinds of protests and mass discontent seen in Greece, Spain, Portugal and the UK.

While the unions have claimed they are fighting to protect American workers from austerity, their actions indicate that their actual goal is to sell the president’s scam as a good deal for their members.  AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, for example, said his organization was committed to making sure that the middle class and workers don’t end up “paying the tab for a party that we didn’t get to,” and he asserted that the president had the same commitment. Also present at the meeting were Mary Kay Henry, head of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Lee Saunders of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association (NEA). Mary Kay Henry said “We expect to have the president’s back on the agenda that the voters just declared support for. The president has always said he needs a movement behind his mandate.”

Unions Have President’s Back (As He Attacks the Middle and Working Classes)

In 2011 Obama proposed a deficit-reduction plan that would have raised the eligibility age for Medicare, cut Medicare benefits, reduced Social Security benefits, slashed Medicaid, and reduced tax deductions for the middle and working classes. According to the WSWS, William Daley (White House chief of staff when Obama first proposed this “grand bargain”) told Bloomberg News that this would be Obama’s starting point for the next round of negotiations with Republicans. To make matters worse, the extension on unemployment benefits will automatically expire on January 1, ending payments to over 2 million unemployed workers and Obama has said nothing about how (or if) he would avert this disaster.

The “bargain” in this Grand Bargain is Obama’s insistence that taxes must be raised on those earning more than $250,000 per year. However, he has indicated that he would be willing to consider other ways of increasing revenue from the wealthy, like maintaining current tax rates, but decreasing deductions. In either case, the rich earn most of their income through capital gains, which are taxed at the relatively low rate of 15%. Thus many, like Mitt Romney, end up paying a far lower effective rate than the majority of Americans (who earn most or all of their income through salaries) and will continue to do so even if Obama wins approval for tax increases on the wealthy.

Further evidence that Obama is planning austerity for the majority of Americans comes from a secret document leaked last week to Meet the Press. The document indicates that in 2011 Obama proposed over two dollars in cuts for every dollar in increased revenue ($2.8 trillion in cuts and $1.2 trillion in tax increases), setting the stage for raising the debt ceiling and the automatic spending cuts that comprise the “fiscal cliff.” The document revealed that Obama was willing to cut TRICARE (health insurance for the military and veterans) and to lower tax rates for business and for the wealthy. The document also suggested cutting Medicare by $250 billion between 2012 and 2021 and by $800 billion between 2022 and 2031. It proposed cutting Social Security payments by $112 billion over the next 10 years and cutting veterans’ disability payments by $24 billion. It also suggested slashing $11 billion from military retirement and $33 billion from benefits for retired federal employees, as well as $2 billion from nutrition assistance, $4 billion from flood insurance and $10 billion from higher education.

All this sounds exactly like an attempt to make American workers pay the tab for a party they didn’t attend. The Republicans have refused to sign off on any tax increases for the wealthy and Obama has indicated he would be willing to lower their tax liability. A few Republicans, like Mitch McConnell, have indicated they might accept a cap on deductions in exchange for cuts to entitlements (e.g., slashing Medicare and Social Security) and Obama has indicated he is open to this. In the end, the rich will sacrifice little or nothing toward closing the federal deficit, which will be subsidized almost entirely by reductions in services and programs that benefit the majority. Yet the deficit is almost entirely a byproduct of gifts to the wealthy, like subsidies to defense contractors, oil and coal companies, and big Agri-business; bailouts of banks; and tax breaks for the wealthy and their businesses.

Education Cuts for California Despite Prop 30 Victory

Image from Flickr, by Double-M

The California Teachers Association (CTA) lobbied heavily for passage of Proposition 30, mobilizing thousands of teachers to phone bank and canvas neighborhoods. Together with other state unions, they spent $50 million to get the initiative passed. They claimed it would save public education and restore funding to the schools. However, with more than $18 billion slashed from K-12 education since the recession began, the $6.6 billion in projected revenues from Prop 30 won’t even come close to restoring public education funding to pre-recession levels, especially considering the state budget deficit is now estimated at more than $15 billion. It will do nothing to bring back the 80,000 teaching jobs lost since the recession began nor reopen any schools that were shut down, the WSWS reports.

What Proposition 30 will do is prevent $6 billion in trigger cuts that had been built into the last state budget as a way to blackmail California voters into approving the tax hikes. Rather than restoring public education, Prop 30 simply maintains the status quo of an $18 billion hole in the state’s K-12 funding and one of the very lowest per pupil funding rates in the nation. While it does raise taxes on those making more than $250,000 per year, the increase is only a nominal 1-3% increase on their payroll taxes (i.e., the taxes withheld from their salaries) and it leaves the tax rate on their capital gains (which makes up the majority of their income) unaffected. At the same time, Prop 30 raises the state sales tax from 9.25% to 9.75%—a regressive tax increase that disproportionately affects poor and working class people.

While the California State University (CSU), University of California (UC) and state community college systems are all planning to increase course offerings and some, like CSU, are planning modest tuition refunds ($249 per semester, according to the Los Angeles Times), they are also planning other fee increases and service cuts. CSU, for example, is still planning to implement fee increases for students taking more classes than they need to graduate, and the UC system is planning on increasing fees for graduate and professional programs by 1.5% to 35%. UC, which threatened 20% tuition hikes if Prop 30 failed (and promised no new fees this year if it passed), is leaving open the possibility of raising undergraduate tuition again next year.

In response to the proposed cuts and the unwillingness of UC to go beyond a tuition freeze and actually lower tuition, UC students have been protesting at UC campuses and at meetings of the university’s regents. Students staged a sleep-out in Berkeley on Wednesday night. Hundreds of students were joined by faculty and unionized workers on Thursday to protest budget cuts that have resulted in slashed course offerings, layoffs and large tuition hikes. They blocked roads leading to the meetings and then disrupted the meeting so effectively that the regents had to call a temporary recess.

Students do not simply want a reduction in tuition—many want a completely subsidized higher education system. Last Friday, KPFA’s “Up Front” news program broadcast protesters chanting, “No cuts! No fees! Education must be free!” Until recently, California did subsidize both the UC and CSU systems to the point that neither charged tuition and both charged fees that were relatively affordable for middle income families. Back in the early- to mid-1980s, for example, it only cost $1,000-1,200 per year to attend UC. By 1995, it was over $4,000. By 2010, it has risen to more than $11,000. Last year, tuition at UC was $13,218. (Click here for more on the history of UC tuition).

With the passage of Prop 30, Los Angeles Unified (LAUSD) is planning on restoring the five school days that had been cut from the school year the Los Angeles Times reports, as well as restoring teacher pay for the 10 days which they had lost to furloughs. However, Superintendent Deasy warned of a new round of cuts (implying the furloughs and pay cuts could return) if Congress and President Obama cannot resolve the “fiscal cliff” crisis, as this would leave LAUSD with a new $60 million budget shortfall.

Of course, if this happens, many districts in the state could suddenly find themselves with large deficits, too. This is because Prop 30 is only a bandage over a gaping wound. Education at all levels, from pre-K to graduate school, has been eviscerated over the past decade and Prop 30 does nothing to restore the cuts. Prop 30 does little to close California’s current budget deficit and it does nothing to stabilize California’s revenue stream or prevent future deficits and education cuts.

There is a glimmer of hope for education funding in the future. One of the reasons California has had so much difficulty in balancing its budget for the past decade is that voters approved a law requiring a two-thirds supermajority in the legislature before any new tax increases can be approved. The most recent election, however, gave the Democrats just such a supermajority in both houses of the state legislature for the first time in nearly 80 years. This will not only allow lawmakers to pass tax increases, but it also gives them the power to override the Governor’s veto.

Whether or not they will use their power in this way remains to be seen, but seems unlikely considering that every one of them would be negatively affected by a serious tax increase on the wealthy. This is not only because they are all wealthy themselves, but because they would be biting the corporate hand that feeds them, keeps them in office, and provides them jobs when they get termed out.