Annotated Bibliography
This is the official bibliography for LAWCHA’s Teaching and Public Sector Unionism initiative. A full listing of our resources can be found on the Teaching Resources page. For an overview of teachers’ unions, see our featured article, “A Century of Teacher Organizing: What Can We Learn?”
General
This section provides materials on overviews of teacher and public sector unionism, as well as the austerity agenda that is creating a crisis in pensions, etc. Many have links to the actual articles.
Arnesen, Eric. Editor. Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History. New York: Routledge, 2007.
The entries below offer important, concise background information on their respective topics.
Leroux, Karen. “National Education Association.” 952-956.
Slater, Joseph E. “Public-Sector Unionism.” 1143-1149.
Lyons, John F. “American Federation of Teachers.” 87-90.
Bale, Jeff and Sarah Knopp. Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012.
“In the first decade of the twenty-first century, a conservative, bipartisan consensus dominates about what’s wrong with our schools and how to fix them. In each case, those solutions scapegoat teachers, vilify our unions, and promise more private control and market mentality as the answer. In each case, students lose—especially students of color and the children of the working class and the poor.This book, written by teacher activists, speaks back to that elite consensus. It draws on the ideas and experiences of social justice educators concerned with fighting against racism and for equality, and those of activists oriented on recapturing the radical roots of the labor movement. Informed by a revolutionary vision of pedagogy, schools, and education, it paints a radical critique of education in Corporate America, past and present, and contributes to a vision of alternatives for education and liberation.” (description from Haymarket website: http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Education-and-Capitalism)
Bell, Deborah. “Unionized Women in State and Local Government” in Women, Work and Protest: A Century of U.S. Women’s Labor History, ed. Ruth Milkman. New York: Routledge, 1985.
Bell examines public sector unionism across the nation—both its rise and its status in the mid-1980s. Bell concludes that “unionized public-sector women are at the forefront of the fight for improved employment conditions for women.” (296) This situation, Bell argues, did not arise “from a long-range strategy on the part of public-sector unions. Rather, it is the unexpected consequence of the vast influx of women into the growing number of government jobs, and the effects of the complex relationship between the trade union, civil rights and women’s movements.” (296) Consequently, Bell continues, that even “in spite of budget-cuts, the public sector has become a central arena for addressing women’s issues.” (296-297)
Bowles, Samuel and Herbert Gintis. School in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011.
“Many recent books on education and schooling examine small pieces of the system to suggest improvements–teacher training and practice, assessments, school design and management, and the like. No book has ever taken on the systemic forces at work in modern education systems like Schooling in Capitalist America and suggested that a radical transformation of society is required to improve schools.” (description from Haymarket website)
Burns, Joe. Strike Back: Using the Militant Tactics of Labor’s Past to Reignite Public Sector Unionism Today. Ig Publishing, 2014.
“During the 1960s and 1970s, teachers, sanitation workers and many other public employees rose up to demand collective bargaining rights in one of the greatest upsurges in labor history. These workers were able to transform the nature of public employment, winning union recognition for millions and ultimately forcing reluctant politicians to pass laws allowing for collective bargaining and even the right to strike. Strike Back uncovers this history of militancy to provide tactics for a new generation of public employees facing unprecedented attacks on their labor rights.” (Description from http://igpub.com/strike-back/)
Bussell, Bob. PowerPoint presentations on public sector unionism. See Graphs/charts tab above for these.
“We Are One”: Protecting and Defending the Public Sector.” 2011. Explores the history of attacks on Public Sector workers.“Neither New Nor Normal”: The Politics of Economic Injustice and the Roots of Union Renewal, December 2012. Connects union struggles in the public sectors to attacks on private sector
Compton, Mary and Lois Weiner, eds. The Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers, and Their Unions: Stories for Resistance. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008.
Compton and Weiner have gathered together this collection of essays that examine neoliberal education policies from nations around the world, including United Kingdom, South Africa, China, Mexico, West Indies, United States, Namibia, India, Australia, Denmark, Canada, Brazil, and Germany. Compton and Weiner explain that “teacher trade unionists are grappling with the increasing privatization of education services,” which generally consist of, “the introduction of business ‘quality control’ measures into education, and the requirement that education produce the kind of minimally trained and flexible workforce that corporations require to maximize their profits.” (5) And while “the titles and acronyms of policies differ from one country to another,” they continue, “the basics of the assault are the same: undercut the publicly supported, publicly controlled system of education, teachers’ professionalism, and teacher unions as organizations.” (4) Compton and Weiner point out that, unfortunately, the “voices for privatization and neoliberalism have virtually the whole of the world’s media at their disposal to speed them on their way.” (6) “Ironically,” however, Compton and Weiner remind teachers that “the potential power of teachers and our unions to derail neoliberal reforms like privatization is often more apparent to our opponents than it is to teachers and union leadership.” (7) For Compton and Weiner, this means teachers need to be aware of the obstacles they face, but they should also realize the power they have to create positive changes.
Susan L. Robertson’s essay, “‘Remaking the World’: Neoliberalism and the Transformation of Education and Teachers’ Labor,” provides an excellent historical background for the development of neoliberal policies across the globe, including an explanation of the term “neoliberal.”
Dannin, Ellen. “The Long History of Privatization Failures,” Portside Online, October 23, 2013. https://portside.org/2013-10-24/long-history-privatization-failures
“We need to own up to is that privatization experiments, based on ideology rather than evidence, have created disruption, neglect, and harm to vital public services and infrastructure – and those effects have undermined the private sector which depends on high quality public services. We seem to have forgotten that the public sector has long created the environment and resources necessary for businesses to prosper.” (summary from Portside website)
Fraser, Steve and Joshua B. Freeman. “In the Rearview Mirror: A Brief History of Opposition to Public Sector Unionism,” New Labor Forum 20 (3): 93-96 Fall 2011
One of the best brief reviews of this history.
Giroux, Henry A. Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014.
“Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education reveals how neoliberal policies, practices, and modes of material and symbolic violence have radically reshaped the mission and practice of higher education, short-changing a generation of young people.Giroux exposes the corporate forces at play and charts a clear-minded and inspired course of action out of the shadows of market-driven education policy. Championing the youth around the globe who have dared to resist the bartering of their future, he calls upon public intellectuals—as well as all people concerned about the future of democracy—to speak out and defend the university as a site of critical learning and democratic promise.” (description from Haymarket website: http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Neoliberalisms-War-on-Higher-Education)
Gude, Shawn and Bhaskar Sunkara. Class Action: An Activist Teacher’s Handbook. New York: Jacobin Foundation, 2014. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/02/class-action-an-activist-teachers-handbook/
In this collection of essays, various writers, teachers, scholars, and activists explore so many issues related to the nation’s education system, especially the threat privatization poses to public education. One author examines the “school-to-prison pipeline.” In a section entitled “Running from Superman” (a reference to Davis Guggenheim’s documentary Waiting for “Superman”), numerous authors explore the many facets of the neoliberal school “reform” efforts: Teach For America, the business model of education, funding from big-business philanthropists like Bill Gates, and charter schools. Many articles explain the success of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), under the leadership of Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE), which came from mobilizing the rank-and-file membership, uniting with district parents and community members against school closings and other neoliberal policies. These various authors hold up the CTU as an example of effective organizing, one that “has indeed distinguished itself as neoliberal school-reformers’ most implacable foe.” (30-31) The contributors to this book intend for it “to be useful to those engaged in struggle—used for tabling and flyering, fuel for reading groups and public debate.” (5) So please read it and help spread the word!
Law, Justin. The Courts Vs. Teacher Unionism” and supporting documents
This is a blog for the LAWCHA site. It now includes links to specific source documents on legal rulings in the Chicago Teachers court cases so that we can trace how legal frameworks circumscribed and circumvented teacher rights.
Lichtenstein, Nelson. A Contest of Ideas: Capital, Politics, and Labor. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013.
In this collection of essays, Lichtenstein’s central point is that “intellectuals…play a decisive role in shaping the way men and women see the social and economic world in which they live.” (2) All of these essays, therefore, explore the intellectuals, along with the ideas they created, across the political spectrum in disputes involving organized labor. In one essay entitled “Bashing Public Employees and Their Unions,” Lichtenstein investigates the ideas used against public sector unionism, mostly by conservatives but also by liberals. Lichtenstein warns that “it would be a mistake to see the GOP offensive against the [public sector] unions as some kind of hasty and ill-planned gambit. The rhetoric and legislative program of politicians like [Wisconsin Governor Scott] Walker…refracts a multi-decade effort by conservatives—in politics, academia, think tanks, and management—designed to eviscerate trade unionism so that it will, in effect, simply wither away.” (197) Far from being mere opportunism, the “collective organization of workers, private or public,” continues Lichtenstein, “stands athwart [conservatives’] vision of how markets should work and the polity should function. (197-198)
Throughout this long history, Lichtenstein identifies three main types of arguments used against public sector unions, all of which were designed to “delegitimize a collective voice for public employees and divorce their interest from that of the larger public good.” (198) The first type of argument, which held most sway from 1919 (the year of the Boston Police strike) into the 1950s, claimed that “collective bargaining by workers in the public sector undercuts the sovereignty of government.” (198) From the 1950s into the 1980s, the second type of argument advanced the idea that “public sector unionism makes government too expensive and sets a standard that private industry cannot meet.” (198) Since the 1980s, a third type of argument progressively gained strength, one that “asserts that public sector unions are bad not because they undermine the sovereignty of the state, but because they sustain it, especially insofar as the state, at either the local or national levels, creates a set of public goods, like education, infrastructure, health care, and even public safety, that conservatives seek to either abolish or privatize.” (198)
Lichtenstein concludes the essay by pointing out the seriousness of conservatives’ commitment to undermining public sector unions and the inherent value of public sector unions: “Although conservatives are wrong to think that in recent decades public sector unions have created a bloated and corrupt welfare state, their hostility is nevertheless well founded because these institutions do in fact stand athwart the increasingly libertarian, neoliberal agenda that so many on the right advocates. Trade unions oppose the fragmentation of the public school system, they fight the privatizations of municipal services, they sustain the Democratic Party, and they politicize and mobilize voters who would otherwise remain alienated and voiceless.” (206)
Lipman, Pauline. The New Political Economy of Urban Education: Neoliberalism, Race, and the Right to the City. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Lipman looks at Chicago as a neoliberal “laboratory,” which she says is “driven by market ideologies and the regulatory power of global finance.” Lipman argues that “education is both shaped by and deeply implicated in globalized political, economic, and ideological processes that have been redefining cities over the past 25 years.” (3) As pervasive as the neoliberal mindset may seem, Lipman claims, the “current failure of markets and deregulation has brought to the fore weaknesses of the neoliberal strategy, creating an opening for alternative progressive agendas and alliances.” (10) Lipman also explains many key aspects of neoliberal ideology. In the neoliberal worldview, says Lipman, education is considered a “private good, an investment one makes in one’s child or oneself to ‘add value’ to better compete in the labor market, not a social good for development of individuals and society as a whole.” (14-15) In one of her chapters, Lipman explores the roots of “school choice” to better understand why these neoliberal policies appeal to so many “teachers and parents, particularly parents of color, who are fed up with the failures of public schools to educate their children appropriately.” (21) In order to create an alternative vision to neoliberalism, claims Lipman, we need to better appreciate its power.
Lyons, John F. “Regional Variations in Union Activism of American Public Schoolteachers” in Education and the Great Depression: Lessons from a Global History, E. Thomas Ewing and David Hicks, eds. New York: Peter Lang, 2006.
Lyons explores the reasons why so few teachers established unions in the United States. Some scholars, Lyons explains, attribute this limited amount of teacher unionism to a simple urban-rural divide: since so many teachers came from rural areas, they were not inclined to unionize while urban private-sector workers were. Other researchers, Lyons continues, claim that few teachers unionized because teachers “adhered to an ideology of professionalism,” which supposedly led teachers “to reject labor unions and militant industrial action.” (20) By comparing Depression-era Chicago to other areas around the country, Lyons finds that the mystery of teacher unionism is “more complex” than just the urban-rural divide or professionalism. As illustrated in the Chicago case, Lyons argues that the key factors that helped “teacher militancy and unionism flourish” are the “existence of a strong private sector labor movement, a tradition of teacher unionism, the acceptance of labor organizations by political elites and school administrators, and the greater social freedom of the large school systems.” (34)
Lyons also shows the long tradition of politicians’ and employers’ opposition to teacher unionism. Lyons explains that already by the 1910s, “presidents, governors, mayors, and judges argued” that in “a representative democracy,” “the will of the people was vested in elected officials who acted in the ‘public interest,’ and answered to the electorate. For public officials to recognize public sector unions, to bargain over conditions with them, or to allow them to strike, would require the public employer to share its decision-making authority with unelected people and violate the sovereignty of the government and the democratic will of the people.” (22)
Lyons also includes a concise comparative history of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) by explaining the two organizations’ foundings and their original purposes, along with the AFT’s relationship to Chicago and the Chicago Teachers’ Federation. (pages 20 through 22)
Mader, Jackie. “Teachers Unions’ Rise: A Look At Union Impact Over The Years,” Huffington Post, September 20, 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/20/teachers-unions-rise-a-lo_n_1900130.html
This article offers a brief timeline of teachers’ unions and associations in the United States, from the founding of the National Education Association in 1857 to the present.
Maynard, Melissa. “Public Strikes Explained: Why There Aren’t More of Them.” Stateline. September 25, 2012. http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2012/09/25/public-strikes-explained-why-there-arent-more-of-them
Maynard provides simple, direct answers to very important questions, such as “How do public sector strikes differ from strikes by private sector workers?” and “Why do teachers strike more often than other public employees?” To answer these questions, Maynard explains the significance of state laws, public opinion, and economic factors. In doing so, Maynard also offers a brief glimpse of the history of public sector collective bargaining and some idea on how to potentially move forward.
McBride, Bill. “Public and Private Sector Payroll Jobs: Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama,” Calculated Risk Blog, December 10, 2013. http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2013/12/public-and-private-sector-payroll-jobs.html
McBride created two line graphs that show the gains and losses of public and private sector employment under these five presidents.
McCartin, Joseph A. “Convenient Scapegoats: Public Workers Under Assault,” Dissent. Spring 2011. McCartin, Joseph A. “‘A Wagner Act for Public Employees’: Labor’s Deferred Dream and the Rise of Conservatism, 1970-1976.” Journal of American History 95:1 (June 2008), pp. 123-148.
McCartin tells the national story of efforts by public sector unionists to achieve federal rights to collectively bargain, like the ones their private sector counterparts secured in 1935. McCartin describes the hopes of public sector labor leaders and how close they came to success. Yet, because of a resurgent business community, economic slowdown, leery municipal governments, and divisions within the labor movement, public sector labor failed to achieve its federal protections. Indeed, public sector labor’s activism helped to develop a growing conservative movement across the country in the 1970s.
McCartin, Joseph. “Public Sector Unions and Worker Rights in Wisconsin” interview on “History for the Future.” March 1, 2011.
In this interview, McCartin explains the history of the public sector labor movement and its relation to the private sector labor movement, showing the parallels and differences. McCartin describes the factors that led to public sector unionism rapid upsurge in the 1960s and early 1970s, which he compares to private sector unionism’s gains in the 1930s. Public sector union growth, says McCartin, had much to do with the era’s Civil Rights Movement, since both movements held overlapping goals to overturn second-class citizenship. McCartin also provides a list of factors that placed strict limits on public sector unionism’s continued expansion in the late 1970s, including budget shortfalls, rising unemployment and inflation, and a conservative resurgence. McCartin pays special attention to Wisconsin and teachers.
Murphy, Marjorie. “Militancy in Many Forms: Teacher Strikes and Urban Insurrection, 1967-1974” in Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner, and Cal Winslow, eds. Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below in the Long 1970s. London: Verso, 2010.
Murphy explains that public school teacher “militancy appeared suddenly in the late 1960s, though the movement for teacher unionism was quite mature, dating to the early twentieth century. Like the rank-and-file militancy in other sectors, teacher activism drew some of its strength from a new, younger workforce, very much dedicated to the social issues of the day, including desegregation and ending the war in Vietnam.” (229) “Often, across the country,” Murphy continues, “teacher unions and civil rights leaders could find common cause, or at least avoid conflict. In several large urban settings, however, the rise of Black Power, particularly its separatist tendency, led to a series of complicated confrontations between African American activists and militant teachers, with tragic results.” (229) Murphy concludes that the “narrative of teacher militancy is a complex one, but it helps to explain how public employee unionism in this period cannot be separated from the urban rebellion, and how the inability of the two to come together played a key role in breaking apart the labor-civil rights coalition that [Martin Luther] King [Jr.] dreamed about.” (248)
Murphy also locates the “origins of the school choice and its complement, privatization” back in 1968, in the midst of these conflicts. (247) “As African Americans demanded control over their schools,” Murphy explains, “many conservative pundits and politicians quickly realized that such demands could be accommodated without much cost or inconvenience to their core constituents in the lily-white suburbs. Instead of busing to achieve integration, African Americans could control their neighborhood schools, which were doomed to underfunded status given the urban tax base. Suburban schools, meanwhile, would prosper free of the burden of educating the city’s children. It is no coincidence that school choice and privatization are most often touted for urban schools, not the suburbs.” (247-248)
Murphy, Marjorie. Blackboard Unions: The AFT and the NEA, 1900-1980. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.
In a national examination of the AFT and the NEA from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1980s, Murphy attempts to explain “the historical obstacles to the unionization of public school teachers, to show how difficult organization was, and to illustrate the contradictions faced by public employees in unionization.” (1) Murphy also explains the tension between unionism and professionalism in teachers’ organizations: “The ideology of professionalism in education grew into a powerful antiunion slogan that effectively paralyzed and then slowed the unionization of teachers. Only in the last twenty years have teachers effectively challenged the confining definitions of professionalism to declare that their own personal well-being was in fact a professional concern.” (1-2) To that end, Murphy explores the transformation of the NEA, which originally “claimed exclusive jurisdiction in professionalism” but now “rather prides itself on being called a union.” (2) The AFT, Murphy explains, always “held stubbornly to its trade-union heritage.” (2) Murphy also identifies fiscal crises and “recurrent red-baiting” as repeated obstacles to teacher unionism. (3)
Naison, Mark. Badass Teachers Unite!: Writing on Education, History, and Youth Activism. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014.
“This collection of important and much needed essays on education and youth activism draws from Naison’s research on Bronx History and his experiences defending teachers and students from school reform policies which undermine their power and creativity. Naison’s focus is identifying teaching and organizing strategies that have worked effectively in New York, and could be implemented in impoverished communities elsewhere.” (description from Haymarket website: http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Badass-Teachers-Unite)
Peterson, Bob and Michael Charney, eds. Transforming Teacher Unions: Fighting for Better Schools and Social Justice. Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools, 1999.
“This stimulating anthology looks at exemplary practices of teacher unions from the local to national level. It challenges the reader, while presenting stirring new visions for the 21st century that involve teacher unions in the fight to improve public schools and conditions of social justice throughout our communities. The 25 articles weave together issues of teacher unions, classroom reform, and the rights of all children to a free, equitable, and high-quality public education.” (back cover)
“Too often,” Peterson and Charney admit, “teacher unions—like public education itself—have had a mixed record on fighting for an equitable and quality education for all children.” (5) “in order to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow,” they propose, “that teacher unions must embark on a new path.” (5) For Peterson and Charney, teacher unions must “be both professional and social justice in orientation,” instead of the predominantly professional emphasis of so many teacher unions. Peterson and Charney further explain that “no matter how successful any set of professional reforms may be, they will fall short of ensuring that ‘all children can learn’ unless the social inequalities that face our children are also overcome. Schools can do more and do better, but they can’t do it all. And if we proclaim that any one set of professional reforms or standards or even increased school funding will ensure that all our children learn, we are setting ourselves up for failure—and ultimately opening up our unions and public education to attack by the right.” (7)
“Rethinking Schools is a not-for-profit educational publisher. Its quarterly publication, Rethinking Schools, is a well-respected grassroots journal for public school reform.” (back cover)
Shaffer, Robert. “Where Are the Organized Public Employees? The Absence of Public Employee Unionism from U.S. History Textbooks, and Why It Matters.” Labor History 43:3 (2002), pp. 315-334.
After investigating many prominent U.S. history textbooks, Shaffer proclaims that he was “at first surprised, and soon appalled, at the absence … of any mention of the upsurge in public employee unionism in the 1960s and 1970s.” (315) As Shaffer argues, public sector labor figures prominently in nearly all post-World War II U.S. history—especially in politics and the economy—despite its absence in textbooks. Further, public sector unionism, says Shaffer, is intimately linked to “the civil rights movement, the [New Left] student movement, the feminist movement, and the questioning of the established order normally associated with the 1960s.” (321) In his conclusion, Shaffer offers some much-needed advice to educators and labor: “If college textbooks continue to promote the image of a union member as simply an industrial, construction, or agricultural worker, then we will have failed in preparing our students for their own potential relationship to or participation in the labor movement.” (333)
Shierholz, Heidi. “The Teacher Gap: More Students and Fewer Teacher,” Portside Online, October 23, 2013. https://portside.org/2013-10-26/teacher-gap-more-students-and-fewer-teachers
Shierholz’s final assessment: “A ‘teacher gap’ of this magnitude means not only larger class sizes, but also fewer teacher aides, fewer extracurricular activities, and a narrower curriculum for our children. Furthermore, this number almost surely understates the real gap. Between 2008 and 2012, the share of children living in poverty increased from 19.0 percent to 21.8 percent. A higher incidence of child poverty increases the need for services provided through schools. Instead of meeting this need by hiring more personnel, public schools have been forced to eliminate jobs.”
Tyack, David B. The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974.
Tyack uses public schools to examine the transition in the United States from a rural society to an urban one from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. He explains how urban school systems grew increasingly bureaucratic and designed on corporate models in the name of efficiency and claimed to be above politics. These claims, says Tyack, “often served to obscure actual alignments of power and patterns of privilege.” (11) All along, teachers fought to gain better control over the curriculum, and sometimes this effort put teachers at odds with the broader struggle for social justice. Tyack concludes that to “create urban schools which really teach students, which reflect the pluralism of society, which serve the quest for social justice—this is a task which will take persistent imagination, wisdom, and will.” (291)
National Education Association (NEA)
Cole, Stephan. The Unionization of Teachers: A Case Study of the UFT. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969.
Cole explains the unionization efforts of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the American Federation of Teachers’ (AFT) New York City local, comparing them to the National Education Association (NEA). In doing so, Cole finds that the AFT was much more committed to collective bargaining over salary—what Cole defines as “unionization”—and the NEA was more committed to “professionalization” because its leadership originally refused to use strikes and focused on making teachers appear more professional like doctors and lawyers. Cole often treats unionism and professionalism as mutually exclusive. Many teachers also viewed them as irreconcilable, and this conflict persists today. From Cole’s vantage point in 1969, AFT’s unionism seemed an unlikely vehicle for professionalization. Yet from this negative forecast, Cole managed to formulate an incredibly accurate prediction: “the existence of organizations such as the UFT will force the NEA to become increasingly militant and to abandon its archaic conservative ideology: A militant professional association committed to fighting for economic and professional goals would probably do more to improve the quality of American education that a union that gives organizational goals priority over professional ones.” (183)
Gaffney, Dennis. Teachers United: The Rise of New York State United Teachers. State University of New York Press, 2007.
Gaffney explored the rise of the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), an AFT affiliate, which resulted from the merger of the New York State Teachers Association (NYSTA), affiliated with the NEA, and the United Teachers of New York (UTNY), another AFT affiliate. Gaffney notes that like other NEA affiliates, the NYSTA remained committed to professionalism. Consequently, they were very reluctant to engage in collective bargaining, acting as a union, or even using union terminology—let alone initiating strikes. Yet the New York City teachers, with their strikes and general militancy, both inspired NYSTA teachers and helped overturn the legal barriers to collective bargaining. Even after NYSTA teachers realized they could collectively bargain, they still hesitated to abandon their traditional roles as professionals. However, when upstate teachers began asking for salary increases in the late 1960s and their school boards resisted, Gaffney argues that NYSTA teachers truly learned the value of unionism, and they began embracing union action. To demonstrate their profound shift, the NYSTA merged with the UTNY in 1972 to form the NYSUT, under the aegis of the AFT, which had traditionally symbolized teacher unionism.
Indiana State Teachers Association. “Advancing the Cause of Education”: A History of the Indiana State Teachers Association, 1854-2004. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2004.
This book tells the 150-year history of the ISTA by explaining the organization’s three main eras. The first time period is from 1854, when the ISTA was founded, and 1938. During this time period, the “ISTA evolved from a loosely run but committed cadre of educators to a professional association.” (5) During the second era, from 1938 to 1971, Robert H. Wyatt led the ISTA, and his “persona defined the organization.” (35) Under his leadership, “Wyatt transformed ISTA from one of the associations that influenced the course of education in Indiana into the association that did so.” (35) The third time period, called the era of “new advocacy,” spanned from 1971 to 2004, when the ISTA changed “from a professional lobbying organization of individual members to a statewide union of local teacher associations.” (67) “Collective bargaining, teachers’ rights, working conditions, and, of course, salaries dominated ISTA’s agenda in these years.” (67)
Kink, Steve and John Cahill. Class Wars: The Story of the Washington Education Association, 1965-2001. Federal Way, WA: Washington Education Association, 2004.
Kink and Cahill examine the Washington Education Association (WEA), NEA affiliate, beginning in 1965. Kink and Cahill explain that WEA adopted the Unified Service (UniServe) system from NEA proposals in 1970. The UniServe system provided professional union organizers to NEA locals to help them collectively bargain. UniServe helped to greatly empower rural districts, since they had traditionally been subjected to greater domination by administrators. Many rural districts across Washington used their new-found assertiveness to demand salary increases during a period of recession in the early 1970s. When school boards did not grant the concessions, many WEA locals went on strike. One strike in 1973 in Elma, Washington got particularly heated as the school board used strikebreakers to end the strike, and members of Elma’s WEA local employed civil disobedience tactics by attempting to block school buses with their bodies. The Elma strike ended after only one week, with the school board emerging victorious. Although this particular strike failed, many others proved successful, and WEA went on to enjoy the peak of its power from 1976 to 1980.
Karpinski, Carol F. “A Visible Company of Professionals”: African Americans and the National Education Association During the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.
Karpinski pays special attention to the NEA’s merger with the African-American teachers’ organization, the American Teachers Association (ATA), in 1966. She notes how the ATA members and leadership vigorously debated about whether they should join the NEA or the AFT, trying to decide which organization would best advance their interests. In an effort to win against its rival, the NEA implemented some reforms regarding its racial policies and began to market itself as racially progressive. Despite some disappointments and slow reforms, Karpinski shows that the NEA became committed to racial justice.
Murphy, Marjorie. Blackboard Unions: The AFT and the NEA, 1900-1980. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.
In a national examination of the AFT and the NEA from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1980s, Murphy attempts to explain “the historical obstacles to the unionization of public school teachers, to show how difficult organization was, and to illustrate the contradictions faced by public employees in unionization.” (1) Murphy also explains the tension between unionism and professionalism in teachers’ organizations: “The ideology of professionalism in education grew into a powerful antiunion slogan that effectively paralyzed and then slowed the unionization of teachers. Only in the last twenty years have teachers effectively challenged the confining definitions of professionalism to declare that their own personal well-being was in fact a professional concern.” (1-2) To that end, Murphy explores the transformation of the NEA, which originally “claimed exclusive jurisdiction in professionalism” but now “rather prides itself on being called a union.” (2) The AFT, Murphy explains, always “held stubbornly to its trade-union heritage.” (2) Murphy also identifies fiscal crises and “recurrent red-baiting” as repeated obstacles to teacher unionism. (3)
Urban, Wayne J. “Courting the Woman Teacher: The National Education Association, 1917-1970.” History of Education Quarterly 41:2 (2001), pp. 139-166.
In examining the NEA’s organizational structure during the twentieth century, Urban argues “that from 1917 until 1972 the association enjoyed a relatively symbiotic relationship with women teachers.” (140) Urban insists this was definitely not an equal relationship. He further points out that this “symbiotic relationship” had “limits set by the NEA’s fundamental organizational commitments, symbolized rhetorically by the association’s devotion to the term ‘professionalism,’ and grounded in a consistent antipathy to the teachers’ union.” (140) Despite these limits, Urban claims, “there were spaces where women teachers were honored and respected,” and the NEA’s female teachers appreciated this attention. (141) As examples of the NEA’s protection of female teachers, Urban offers the NEA’s “pursuit of the single-salary scale and its defense of the married woman teacher.” (141) Finally, Urban argues that in 1972, when the NEA formally amended its constitution to exclude administrators and embrace unionism, the NEA’s emphasis on “collective bargaining and trade unionism substantially diminished the association’s commitment to the cause of women teachers.” (141)
_________. Gender, Race, and the National Education Association: Professionalism and Its Limitations. New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2000.
Urban adds the themes of gender and professionalism to his analysis of the NEA and race. Urban argues that from 1917 to the 1960s, the NEA based its organization and policies on a feminine conception of professionalism, since its membership was mostly comprised of rural women. Beginning in the 1960s, however, with a greater influx of young, urban, militant male teachers, the NEA embraced unionism. In order to compete for members with the AFT’s well-established unionism, Urban argues, the NEA both downplayed its feminine professionalism and offered its promise of unionism to African Americans. This phase lasted into the early 1990s, when new NEA leadership sought to establish a “new unionism” that aimed to meld professionalism and unionism to address the changed needs of that era. As most scholars note, the NEA-AFT rivalry for membership produced changes in attitudes and policies in both national organizations and their affiliates, which often led to tense relations with their surroundings—even outright strikes.
_________. Why Teachers Organized. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1982.
Urban examines both the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and some of their local affiliates around the country—primarily Atlanta, Chicago, and New York City—from the 1890s through the 1920s. Urban demonstrates that “teachers represented in microcosm the ongoing transition from farm to city that affected many aspects of American life during the Progressive Era.” (17) Urban claims that teachers during this time period organized for two primary reasons: “First, teachers organized to pursue material improvements, salaries, pensions, tenure, and other benefits and policies which helped raise teaching in the cities to the status of a career for the women who practiced it. Second, through the pursuit of salary scales and other policies, teachers sought to institutionalize experience, or seniority, as the criterion of success in teaching.” Urban further claims that both these factors are still very influential in teacher organizing, since teachers carefully guard them, and this has “inhibited effective organizational activity in the past.” (22 and 174)Urban also offers two useful cautions about the effects of union structure. First, Urban observes that leaders “of modern large-membership teachers’ unions devote most of their time to complex, time-consuming tasks, such as bargaining and handling grievances, leaving themselves little time and less inclination to allow meaningful member participation in setting goals and planning strategies.” (174) He further notes that the “bargaining process also imposes a powerful personal discipline on local leaders, making the emergence of politically reformist or radical leaders like Margaret Haley or Henry Linville less and less likely. The evolution of Albert Shanker of New York City from a social democrat … to a tough-minded, powerful, pragmatic unionist serves as a case in point.” (176)
American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
Cole, Stephan. The Unionization of Teachers: A Case Study of the UFT. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969.
Cole explains the unionization efforts of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the American Federation of Teachers’ (AFT) New York City local, comparing them to the National Education Association (NEA). In doing so, Cole finds that the AFT was much more committed to collective bargaining over salary—what Cole defines as “unionization”—and the NEA was more committed to “professionalization” because its leadership originally refused to use strikes and focused on making teachers appear more professional like doctors and lawyers. Cole often treats unionism and professionalism as mutually exclusive. Many teachers also viewed them as irreconcilable, and this conflict persists today. From Cole’s vantage point in 1969, AFT’s unionism seemed an unlikely vehicle for professionalization. Yet from this negative forecast, Cole managed to formulate an incredibly accurate prediction: “the existence of organizations such as the UFT will force the NEA to become increasingly militant and to abandon its archaic conservative ideology: A militant professional association committed to fighting for economic and professional goals would probably do more to improve the quality of American education that a union that gives organizational goals priority over professional ones.” (183)
Eaton, William Edward. The American Federation of Teachers, 1916-1961: A History of the Movement. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1975.
The American Federation of Teachers’ (AFT) tense relationship with the NEA is important for Eaton, since it pushed the AFT toward a closer affiliation with organized labor and the union model. Eaton points out that the AFT mostly suffered from problems within the organization itself. Eaton argues that the AFT largely operates with a “crisis orientation” because the organization is well equipped to fight against immediate threats but often lacks the ability to maintain long-term relations. (179) The AFT’s dues, claims Eaton, were too low, which prevented the organization from communicating effectively and exercising its power. Eaton also mentions the persistent problems of regionalism, religion, and ethnicity that often divided the national membership. Eaton notes that while the AFT has a relatively small membership, it has been an influential organization. From his perspective in 1975, Eaton could see the growing rift between teachers and union members of the private sector, who seemed reluctant to pay increased taxes to support public schools.
Gaffney, Dennis. Teachers United: The Rise of New York State United Teachers. State University of New York Press, 2007.
Gaffney explored the rise of the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), an AFT affiliate, which resulted from the merger of the New York State Teachers Association (NYSTA), affiliated with the NEA, and the United Teachers of New York (UTNY), another AFT affiliate. Gaffney notes that like other NEA affiliates, the NYSTA remained committed to professionalism. Consequently, they were very reluctant to engage in collective bargaining, acting as a union, or even using union terminology—let alone initiating strikes. Yet the New York City teachers, with their strikes and general militancy, both inspired NYSTA teachers and helped overturn the legal barriers to collective bargaining. Even after NYSTA teachers realized they could collectively bargain, they still hesitated to abandon their traditional roles as professionals. However, when upstate teachers began asking for salary increases in the late 1960s and their school boards resisted, Gaffney argues that NYSTA teachers truly learned the value of unionism, and they began embracing union action. To demonstrate their profound shift, the NYSTA merged with the UTNY in 1972 to form the NYSUT, under the aegis of the AFT, which had traditionally symbolized teacher unionism.
Golin, Steve. The Newark Teacher Strike: Hopes on the Line. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002.
Golin argues that the Newark teachers’ union, which was predominantly white ethnics (Jews and Italians) and an AFT affiliate, fused 1930s-style unionism with a 1960s social consciousness in their quest for “teacher power,” the right for teachers to have greater control over their workplace. This new, reinvigorated idea about class that combined blue-collar unionism with professionalism, animated both teachers’ strikes in Newark. Between the two strikes, a black mayor took office in Newark, and he appointed a black majority in the city’s board of education. When the teachers went on strike in 1971, the board and the city government could align with black parents against what they claimed was a white teachers’ union. As part of their assertion of professionalism, the Newark teachers demanded they no longer perform chores they deemed unprofessional. Since these tasks were then given to black non-teachers, it helped draw the racial lines more clearly. This racial alliance helped the board, city government, and largely black parents win against the predominantly white union.
Kahlenberg, Richard D. Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Because of Albert Shanker’s roles as “a father of modern teachers’ unions,” influential education reformer,” and an “advocate of tough liberalism,” Kahlenberg bestows great significance to Shanker’s career: “If Horace Mann was the key educational figure in the nineteenth century and John Dewey in the first half of the twentieth century, Albert Shanker has stood as the most influential figure since then. As a critical thinker, writer, and player in all the great education debates of the last quarter century—whether school vouchers, charter schools, or education standards—he was, journalist Sara Mosle argues, ‘our Dewey.’” (7) Kahlenberg explains that “Shanker believed in what might be called ‘tough liberalism,’ an ideology that champions an affirmative role for government in promoting social mobility, social cohesion, and greater equality at home and democracy abroad, but which is also tough-minded about human nature, the way the world works, and the reality of evil. He remained, to the end, a liberal, and over a thirty-year period he stood squarely for two central pillars of liberal thought: public education and organized labor.” (8) Because Shanker’s “tough liberalism” was composed of both “conservative” and “liberal” values, it seems to be inconsistent contradictory and outdated. But, Kahlenberg points out that “Shanker argued that tough liberalism was not only consistent but was also politically attractive, because it addressed the central vulnerabilities of liberalism, which since the 1960s has been seen as soft, elitist, politically correct, and out of touch with the way the world works.” (10) And “as contemporary American liberalism struggles both for intellectual coherence and political viability,” Kalenberg continues, “Albert Shanker’s life reminds us that there is an alternative tough liberal tradition wholly worthy of reviving.” (11)
Lyons, John F. “Regional Variations in Union Activism of American Public Schoolteachers” in Education and the Great Depression: Lessons from a Global History, E. Thomas Ewing and David Hicks, eds. New York: Peter Lang, 2006.
Lyons explores the reasons why so few teachers established unions in the United States. Some scholars, Lyons explains, attribute this limited amount of teacher unionism to a simple urban-rural divide: since so many teachers came from rural areas, they were not inclined to unionize while urban private-sector workers were. Other researchers, Lyons continues, claim that few teachers unionized because teachers “adhered to an ideology of professionalism,” which supposedly led teachers “to reject labor unions and militant industrial action.” (20) By comparing Depression-era Chicago to other areas around the country, Lyons finds that the mystery of teacher unionism is “more complex” than just the urban-rural divide or professionalism. As illustrated in the Chicago case, Lyons argues that the key factors that helped “teacher militancy and unionism flourish” are the “existence of a strong private sector labor movement, a tradition of teacher unionism, the acceptance of labor organizations by political elites and school administrators, and the greater social freedom of the large school systems.” (34)
Lyons also shows the long tradition of politicians’ and employers’ opposition to teacher unionism. Lyons explains that already by the 1910s, “presidents, governors, mayors, and judges argued” that in “a representative democracy,” “the will of the people was vested in elected officials who acted in the ‘public interest,’ and answered to the electorate. For public officials to recognize public sector unions, to bargain over conditions with them, or to allow them to strike, would require the public employer to share its decision-making authority with unelected people and violate the sovereignty of the government and the democratic will of the people.” (22)
Lyons also includes a concise comparative history of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) by explaining the two organizations’ foundings and their original purposes, along with the AFT’s relationship to Chicago and the Chicago Teachers’ Federation. (pages 20 through 22)
Mirel, Jeffrey. The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1907-81. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999.
Mirel explains that the “history of the Detroit Public Schools…offers a unique opportunity to explore the rise and fall of a great urban school district. Virtually every major educational reform and innovation of the twentieth century took root and flourished in Detroit.” (xiv) Mirel’s book is about the many individuals and organizations that influenced Detroit’s public school system. But some segments of the book are especially relevant to teacher unionism in that city:
- The section entitled “Teacher Unionism and Educational Conflict” is about the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) original unionization (111-124).
- The section entitled “The Road to Financial Ruin” is about the circumstances surrounding a DFT strike in 1967 (313-326).
- The section entitled “From Decentralization to Recentralization, 1971-1981” is about the circumstances surrounding another DFT strike in 1973 (359-370).
Murphy, Marjorie. Blackboard Unions: The AFT and the NEA, 1900-1980. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.
In a national examination of the AFT and the NEA from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1980s, Murphy attempts to explain “the historical obstacles to the unionization of public school teachers, to show how difficult organization was, and to illustrate the contradictions faced by public employees in unionization.” (1) Murphy also explains the tension between unionism and professionalism in teachers’ organizations: “The ideology of professionalism in education grew into a powerful antiunion slogan that effectively paralyzed and then slowed the unionization of teachers. Only in the last twenty years have teachers effectively challenged the confining definitions of professionalism to declare that their own personal well-being was in fact a professional concern.” (1-2) To that end, Murphy explores the transformation of the NEA, which originally “claimed exclusive jurisdiction in professionalism” but now “rather prides itself on being called a union.” (2) The AFT, Murphy explains, always “held stubbornly to its trade-union heritage.” (2) Murphy also identifies fiscal crises and “recurrent red-baiting” as repeated obstacles to teacher unionism. (3)
Perlstein, Daniel H. Justice, Justice: School Politics and the Eclipse of Liberalism. New York: Peter Lang, 2004.
Perlstein examines the infamous Ocean Hill-Brownsville (a school district in New York City) teachers’ strike of 1968. Perlstein argues that the predominantly Jewish United Federation of Teachers (UFT) felt an interracial working-class solidarity with their black students. Yet UFT members also felt that their professional expertise, along with those of the white administrators, offered the best path to racial equality. The UFT’s position was largely acceptable until Black Power pointed out the systemic nature of discrimination. At this point, Perlstein contends, the predominantly black Ocean Hill-Brownsville community viewed the UFT’s stance as insufficient and condescending—and worse: their dominance by white “experts” perpetuated inequality. As Perlstein shows, the bitter strike realigned New York City’s politics and reshaped ideas of race and class, since the Jewish UFT teachers became fully “white” and middle-class and began to shift their electoral allegiance to the conservative camp. Additionally, this incident spoiled the UFT’s and AFT’s reputation as civil rights advocates, which offered the opportunity for the NEA to pick up that standard.
Podair, Jerald E. The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.
Podair examines the infamous Ocean Hill-Brownsville (a school district in New York City) teachers’ strike of 1968. Podair argues that the predominantly Jewish United Federation of Teachers (UFT) felt an interracial working-class solidarity with their black students. Yet UFT members also felt that their professional expertise, along with those of the white administrators, offered the best path to racial equality. The UFT’s position was largely acceptable until Black Power pointed out the systemic nature of discrimination. At this point, Podair contends, the predominantly black Ocean Hill-Brownsville community viewed the UFT’s stance as insufficient and condescending—and worse: their dominance by white “experts” perpetuated inequality. As Podair shows, the bitter strike realigned New York City’s politics and reshaped ideas of race and class, since the Jewish UFT teachers became fully “white” and middle-class and began to shift their electoral allegiance to the conservative camp. Additionally, this incident spoiled the UFT’s and AFT’s reputation as civil rights advocates, which offered the opportunity for the NEA to pick up that standard.
Selden, David. The Teacher Rebellion. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1985.
Selden was a main organizer for New York City’s United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and served as the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) from 1968 to 1974, when he lost a leadership election to Albert Shanker. Written in the first-person, Selden explains that this “book is a memoir of the postwar decades, when the spark of teacher militancy spread across the country. I was a participant in that movement. My experience helps locate the events of the rebellion in their time and social context. It also invokes the attempt to build that ‘one big union’ for all teachers.” (ix) Selden describes his role in building up the UFT and AFT, his time as president of the AFT, attempts at the AFT-NEA merger, and his loss to Albert Shanker in 1974.
Taft, Philip. United They Teach: The Story of the United Federation of Teachers. Los Angeles: Nash Publishing, 1974.
Taft examines the UFT from its origins in the early twentieth century all the way until 1973. Taft explains that his book pays special attention to “obstacles to the growth of teacher unionism throughout the country and also in New York City. The activities of the old Teachers Union are examined up to 1935, the year in which the Communists gained control of the organization. As a result many of its former leaders and several hundred members withdrew and formed the Teachers Guild, which became the direct predecessor of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). The latter was able to eliminate the several dozen teachers’ associations which made the development of a successful collective-bargaining policy impossible.” (xi) Taft further explains that the “UFT is interesting because its size creates difficult administrative problems. In addition, a teachers’ union in New York which represents the staff in the schools faces problems that to some extent are different from and more difficult than those of teachers’ unions in virtually all the other cities in the United States. Nevertheless, the UFT has been able to overcome obstacles and weld together a diverse and loyal membership led by an unusual group of leaders.” (xi) Taft also explores the UFT’s fight for academic freedom, the UFT’s first contract, the UFT’s role in New York City’s school district decentralization plan, and the UFT’s role in the infamous Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike of 1968.
Urban, Wayne J. Why Teachers Organized. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1982.
Urban examines both the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and some of their local affiliates around the country—primarily Atlanta, Chicago, and New York City—from the 1890s through the 1920s. Urban demonstrates that “teachers represented in microcosm the ongoing transition from farm to city that affected many aspects of American life during the Progressive Era.” (17) Urban claims that teachers during this time period organized for two primary reasons: “First, teachers organized to pursue material improvements, salaries, pensions, tenure, and other benefits and policies which helped raise teaching in the cities to the status of a career for the women who practiced it. Second, through the pursuit of salary scales and other policies, teachers sought to institutionalize experience, or seniority, as the criterion of success in teaching.” Urban further claims that both these factors are still very influential in teacher organizing, since teachers carefully guard them, and this has “inhibited effective organizational activity in the past.” (22 and 174)Urban also offers two useful cautions about the effects of union structure. First, Urban observes that leaders “of modern large-membership teachers’ unions devote most of their time to complex, time-consuming tasks, such as bargaining and handling grievances, leaving themselves little time and less inclination to allow meaningful member participation in setting goals and planning strategies.” (174) He further notes that the “bargaining process also imposes a powerful personal discipline on local leaders, making the emergence of politically reformist or radical leaders like Margaret Haley or Henry Linville less and less likely. The evolution of Albert Shanker of New York City from a social democrat … to a tough-minded, powerful, pragmatic unionist serves a s a case in point.” (176)
Zeluck, Steve. Toward Teacher Power. Highland Park, MI: Sun Press, 1974. http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds/view/32955087?n=1&imagesize=1200&jp2Res=.25&printThumbnails=no
Zeluck was a member of the International Socialists when he wrote this pamphlet. Zeluck looks to the 1960s as the “halcyon days of the teacher movement. It was a period of rapidly rising salaries and employment, or rising self-confidence, of a belief that militant unionism provided the tools to win teacher rights and change the schools.” But Zeluck warns that “Today, from coast to coast, the movement is in trouble, under attack from all sides.” (1) Teachers, he continues, “appear…to be in danger of returning to the situation which characterized teachers 20 years ago. These developments are doubly intolerable to teachers and parents because they occur on the heels of a period of rising expectations by both teachers and communities in the 1960’s.” (1 and 2) Zeluck is identifies some key enemies of the teacher movement: “the U.S. corporate establishment” (4) and conservative politicians who support that agenda. Zeluck is also very critical of Albert Shanker’s leadership of the American Federation of Teachers. Zuleck concludes by arguing that the teacher “movement is in danger of having reached the limits of its effectiveness unless it takes a second giant step—a break with the conservative philosophy and practices of business unionism and the capitalist system which breeds it.” (38)
Waiting for Superman
Bale, Jeff and Sarah Knopp. Education and Capitalism: Struggles for Learning and Liberation. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012.
“In the first decade of the twenty-first century, a conservative, bipartisan consensus dominates about what’s wrong with our schools and how to fix them. In each case, those solutions scapegoat teachers, vilify our unions, and promise more private control and market mentality as the answer. In each case, students lose—especially students of color and the children of the working class and the poor.
This book, written by teacher activists, speaks back to that elite consensus. It draws on the ideas and experiences of social justice educators concerned with fighting against racism and for equality, and those of activists oriented on recapturing the radical roots of the labor movement. Informed by a revolutionary vision of pedagogy, schools, and education, it paints a radical critique of education in Corporate America, past and present, and contributes to a vision of alternatives for education and liberation.” (description from Haymarket website)
This book, written by teacher activists, speaks back to that elite consensus. It draws on the ideas and experiences of social justice educators concerned with fighting against racism and for equality, and those of activists oriented on recapturing the radical roots of the labor movement. Informed by a revolutionary vision of pedagogy, schools, and education, it paints a radical critique of education in Corporate America, past and present, and contributes to a vision of alternatives for education and liberation.” (description from Haymarket website)
Bowles, Samuel and Herbert Gintis. School in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011.
“Many recent books on education and schooling examine small pieces of the system to suggest improvements–teacher training and practice, assessments, school design and management, and the like. No book has ever taken on the systemic forces at work in modern education systems like Schooling in Capitalist America and suggested that a radical transformation of society is required to improve schools.” (description from Haymarket website)
Carey, Kevin. “The Dissenter.” The New Republic, November 23, 2011. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/magazine/97765/diane-ravitch-education-reform?page=0,0&passthru=YjkzM2EyNmQ3ZDllNmUzYTAzZGQ0OTE4NGJmMWM1Zjc
Carey chronicles Diane Ravitch’s career in speaking publicly on education policy, which had many twists and turns. When Ravitch began this public career, Carey explains that Ravitch “had spent years in the inner circle of conservative education policy, advocating for school vouchers, firing incompetent teachers, and shutting down failing schools.” Ravitch’s “conversion” started in 2001, when New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg centralized the city’s Department of Education. Ravitch began to believe that her previous views were misguided. She now firmly opposes the brand of school “reform” espoused by Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for “Superman”, a documentary that primarily blames teacher unions for the problems facing public schools and offers privatized charter schools as the answer. The documentary claims that teacher unions protect incompetent teachers and stifle innovation in education. However, private charter schools, the documentary argues, are free to make the changes necessary to rescue the U.S. education system. Carey also devotes a significant portion of the article to show the shortcomings of Ravitch’s arguments.
Cavanagh, Julie, Darren Marelli, Norm Scott, Mollie Bruhn, and Lisa Donlan. The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman. New York: Grassroots Education Movement Production and Real Reform Studios, 2011. http://theinconvenienttruthbehindwaitingforsuperman.com/
This documentary was written and produced by New York City public school teachers to refute the claims of the documentary Waiting for “Superman”. With extensive corporate funds and support, Davis Guggenheim wrote, narrated, and produced Waiting for “Superman”. That documentary primarily blames teacher unions for the problems facing public schools and offers privatized charter schools as the answer. The documentary claims that teacher unions protect incompetent teachers and stifle innovation in education. However, private charter schools, the documentary argues, are free to make the changes necessary to rescue the U.S. education system. The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman shows the other side of the debate by examining grassroots movements of parents, teachers, students, and community members who oppose school privatization in New York City public schools and Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s centralization of school administration. In addition to being able to watch the film, this website offers many more resources that argue against school privatization and provides ways to help spread that message.
Compton, Mary and Lois Weiner, eds. The Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers, and Their Unions: Stories for Resistance. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008.
Compton and Weiner have gathered together this collection of essays that examine neoliberal education policies from nations around the world, including United Kingdom, South Africa, China, Mexico, West Indies, United States, Namibia, India, Australia, Denmark, Canada, Brazil, and Germany. Compton and Weiner explain that “teacher trade unionists are grappling with the increasing privatization of education services,” which generally consist of, “the introduction of business ‘quality control’ measures into education, and the requirement that education produce the kind of minimally trained and flexible workforce that corporations require to maximize their profits.” (5) And while “the titles and acronyms of policies differ from one country to another,” the continue, “the basics of the assault are the same: undercut the publicly supported, publicly controlled system of education, teachers’ professionalism, and teacher unions as organizations.” (4) Compton and Weiner point out that, unfortunately, the “voices for privatization and neoliberalism have virtually the whole of the world’s media at their disposal to speed them on their way.” (6) “Ironically,” however, Compton and Weiner remind teachers that “the potential power of teachers and our unions to derail neoliberal reforms like privatization is often more apparent to our opponents than it is to teachers and union leadership.” (7) For Compton and Weiner, this means teachers need to be aware of the obstacles they face, but they should also realize the power they have to create positive changes.
Susan L. Robertson’s essay, “‘Remaking the World’: Neoliberalism and the Transformation of Education and Teachers’ Labor,” provides an excellent historical background for the development of neoliberal policies across the globe, including an explanation of the term “neoliberal.”
Dannin, Ellen. “The Long History of Privatization Failures,” Portside Online, October 23, 2013.
URL: https://portside.org/2013-10-24/long-history-privatization-failures
“We need to own up to is that privatization experiments, based on ideology rather than evidence, have created disruption, neglect, and harm to vital public services and infrastructure – and those effects have undermined the private sector which depends on high quality public services. We seem to have forgotten that the public sector has long created the environment and resources necessary for businesses to prosper.” (summary from Portside website)
Democracy Now!, “‘Waiting for Superman’: Critics Say Much-Hyped Education Documentary Unfairly Targets Teachers Unions and Promotes Charter Schools.” October 1, 2010. http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/1/waiting_for_superman_critics_say_much
“Waiting for Superman, a new documentary by filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, has caused a stir in the education world for its sweeping endorsement of the charter school movement and attack on teachers unions. President Obama has endorsed the film, describing it as “heartbreaking” and “powerful,” but some teachers have called for a boycott of the film for its portrayal of teachers and the teachers union. We speak to Rick Ayers, founder of the Communication Arts and Sciences program at Berkeley High School and adjunct professor in teacher education at the University of San Francisco.” (description from Democracy Now! website)
Gates, Bill. “How Teacher Development Could Revolutionize Our Schools.” Washington Post, February 28, 2011. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/27/AR2011022702876.html
In this article, Bill Gates presents part of his proposed solution for fixing the U.S. education system. Gates claims that spending on public schools has increased dramatically without many positive gains in performance. Gates disapproves of the seniority and tenure systems in teachers’ unions because they increase costs and stifle innovation in education. Gates wants to get rid of these systems to make education more cost effective. Gates also favors standardizing teaching practices to make teaching more effective and efficient, thus comparing education to a form of production. The ideas Gates presents here are very similar to those expressed in the documentary to which he provided significant support, Waiting for “Superman”, which fully endorses privatized charter schools.
Giroux, Henry A. Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014.
“Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education reveals how neoliberal policies, practices, and modes of material and symbolic violence have radically reshaped the mission and practice of higher education, short-changing a generation of young people. Giroux exposes the corporate forces at play and charts a clear-minded and inspired course of action out of the shadows of market-driven education policy. Championing the youth around the globe who have dared to resist the bartering of their future, he calls upon public intellectuals—as well as all people concerned about the future of democracy—to speak out and defend the university as a site of critical learning and democratic promise.” (description from Haymarket website)
Leopold, Les. “The Hedge Fund That Ate Chicago.” Portside.org. May 5, 2014.
“There’s a battle royale raging in Chicago,” begins Leopold. This battle “pits hedge funds, the Chicago financial exchanges, real estate interests and Mayor Rahm Emanuel on the one side, against public employee unions and community groups on the other.” Emanuel and his allies claim the pension funds for public employees need to be drastically cut to avoid tax hikes. Despite these calls for austerity, however, Emanuel’s administration provides massive subsidies and/or tax breaks to many private companies, which also strains the budget. Although the main battleground is Chicago, Leopold announces that the “outcome may determine the health and well-being of pension funds as well as public services all across the country.”
“Defined pension funds,” Leopold explains, “are disappearing for two overlapping reasons. The first is that unions, the main driver of defined-benefit pensions, are in decline. Today, union’s represent less than 7 percent of the private sector workforce, down from 35% in 1955. But that’s only part of the story. The most crucial cause is the deregulation of the financial sector which started in the late 1970s. Once freed from their New Deal shackles, corporate raiders (now called private equity firms, hedge funds and investment firms) strip-mined thousands of corporations using borrowed money.” Leopold demystifies the language these brokers use to justify their practices: “The raiders, of course, claim that through their own entrepreneurial genius, they ‘unlock’ hidden value. In reality, they milk the company in every way imaginable,” in a practice Leopold calls “financial strip-mining.”
Leopold explains that the “public employee unions and community activists contend that city’s fiscal problems could be solved easily through a small sales tax on financial trades on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board Options Exchange.” This “financial transaction tax (sometimes called a financial speculation tax or Robin Hood Tax),” says Leopold, “is designed to retrieve some of the money that is being siphoned away from our wages, benefits and tax dollars.”
Leopold sees this solution as a potential means to close the rift that often appears to divide public and private sector employees: “While such a tax could easily fulfill the promises made to public employees, it might also be prudent and just to use some of the financial tax to create a statewide defined benefit pension fund for private sector as well as public employees. That should put an end to the divide-and-conquer tactics opportunistic politicians and their hedge fund cronies use to enrich themselves and their political ambitions.”
Lipman, Pauline. The New Political Economy of Urban Education: Neoliberalism, Race, and the Right to the City. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Lipman looks at Chicago as a neoliberal “laboratory,” which she says is “driven by market ideologies and the regulatory power of global finance.” Lipman argues that “education is both shaped by and deeply implicated in globalized political, economic, and ideological processes that have been redefining cities over the past 25 years.” (3) As pervasive as the neoliberal mindset may seem, Lipman claims, the “current failure of markets and deregulation has brought to the fore weaknesses of the neoliberal strategy, creating an opening for alternative progressive agendas and alliances.” (10) Lipman also explains many key aspects of neoliberal ideology. In the neoliberal worldview, says Lipman, education is considered a “private good, an investment one makes in one’s child or oneself to ‘add value’ to better compete in the labor market, not a social good for development of individuals and society as a whole.” (14-15) In one of her chapters, Lipman explores the roots of “school choice” to better understand why these neoliberal policies appeal to so many “teachers and parents, particularly parents of color, who are fed up with the failures of public schools to educate their children appropriately.” (21) In order to create an alternative vision to neoliberalism, claims Lipman, we need to better appreciate its power.
Naison, Mark. Badass Teachers Unite!: Writing on Education, History, and Youth Activism. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014.
“This collection of important and much needed essays on education and youth activism draws from Naison’s research on Bronx History and his experiences defending teachers and students from school reform policies which undermine their power and creativity. Naison’s focus is identifying teaching and organizing strategies that have worked effectively in New York, and could be implemented in impoverished communities elsewhere.” (description from Haymarket website)
National Education Association, “NEA’s Waiting for Superman Resources,” October 5, 2010. http://neatoday.org/2010/10/05/waiting-for-superman-resources/
This is a collection of articles and multimedia clips from journalists, educators, school administrators, and activists that counter the claims made by Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for “Superman”, a documentary that primarily blames teacher unions for the problems facing public schools and offers privatized charter schools as the answer. The documentary claims that teacher unions protect incompetent teachers and stifle innovation in education. However, private charter schools, the documentary argues, are free to make the changes necessary to rescue the U.S. education system.
Phillips, Mark. “The Cinema of Educational Despair.” Washington Post, April 2, 2012. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the-cinema-of-educational-despair-a-bad-narrative-reinforced/2012/04/01/gIQAhthIpS_blog.html
Phillips focuses on the film Detachment, which presents a very depressing view on teaching in urban public schools. Phillips criticizes this movie because it “reinforces” the negative outlook on public schools and “takes it even further into bleak anger and despair.” This narrative, which is so widespread across the country, has a terrible effect on “teachers struggling in underfunded schools” because “it encourages anger and self-pity rather than productive action.” Further, Phillips claims that for “critics of our public schools,” films like Detachment will only “validate the half-truths they already believe.” Instead of perpetuating this dismal outlook, Phillips asks for a film “about really bright, dedicated, politically savvy teachers and students who take on a group of dim political leaders and turn their school around. … Imagine the impact a film with that narrative could have.”
Ravitch, Diane. The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education. New York: Basic Books, 2010.
In this book, Ravitch refutes the brand of school “reform” advocated by people like Davis Guggenheim and his documentary Waiting for “Superman”, a film that primarily blames teacher unions for the problems facing public schools and offers privatized charter schools as the answer. The documentary claims that teacher unions protect incompetent teachers and stifle innovation in education. However, private charter schools, the documentary argues, are free to make the changes necessary to rescue the U.S. education system. Ravitch also criticizes the high-stakes, standardized testing implemented by George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, which Ravtich sees as an invalid way of testing students and gives too much money to corporations that administer the tests. Ravitch shows that those advocate school “reform” have such persuasive cases because they offer such appealing, simple solutions to complex problems. But the “new corporate reformers,” says Ravitch, “betray their weak comprehension of education by drawing false analogies between education and business.” Instead of a for-profit venture, Ravitch stands behind public education as a means “to shape good human beings, good citizens, people of good character with the knowledge and skills to make their way in the world and to join with others to sustain and improve our democracy.”
Ravitch, Diane. “The Myth of Charter Schools” (A review of Waiting for “Superman”). New York Review of Books, November 11, 2010. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/
In this review, Ravitch shows the many flaws in Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for “Superman”. Waiting primarily blames teacher unions for the problems facing public schools and offers privatized charter schools as the answer. The documentary claims that teacher unions protect incompetent teachers and stifle innovation in education. However, private charter schools, the documentary argues, are free to make the changes necessary to rescue the U.S. education system. Ravitch states that Waiting for “Superman” is “a powerful weapon on behalf of those championing the ‘free market’ and privatization.” The documentary is so convincing, Ravitch claims, because it offers teachers’ unions, and public education in general, as scapegoats: “At last we have the culprit on which we can pin our anger, our palpable sense that something is very wrong with our society, that we are on the wrong track, and that America is losing the race for global dominance. It is not globalization or deindustrialization or poverty or our coarse popular culture or predatory financial practices that bear responsibility: it’s the public schools, their teachers, and their unions.” The very nations that Waiting for “Superman” claims we are “losing” to, says Ravitch, “whether Korea, Singapore, Finland, or Japan—have succeeded not by privatizing their schools or closing those with low scores, but by strengthening the education profession. They also have less poverty than we do,” something Waiting for “Superman” fails to mention. Ravitch affirms that “Public education is one of the cornerstones of American democracy,” so she feels that American citizens should continue to support it.
Ravitch, Diane. Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.
“In Reign of Error, Diane Ravitch argues that the crisis in American education is not a crisis of academic achievement but a concerted effort to destroy the schools in this country. She makes clear that, contrary to claims being made, public school test scores and graduation rates are the highest they’ve ever been, and dropout rates are at their lowest point. She argues that federal programs such as George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Barack Obama’s Race to the Top set unreasonable targets for American students, punish schools, and result in teachers being fired if their students underperform, unfairly branding those educators as failures. She warns that major foundations, individual billionaires, and Wall Street hedge fund managers are encouraging the privatization of public education, some for idealistic reasons, others for profit.” (summary from dust jacket)Instead of the current bipartisan consensus of so-called school “reform,” Ravitch contends that both political parties ought to oppose privatized education: “Liberals should be at the forefront of the effort to defend public education, because public education has been …a force to achieve a more just society,” and conservatives “should be at the forefront of the effort to oppose privatization because the public school is a source of community, stability, and local values.” (320 and 321)Ravitch concedes that public schools are not perfect. Indeed, she says, “we must improve our schools.” But, contrary to the privatization agenda, Ravitch explains that true “school reform must be built on hope, not fear; on encouragement, not threats, on inspiration, not compulsion; on trust, not carrots and sticks; on the belief in the dignity of the human person, not a slavish devotion to data; on support and mutual respect, not a regime of punishment and blame.” (325)Ravitch reminds readers that the “essential mission of the public schools is not merely to prepare workers for the global workforce but to prepare citizens with the minds, hearts, and characters to sustain our democracy into the future.” (325) Because of the stakes involved in this struggle, Ravitch declares that “[p]rotecting our public schools against privatization and saving them for future generations of American children is the civil rights issue of our time.” (325)
Rothstein, Richard. “Fact-Challenged Policy.” Economic Policy Institute, March 8, 2011. http://www.epi.org/publication/fact-challenged_policy/
Rothstein refutes, point by point, Bill Gates’s claims in one of his articles called “How Teacher Development Could Revolutionize Our Schools.” Gates enthusiastically favors school privatization, and gave significant support to Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for “Superman”, a documentary that primarily blames teacher unions for the problems facing public schools and offers privatized charter schools as the answer. The documentary claims that teacher unions protect incompetent teachers and stifle innovation in education. However, private charter schools, the documentary argues, are free to make the changes necessary to rescue the U.S. education system. Rothstein shows how Gates misrepresents facts to make his case. Rothstein finds that Gates’s “specific prescriptions, and the urgency he attaches to them, are based on the misrepresentation of one fact, the misinterpretation of another and the demagogic presentation of a third.” “It is remarkable,” Rothstein continues, “that someone associated with technology and progress should have such a careless disregard for accuracy when it comes to the education policy in which he is now so deeply involved.”Bill Gates’s article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/27/AR2011022702876.html
Saltman, Kenneth J. Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2007.
“Capitalizing on Disaster dissects the most powerful educational reforms and highlights their relationship to the rise of powerful think tanks and business groups. Over the past several decades, there has been a strong movement to privatize public schooling through business ventures. At the beginning of the millennium, this privatization project looked moribund as both the Edison Schools and Knowledge Universe foundered. Nonetheless, privatization is back.”
“The new face of educational privatization replaces public schooling with EMOs, vouchers, and charter schools at an alarming rate. In both disaster and nondisaster areas, officials designate schools as failed in order to justify replacement with new, unproven models. Saltman examines how privatization policies such as No Child Left Behind are designed to deregulate schools, favoring business while undermining public oversight. Examining current policies in New Orleans, Chicago, and Iraq, Capitalizing on Disaster shows how the struggle for public schooling is essential to the struggle for a truly democratic society.” (Description is from Paradigm Publishers website)
Senechal, Diana. “In Defense of Diane Ravitch.” The New Republic, December 12, 2011. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/98379/diane-ravitch-school-reform
Senechal’s article defending Ravitch is a direct response to Kevin Carey’s article, “The Dissenter,” which largely aims to discredit Ravitch. Senechal agrees that “Ravitch’s books are not mild-mannered; they do not tiptoe or bow. At once passionate and lucid, they do what the work of a public intellectual should do: arouse general interest in matters that might otherwise seem out of reach or obscure.” Despite their provocative nature, Ravitch’s books, according to Senechal, “illuminate education conflicts of the past and present, draw attention to fascinating personages and writings, and make for invigorating reading.” “I do not always agree” with Ravitch, says Senechal, “but I admire her work and have learned much from it.”Kevin Carey’s article: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/magazine/97765/diane-ravitch-education-reform?page=0,0&passthru=YjkzM2EyNmQ3ZDllNmUzYTAzZGQ0OTE4NGJmMWM1Zjc
Uetricht, Micah. Strike for America: Chicago Teachers Against Austerity. New York: Verso, 2014.
“The teachers took on the bipartisan, free market school reform agenda that is currently exacerbating inequality in education and waging war on teachers’ livelihoods. In the age of austerity, when the public sector is under attack, Chicago teachers fought back — and won.
“The strike was years in the making. Chicago teachers spent a long time building a grassroots movement to educate and organize the entire union membership. They stood up against hostile mayors, billionaire -backed reformers out to destroy unions, and even their own intransigent union leadership, to take militant action. The Chicago protest has become a model for how reforms to the school system can be led by teachers and communities. It offers inspiration for workers looking to create democratic, fighting unions. Strike for America is the story of this movement and how it triumphed in the defining struggle for workers today.” (description from Verso website)
Weiner, Lois. The Future of Our Schools: Teachers Unions and Social Justice. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012.
Weiner explains that she created this collection of essays “for teachers who are committed to social justice and democracy, in our society and in our schools.” (4) She writes to inform readers that the “lofty-sounding slogans” of the so-called school reform movement “mask the drive of transnational corporations to refashion education to fit their vision of a new global economy.” (60) Weiner reminds readers that although the propaganda campaigns against teachers unions seem daunting and that there are “powerful forces arrayed against us, we also need to keep in mind that every major improvement to education occurred because social movements—ordinary people banding together to make change—made others see issues differently.” (4) The opposition’s forces, she explains, are based upon an international “neoliberal” mindset, which emphasizes “individual initiative and competition” and “pushes a ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking.” (9) Weiner proposes that teachers “reverse the assault on public education” by “creat[ing] a new social movement of teachers that knows how to learn from and work with parents, communities, activists on other social issues, and other labor unions.” (4) “If we fail to make the unions what they should be,” Weiner cautions, “most students in our country—and the world—will be trained for a life of menial labor, poverty, or imprisonment.” (12)
For updated material, visit Lois Weiner’s website
Regional Bibliography
Northeast
Newark
Golin, Steve. The Newark Teacher Strike: Hopes on the Line. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002.
Golin argues that the Newark teachers’ union, which was predominantly white ethnics (Jews and Italians) and an AFT affiliate, fused 1930s-style unionism with a 1960s social consciousness in their quest for “teacher power,” the right for teachers to have greater control over their workplace. This new, reinvigorated idea about class that combined blue-collar unionism with professionalism, animated both teachers’ strikes in Newark. Between the two strikes, a black mayor took office in Newark, and he appointed a black majority in the city’s board of education. When the teachers went on strike in 1971, the board and the city government could align with black parents against what they claimed was a white teachers’ union. As part of their assertion of professionalism, the Newark teachers demanded they no longer perform chores they deemed unprofessional. Since these tasks were then given to black non-teachers, it helped draw the racial lines more clearly. This racial alliance helped the board, city government, and largely black parents win against the predominantly white union.
New York
Cole, Stephan. The Unionization of Teachers: A Case Study of the UFT. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969.
Cole explains the unionization efforts of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the American Federation of Teachers’ (AFT) New York City local, comparing them to the National Education Association (NEA). In doing so, Cole finds that the AFT was much more committed to collective bargaining over salary—what Cole defines as “unionization”—and the NEA was more committed to “professionalization” because its leadership originally refused to use strikes and focused on making teachers appear more professional like doctors and lawyers. Cole often treats unionism and professionalism as mutually exclusive. Many teachers also viewed them as irreconcilable, and this conflict persists today. From Cole’s vantage point in 1969, AFT’s unionism seemed an unlikely vehicle for professionalization. Yet from this negative forecast, Cole managed to formulate an incredibly accurate prediction: “the existence of organizations such as the UFT will force the NEA to become increasingly militant and to abandon its archaic conservative ideology: A militant professional association committed to fighting for economic and professional goals would probably do more to improve the quality of American education that a union that gives organizational goals priority over professional ones.” (183)
Gaffney, Dennis. Teachers United: The Rise of New York State United Teachers. State University of New York Press, 2007.
Gaffney explored the rise of the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), an AFT affiliate, which resulted from the merger of the New York State Teachers Association (NYSTA), affiliated with the NEA, and the United Teachers of New York (UTNY), another AFT affiliate. Gaffney notes that like other NEA affiliates, the NYSTA remained committed to professionalism. Consequently, they were very reluctant to engage in collective bargaining, acting as a union, or even using union terminology—let alone initiating strikes. Yet the New York City teachers, with their strikes and general militancy, both inspired NYSTA teachers and helped overturn the legal barriers to collective bargaining. Even after NYSTA teachers realized they could collectively bargain, they still hesitated to abandon their traditional roles as professionals. However, when upstate teachers began asking for salary increases in the late 1960s and their school boards resisted, Gaffney argues that NYSTA teachers truly learned the value of unionism, and they began embracing union action. To demonstrate their profound shift, the NYSTA merged with the UTNY in 1972 to form the NYSUT, under the aegis of the AFT, which had traditionally symbolized teacher unionism.
Perlstein, Daniel H. Justice, Justice: School Politics and the Eclipse of Liberalism. New York: Peter Lang, 2004.
Perlstein examines the infamous Ocean Hill-Brownsville (a school district in New York City) teachers’ strike of 1968. Perlstein argues that the predominantly Jewish United Federation of Teachers (UFT) felt an interracial working-class solidarity with their black students. Yet UFT members also felt that their professional expertise, along with those of the white administrators, offered the best path to racial equality. The UFT’s position was largely acceptable until Black Power pointed out the systemic nature of discrimination. At this point, Perlstein contends, the predominantly black Ocean Hill-Brownsville community viewed the UFT’s stance as insufficient and condescending—and worse: their dominance by white “experts” perpetuated inequality. As Perlstein shows, the bitter strike realigned New York City’s politics and reshaped ideas of race and class, since the Jewish UFT teachers became fully “white” and middle-class and began to shift their electoral allegiance to the conservative camp. Additionally, this incident spoiled the UFT’s and AFT’s reputation as civil rights advocates, which offered the opportunity for the NEA to pick up that standard.
Perrillo, Jonna. Uncivil Rights: Teachers, Unions, and Race in the Battle for School Equity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Perrillo explains that her book “traces the tensions between teachers’ rights and civil rights in New York City from the Great Depression to the present, examining teachers’ participation in creating a progressive ‘social order,’ their investment in the status quo, and the relationship of both to their professional interests.” (1) In doing so, Perrillo explores “the historical relationship between two social movements that are often studied separately: teachers’ struggle for professional agency…and black Americans’ quest for an equal education.” (2) “Although teachers’ rights and civil rights need not be viewed as conflicting categories,” Perrillo argues, “they were often made so, both by teachers, who came to see civil rights efforts as detracting from or competing with their own goals, and by civil rights efforts and mandates that regulated and at times deprofessionalized teachers’ work in minority schools.” (2) Perrillo advises readers to “rethink the centrality of rights talk to school reform projects and instead see the empowerment of teachers and students as mutually beneficial goals, not just in rhetoric but in reality.” (13)
Podair, Jerald E. The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.
Podair examines the infamous Ocean Hill-Brownsville (a school district in New York City) teachers’ strike of 1968. Podair argues that the predominantly Jewish United Federation of Teachers (UFT) felt an interracial working-class solidarity with their black students. Yet UFT members also felt that their professional expertise, along with those of the white administrators, offered the best path to racial equality. The UFT’s position was largely acceptable until Black Power pointed out the systemic nature of discrimination. At this point, Podair contends, the predominantly black Ocean Hill-Brownsville community viewed the UFT’s stance as insufficient and condescending—and worse: their dominance by white “experts” perpetuated inequality. As Podair shows, the bitter strike realigned New York City’s politics and reshaped ideas of race and class, since the Jewish UFT teachers became fully “white” and middle-class and began to shift their electoral allegiance to the conservative camp. Additionally, this incident spoiled the UFT’s and AFT’s reputation as civil rights advocates, which offered the opportunity for the NEA to pick up that standard.
Selden, David. The Teacher Rebellion. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1985.
Selden was a main organizer for New York City’s United Federation of Teachers (UFT) and served as the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) from 1968 to 1974, when he lost a leadership election to Albert Shanker. Written in the first-person, Selden explains that this “book is a memoir of the postwar decades, when the spark of teacher militancy spread across the country. I was a participant in that movement. My experience helps locate the events of the rebellion in their time and social context. It also invokes the attempt to build that ‘one big union’ for all teachers.” (ix) Selden describes his role in building up the UFT and AFT, his time as president of the AFT, attempts at the AFT-NEA merger, and his loss to Albert Shanker in 1974.
Taft, Philip. United They Teach: The Story of the United Federation of Teachers. Los Angeles: Nash Publishing, 1974.
Taft examines the UFT from its origins in the early twentieth century all the way until 1973. Taft explains that his book pays special attention to “obstacles to the growth of teacher unionism throughout the country and also in New York City. The activities of the old Teachers Union are examined up to 1935, the year in which the Communists gained control of the organization. As a result many of its former leaders and several hundred members withdrew and formed the Teachers Guild, which became the direct predecessor of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). The latter was able to eliminate the several dozen teachers’ associations which made the development of a successful collective-bargaining policy impossible.” (xi) Taft further explains that the “UFT is interesting because its size creates difficult administrative problems. In addition, a teachers’ union in New York which represents the staff in the schools faces problems that to some extent are different from and more difficult than those of teachers’ unions in virtually all the other cities in the United States. Nevertheless, the UFT has been able to overcome obstacles and weld together a diverse and loyal membership led by an unusual group of leaders.” (xi) Taft also explores the UFT’s fight for academic freedom, the UFT’s first contract, the UFT’s role in New York City’s school district decentralization plan, and the UFT’s role in the infamous Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike of 1968.
Taylor, Clarence. Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
Taylor explored New York City’s Teachers Union (TU), which was Communist-founded and -dominated, and explains how the organization “went beyond professional unionism,” forging alliances with community members to advance a comprehensive civil rights platform for black equality. Taylor holds the TU up as an example of sincere interracial cooperation, even though this group was well outside the mainstream. In short, Taylor’s account is inspiring, but it’s also fairly romanticized.
Pittsburgh
Shelton, Jon. “Against the Public: The Pittsburgh Teachers Strike of 1975-1976 and the Crisis of the Labor-Liberal Coalition.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 10:2 (Summer 2013), pp. 55-75.
Shelton explores public perceptions of the 1975-76 Pittsburgh teachers’ strike. “The Pittsburgh strike,” Shelton argues, “significantly widened the gap between what many believed were the interests of labor unions and the interests of the public.” (62) Some who opposed the striking teachers felt, Shelton claims, “the commitment to teaching was incompatible with the right of the teacher, as a worker, to withhold labor to achieve a higher salary.” (66) Striking teachers became, to some extent, a scapegoat “for the fears of American economic and moral decline…in the 1970s.” (68) In short, Shelton shows that despite state legislation friendly to teachers’ unions, public opinion turned against the striking teachers. Further, the arguments people formulated against public sector unions were later adapted to use against private sector unions. (75)
Pacific Northwest
Belabored, a podcast from Dissent magazine online.
Episode 42: “(Almost) Striking in Portland” – February 22, 2014, by Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen.“[T]eachers in Oregon are proving that militant unionism isn’t dead yet, and that there’s a lot to be won if workers stand together and fight with the community by their side. Portland teacher Elizabeth Thiel gives Belabored some thoughts on what happened in her district, and what’s happening as teachers around the country decide that enough is enough when it comes to corporate education reform.”http://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/belabored-podcast-42-almost-striking-in-portland
Bussell, Bob. PowerPoint presentations.
“We Are One”: Protecting and Defending the Public Sector.” 2011. Explores the history of attacks on Public Sector workers.“Neither New Nor Normal”: The Politics of Economic Injustice and the Roots of Union Renewal, December 2012. Connects union struggles in the public sectors to attacks on private sector
Kink, Steve and John Cahill. Class Wars: The Story of the Washington Education Association, 1965-2001. Federal Way, WA: Washington Education Association, 2004.
Kink and Cahill examine the Washington Education Association (WEA), NEA affiliate, beginning in 1965. Kink and Cahill explain that WEA adopted the Unified Service (UniServe) system from NEA proposals in 1970. The UniServe system provided professional union organizers to NEA locals to help them collectively bargain. UniServe helped to greatly empower rural districts, since they had traditionally been subjected to greater domination by administrators. Many rural districts across Washington used their new-found assertiveness to demand salary increases during a period of recession in the early 1970s. When school boards did not grant the concessions, many WEA locals went on strike. One strike in 1973 in Elma, Washington got particularly heated as the school board used strikebreakers to end the strike, and members of Elma’s WEA local employed civil disobedience tactics by attempting to block school buses with their bodies. The Elma strike ended after only one week, with the school board emerging victorious. Although this particular strike failed, many others proved successful, and WEA went on to enjoy the peak of its power from 1976 to 1980.
Upper Midwest
Chicago
_________. “Abolish Federation of Chicago Teachers.” Dallas Morning News, September 2, 1913. (Provided by Tom Alter)
This article refers to the Chicago school board’s vote to disband the Chicago Teachers Federation (CTF) in 1913, and the story’s appearance here in a Dallas newspaper shows that the event received national attention. The article reports that the Chicago board’s decision may have resulted from corruption, but many in Chicago and on the city’s board had reason to oppose the CTF. At the time, the CTF was a very activist union. The CTF provided significant support in gaining women the right to vote in Illinois that year, the first state east of the Mississippi River to do so. Further, the CTF was also involved in its state legislative fight to save the teachers’ pension program. To better understand the CTF during this time period, see Suellen Hoy’s article in the Summer 2013 issue of Chicago History called “Sideline Suffragists.”
Alter, Tom. “‘It Felt Like Community’: Social Movement Unionism and the Chicago Teachers Union Strike of 2012.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 10:3 (Fall 2013), pp. 11-25.
A history of unions, assessing which types proved successful and which ones failed. Alter then presents the keys to the Chicago Teachers Union’s (CTU) successful 2012 strike in opposing Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s “neoliberal” policies, which Alter also explains. Alter argues that the CTU’s “mobilization exemplified the essence of social movement unionism,” implemented by the CTU’s Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE). (11) This model, Alter concludes, “has shown a way forward for a long-dormant US labor movement by not just looking out for their own workplace concerns but also linking their fight to a community struggle and placing it in a broader political framework.” (11)
Belabored, a podcast from Dissent magazine online.
Episode 1: “‘We will shut down your city’” – April 12, 2013, by Josh Eidelson and Sarah Jaffe. An interview with Chicago Teachers Union president Karen Lewis. http://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/belabored-podcast-launches-sarah-jaffe-josh-eidelson-karen-lewisEpisode 37: “The One-Day Strike, featuring Max Fraser” – January 17, 2014, by Sarah Jaffe and Michelle Chen. A short discussion of the “changes in the ranks of the Chicago teachers’ union.” http://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/belabored-podcast-37-one-day-strike-max-fraser
Chicago Teachers Union, The Schools Chicago’s Students Deserve: Research-based Proposals To Strengthen Elementary And Secondary Education In The Chicago Public Schools, February 2012. (Suggested by Tom Alter) http://www.ctunet.com/quest-center/research/the-schools-chicagos-students-deserve
The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) released this report approximately six months before their strike at the beginning of the 2012-2013 school year. This report was essential in articulating the CTU’s vision for the future of Chicago’s public education system. The CTU’s report also helped enlist help from district parents and community activists because it demonstrated how teachers’ interests overlapped with those of their students and communities—and that teachers could act as agents of that change. “Every student in Chicago Public Schools (CPS),” the report begins, “deserves to have the same quality education as the children of the wealthy. … Our students deserve smaller class sizes, a robust, well-rounded curriculum, and in-school services that address their social, emotional, intellectual and health needs.” (v)
Chicago Teachers Union, A Sea of Red: Chicago Teachers Union members reflect on how the social organizing model of unionism helped win the union’s 2012 contract campaign. February 2014. (Suggested by Tom Alter) http://www.ctunet.com/quest-center/research/text/A-SEA-OF-RED-February-2014.pdf
Although this is a secondary source, it is filled with sizable quotes from 37 CTU members, mostly teachers of numerous grade levels, who were interviewed “on their perspective of the 2012 contract campaign, strike and the turn toward what is often called a social-organizing model of unionism.” (1) The various CTU interviewees reflect on the national, state, and municipal conditions and policies that compelled them to organize. They also discuss how they organized and the difficulties they faced in doing so. The CTU members also explain how they reconciled unionism and professionalism and reached out to their communities to enlist supporters. The CTU interviewees also reflect on the specific actions they took during the September 2012 strike and what they believe were the outcomes of the strike.
Danns, Dionne. “Blank Pay Days by a Chicago High-School Teacher.” The Saturday Evening Post, July 1, 1933, 16-17 and 68-70. (Provided by John F. Lyons)
An anonymous female public teacher in Chicago describes the personal and financial hardships she experienced when the Chicago Board of Education withheld her pay, along with her fellow Chicago teachers’ pay. Because of the hard times, she explains that in addition to her own family, “[p]lenty of other families have had to double up, to get along without conveniences and aids which they had come to look upon as necessities.” (68) She also describes her own students’ struggles with poverty. In passing, she mentions the interconnectedness of the city’s economy: many people traded in the scrip the teachers received from the Board of Education. Despite these poor conditions, she apparently opposed a teachers’ strike and refused to participate in one, and she claimed that “three-quarters of the teachers I know feel the same way.” (70) A teacher who supported a strike asked the author why she opposed a strike. And this anonymous author explained her reasoning: “I am afraid of mob psychology. I do not propose to act like an incorrigible child because I have been treated unfairly by my employer.” (70) Some teachers hold similar sentiments today.
For more background information on this primary source, see John F. Lyons’s article: “Regional Variations in Union Activism of American Public Schoolteachers” in Education and the Great Depression: Lessons from a Global History, E. Thomas Ewing and David Hicks, eds. New York: Peter Lang, 2006.
_________. “Spasmodic Diary of a Chicago School-Teacher.” The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 152, No. 5 (November, 1933): pp. 513-526. (Provided by John F. Lyons)
This article is a collection of excerpts from the diary of an anonymous female public school teacher in Chicago. Her entries relate the personal and financial hardships she experienced when the Chicago Board of Education withheld her pay, along with her fellow Chicago teachers’ pay. She also emphasizes the political and economic climate of Chicago. As the entries continue, readers can see how she becomes increasingly willing to engage in direct actions to protest their lack of pay: “It appalled me to find myself marching in a parade of protest, but I do think that only such methods will bring results. I’ve been converted. Once I did n’t [sic] believe it. But all other methods have failed.” (520) She believes that the “members of the Board [of Education] appear to represent the thought of all ‘big business,’” and these cooperating business leaders and politicians used the crisis to help pass their own austerity agenda in public education. (525)
For more background information on this primary source, see John F. Lyons’s article: “Regional Variations in Union Activism of American Public Schoolteachers” in Education and the Great Depression: Lessons from a Global History, E. Thomas Ewing and David Hicks, eds. New York: Peter Lang, 2006.
_________. Something Better for Our Children: Black Organizing in Chicago Public Schools, 1963-1971. New York: Routledge, 2003.
In this study of Chicago in the 1960s and early 1970s, Danns explores how “Black community leaders and organizations, students and teachers demanded Chicago school reform.” (117) Black Chicagoans “organized at various levels of the community and school system,” Donns explains, “to correct the inequalities of the city’s schools,” such as “overcrowding, poorly staffed schools, inadequate supplies and materials, outdated and racist curriculum and unstable job security.” (117) Danns devotes a chapter to the role Chicago’s black teachers played in this movement. Danns acknowledges that, like many teachers’ unions of the time, the policies of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) were discriminatory, and this led to tensions between black teachers and the CTU: “When the CTU stood in their way, [Chicago’s black teachers] moved to separate from it, Full Time Basis substitutes (FTBs) held wildcat strikes against it, and they held school when the CTU held a strike.” (93)
Gude, Shawn and Bhaskar Sunkara. Class Action: An Activist Teacher’s Handbook. New York: Jacobin Foundation, 2014. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/02/class-action-an-activist-teachers-handbook/
In this collection of essays, various writers, teachers, scholars, and activists explore so many issues related to the nation’s education system, especially the threat privatization poses to public education. One author examines the “school-to-prison pipeline.” In a section entitled “Running from Superman” (a reference to Davis Guggenheim’s documentary Waiting for “Superman”), numerous authors explore the many facets of the neoliberal school “reform” efforts: Teach For America, the business model of education, funding from big-business philanthropists like Bill Gates, and charter schools. Many articles explain the success of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), under the leadership of Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE), which came from mobilizing the rank-and-file membership, uniting with district parents and community members against school closings and other neoliberal policies. These various authors hold up the CTU as an example of effective organizing, one that “has indeed distinguished itself as neoliberal school-reformers’ most implacable foe.” (30-31) The contributors to this book intend for it “to be useful to those engaged in struggle—used for tabling and flyering, fuel for reading groups and public debate.” (5) So please read it and help spread the word!
Haley, Margaret. “Why Teachers Should Organize.” 1904. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uiug.30112039515827;view=1up;seq=161
“Margaret Haley (1861-1939) was born in Joliet, Illinois…. She began her career as a teacher in Chicago in 1876 at the age of sixteen. She left teaching in 1901 to become a full time employee of the Chicago Teachers Federation, the local teachers union. Haley spent most of her career lobbying on behalf of teachers, in order to improve wages and working conditions. She became president of the National Federation of Teachers and used this position to help develop the stronger National Education Association (NEA). She was the first woman to speak from the floor of the NEA, and she was a close associate of Ella Flagg Young, a progressive educator, who was the first female President of the NEA. Haley was a strong voice in national education politics. She and her colleagues acquired the nickname, ‘Lady Labor Sluggers.’”“In this essay, Haley’s appeal to teachers to organize in unions derives from her belief in the responsibilities of citizenship demanded in a democratic form of government. In this sense, Haley’s arguments are similar to the pleas made by the founding fathers in the early republic. She quotes Horace Mann and John Dewey, who both influenced her thinking, in an attempt to demonstrate support for public schools and the teaching profession. She observed first-hand the poor working conditions for teachers and the increasing similarity of teaching to factory work. She articulated her desire for teachers to be recognized as educators with the power to think and make decisions. Her remarks are relevant today as increasing standardization haunts the world of education; the ability of teachers to make educational decisions about content, methods, and processes has decreased.”(summary by Chara Haeussler Bohan, ed. Readings in American Educational Thought: From Puritanism to Progressivism. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing, 2004, 387-388.)
Leidenberger, George. Chicago’s Progressive Alliance: Labor and the Bid for Public Streetcars. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006.
Sections focus on how the Chicago Teacher Federation fought efforts of the Chicago Board of Education to centralize and empower administrators, demand direct election of the school board, connecting the struggle to unionize with a broad campaign for the public good. Leidenberger argues that their coalition building with Teamsters and the Chicago Federation helped to create a public sphere that was working-class oriented instead of top-down Progressive era reform. One of their key campaigns was municipal ownership of streetcars.
Leopold, Les. “The Hedge Fund That Ate Chicago.” Portside.org. May 5, 2014.
“There’s a battle royale raging in Chicago,” begins Leopold. This battle “pits hedge funds, the Chicago financial exchanges, real estate interests and Mayor Rahm Emanuel on the one side, against public employee unions and community groups on the other.” Emanuel and his allies claim the pension funds for public employees need to be drastically cut to avoid tax hikes. Despite these calls for austerity, however, Emanuel’s administration provides massive subsidies and/or tax breaks to many private companies, which also strains the budget. Although the main battleground is Chicago, Leopold announces that the “outcome may determine the health and well-being of pension funds as well as public services all across the country.”
“Defined pension funds,” Leopold explains, “are disappearing for two overlapping reasons. The first is that unions, the main driver of defined-benefit pensions, are in decline. Today, union’s represent less than 7 percent of the private sector workforce, down from 35% in 1955. But that’s only part of the story. The most crucial cause is the deregulation of the financial sector which started in the late 1970s. Once freed from their New Deal shackles, corporate raiders (now called private equity firms, hedge funds and investment firms) strip-mined thousands of corporations using borrowed money.” Leopold demystifies the language these brokers use to justify their practices: “The raiders, of course, claim that through their own entrepreneurial genius, they ‘unlock’ hidden value. In reality, they milk the company in every way imaginable,” in a practice Leopold calls “financial strip-mining.”
Leopold explains that the “public employee unions and community activists contend that city’s fiscal problems could be solved easily through a small sales tax on financial trades on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board Options Exchange.” This “financial transaction tax (sometimes called a financial speculation tax or Robin Hood Tax),” says Leopold, “is designed to retrieve some of the money that is being siphoned away from our wages, benefits and tax dollars.”
Leopold sees this solution as a potential means to close the rift that often appears to divide public and private sector employees: “While such a tax could easily fulfill the promises made to public employees, it might also be prudent and just to use some of the financial tax to create a statewide defined benefit pension fund for private sector as well as public employees. That should put an end to the divide-and-conquer tactics opportunistic politicians and their hedge fund cronies use to enrich themselves and their political ambitions.”
Lipman, Pauline. The New Political Economy of Urban Education: Neoliberalism, Race, and the Right to the City. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Lipman looks at Chicago as a neoliberal “laboratory,” which she says is “driven by market ideologies and the regulatory power of global finance.” Lipman argues that “education is both shaped by and deeply implicated in globalized political, economic, and ideological processes that have been redefining cities over the past 25 years.” (3) As pervasive as the neoliberal mindset may seem, Lipman claims, the “current failure of markets and deregulation has brought to the fore weaknesses of the neoliberal strategy, creating an opening for alternative progressive agendas and alliances.” (10) Lipman also explains many key aspects of neoliberal ideology. In the neoliberal worldview, says Lipman, education is considered a “private good, an investment one makes in one’s child or oneself to ‘add value’ to better compete in the labor market, not a social good for development of individuals and society as a whole.” (14-15) In one of her chapters, Lipman explores the roots of “school choice” to better understand why these neoliberal policies appeal to so many “teachers and parents, particularly parents of color, who are fed up with the failures of public schools to educate their children appropriately.” (21) In order to create an alternative vision to neoliberalism, claims Lipman, we need to better appreciate its power.
Lyons, John F. Teachers and Reform: Chicago Public Education, 1929-1970. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008.
One of Chicago’s major bargaining units, the Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU), was also founded by white ethnics. Although the CTU had a sizable African American contingent by the late 1960s, its leaders and senior members were overwhelmingly white. According to Lyons, this led to a racial divide within the CTU as the white teachers asserted their new-found professionalism by asking for increased wages and greater classroom control. The CTU’s black teachers, on the other hand, were influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and ideas of Black Power and demanded the union try to improve the poor schools and help the predominantly black student population succeed. When the CTU went on strike in 1969 to secure salary increases, black CTU members crossed the picket line in solidarity with the community’s black parents and students and against the white teachers and Chicago’s central white Board of Education. After the failure of the strike, both the CTU and the Board made reforms, employing more African Americans and promoting more of them into leadership roles. For Lyons, this incident in Chicago illustrates the significant affect race has on the “ever-present dualism” in the teaching profession: the conflicting aims of “self-interest” and “social reform.”
_________. “Chicago Teachers Unite,” Chicago History (Spring 2004): 32-47.
In this article, Lyons examines the social activities of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) during the 1930s and 1940s. Lyons explains that “Chicago public schoolteachers founded” the CTU in 1937 in response to the “hardships Chicago public schoolteachers endured during the Great Depression.” (32) “To build and maintain the union’s organizational strength and repair years of division among teachers,” Lyons continues, “union leaders initiated a program of study classes, cultural events, and social activities. This initiative attracted members and actively forged a sense of solidarity among Chicago public schoolteachers. By 1938, with more than eight thousand members, the CTU was the largest teachers’ union in the country and represented two-thirds of the city’s teacher workforce.” (32) The CTU’s social programs faded away shortly after World War II. But for “its brief lifespan,” Lyons concludes, “the educational, cultural, and social programs of the CTU served to ‘knit warm personal relationships among teachers of the various levels,’ according to Mary Herrick, first vice president of the CTU. In the process, the union helped teachers become a force in the political life of the city.” (47)
This article includes numerous images from the time period: pictures of classrooms, CTU leaders and rank-and-file members, teachers’ political demonstrations, Chicago politicians, pamphlets and broadsides from the CTU, newspaper articles, and even the sheet music for the CTU’s “Our Union Song.”
_________. “Regional Variations in Union Activism of American Public Schoolteachers” in Education and the Great Depression: Lessons from a Global History, E. Thomas Ewing and David Hicks, eds. New York: Peter Lang, 2006.
Lyons explores the reasons why so few teachers established unions in the United States. Some scholars, Lyons explains, attribute this limited amount of teacher unionism to a simple urban-rural divide: since so many teachers came from rural areas, they were not inclined to unionize while urban private-sector workers were. Other researchers, Lyons continues, claim that few teachers unionized because teachers “adhered to an ideology of professionalism,” which supposedly led teachers “to reject labor unions and militant industrial action.” (20) By comparing Depression-era Chicago to other areas around the country, Lyons finds that the mystery of teacher unionism is “more complex” than just the urban-rural divide or professionalism. As illustrated in the Chicago case, Lyons argues that the key factors that helped “teacher militancy and unionism flourish” are the “existence of a strong private sector labor movement, a tradition of teacher unionism, the acceptance of labor organizations by political elites and school administrators, and the greater social freedom of the large school systems.” (34)
Lyons also shows the long tradition of politicians’ and employers’ opposition to teacher unionism. Lyons explains that already by the 1910s, “presidents, governors, mayors, and judges argued” that in “a representative democracy,” “the will of the people was vested in elected officials who acted in the ‘public interest,’ and answered to the electorate. For public officials to recognize public sector unions, to bargain over conditions with them, or to allow them to strike, would require the public employer to share its decision-making authority with unelected people and violate the sovereignty of the government and the democratic will of the people.” (22)
Lyons also includes a concise comparative history of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) by explaining the two organizations’ foundings and their original purposes, along with the AFT’s relationship to Chicago and the Chicago Teachers’ Federation. (pages 20 through 22)
Reid, Robert L., ed. Battleground: The Autobiography of Margaret A. Haley. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982.
Beginning with the words “I never wanted to fight,” Haley recounts her own life, “forty of them,” she says, were “spent on hectic battle-fronts of the unending war” in education. (3) Editor Robert Reid explains that as “the leader of the nation’s most militant teacher organization, the Chicago Teachers’ Federation, Haley fought to advance the cause of public education and to improve the well-being of the women grade teachers of Chicago.” (vii) “Woven through her life story,” Reid continues, “are contemporary American themes: urbanization, bureaucratization, feminism, and professionalism.” (vii) Reid points out that under Haley’s “leadership, the CTF played a significant role in the progressive reform movement” in Chicago. (viii) Reid explains that Haley’s activism reflected her general values, which “included a belief in the workings of democracy, and understanding of the relationship between taxation and social justice, a respect for the dignity of all human beings including those of the feminine sex, and a strong faith in the importance of education and the common schools.” (ix)
Rousmaniere, Kate. Citizen Teacher: The Life and Leadership of Margaret Haley. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005.
Rousmaniere explains that she wrote this biography of Haley “to reintroduce Haley’s vision into the public conversation about schooling, and to offer a historical perspective to the battle for school finance reform.” (xi) Rousmaniere describes Haley as “[c]harismatic, ambitious, and fearless,” (x) and says these traits helped Haley as she led the Chicago Teachers’ Federation, which was the first teachers’ union in the United States. “Haley believed,” continues Rousmaniere, “that the public school was the heart of democracy and that teachers were its life blood.” (ix) Consequently, Haley “saw her struggle for equitable school funding and democratic education as nothing less than a war over the soul of American democracy.” (x) “The driving force behind all of Haley’s activities,” says Rousmaniere, “was her vision of citizenship—that teachers, parents, and children has the right and responsibility to be involved in the democratic process.” (x) For all of these reasons, Rousmaniere concludes, “Haley is a powerful role model” for “all teachers, but especially women teachers who work for school improvement and social justice.” (x)
Smith, Edith. “Chicago Teachers Are Paid.” The Nation Vol. 139, No. 3611 (September 19, 1934), pp. 322-323. (Provided by John F. Lyons)
Smith, a female public school teacher in Chicago, explains the feelings she and many of her fellow teachers experience as they received their first full, regular paychecks from Chicago’s Board of Education in four years. Smith mentions the difficulties she and many other teachers experienced during this time period due to the withholding of their salaries and the general hardships of the Great Depression. She also explains that after participating in public displays of protest to ask for teachers’ back pay, many opponents claimed she was a “‘red’ for daring to believe I had earned my salary and was entitled to it.” (323) She makes many observations that serve as parallels to current public teachers struggles in Chicago: teachers and students collaborating in activism, politicians’ claiming to balance the budget, and corporate influence in politics. Smith ends with a powerful conclusion: “After four years of learning that bankers are our worst enemies, that politicians are interested in votes and power only and use the city’s children merely as pawns in their own selfish game, that we can depend on no one but ourselves, we cannot be restored to our previous complacency by one pay day.” (323)
For more background information on this primary source, see John F. Lyons’s article: “Regional Variations in Union Activism of American Public Schoolteachers” in Education and the Great Depression: Lessons from a Global History, E. Thomas Ewing and David Hicks, eds. New York: Peter Lang, 2006.
Sustar, Lee. Striking Back in Chicago: How Teachers Took on City Hall and Pushed Back Education “Reform”. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014.
“After years in which teachers have been blamed for the problems of underfunded and understaffed schools, the Chicago teachers’ strike of 2012 transformed the debate. From the overwhelming strike authorization vote that overcame anti-union legislation to repeated mass marches and protests, the Chicago Teachers Union showed teachers were determined to maker their voices heard in response to corporate-driven education reform.” (description from Haymarket website: http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Striking-Back-in-Chicago)
Uetricht, Micah. Strike for America: Chicago Teachers Against Austerity. New York: Verso, 2014.
“The teachers took on the bipartisan, free market school reform agenda that is currently exacerbating inequality in education and waging war on teachers’ livelihoods. In the age of austerity, when the public sector is under attack, Chicago teachers fought back — and won.“The strike was years in the making. Chicago teachers spent a long time building a grassroots movement to educate and organize the entire union membership. They stood up against hostile mayors, billionaire -backed reformers out to destroy unions, and even their own intransigent union leadership, to take militant action. The Chicago protest has become a model for how reforms to the school system can be led by teachers and communities. It offers inspiration for workers looking to create democratic, fighting unions. Strike for America is the story of this movement and how it triumphed in the defining struggle for workers today.” (description from Verso website: http://www.versobooks.com/books/1569-strike-for-america)
Wrigley, Julia. Class Politics and Public Schools, 1900-1950. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1982.
In her study of Chicago in the first half of the twentieth century, Wrigley argues that “[l]ocal and state organizations argued for better funding of the schools, for higher school-leaving ages, and for the development of a broad curriculum for working-class students. … [L]abor representatives emphasized the importance of public schooling for a more equitable society.” (261) Chicago business leaders, on the other hand, “promoted much more limited, cheap and hierarchical forms of schooling,” and because these business leaders reached an agreement with Chicago’s Democratic Party machine, the business leaders largely succeeded in implementing their vision of education. But, concludes Wrigley, the “history of educational development in Chicago is a history of struggle, compromise, and resistance, not of simple elite domination,” since labor activism helped shape and lessen the harshness of the business leaders’ plans for the city’s education. (265)
Detroit
Detroit Teachers Opposed to Compulsory Unionism (DTOCU). “‘Agency Shop’- – What it means for Detroit Teachers,” pamphlet. ca. 1970. (Provided by Jon Shelton. Ernest C. Smith Collection, Folder 2-18, “Detroit Teachers Opposed to Compulsory Unionism; Mailings, 1969-1970”; Walter P. Reuther Library)
This pamphlet was part of a campaign by the Detroit Teachers Opposed to Compulsory Unionism (DTOCU), a Detroit organization supported by the National Right to Work Committee. In the pamphlet, Christine Warczak, a Detroit teacher who was the DTOCU’s president, asks Detroit teachers to not sign the local teachers’ union collective bargaining agreement because it includes an “agency shop” clause. This clause required even non-union members to pay union dues, since non-members also benefit from the union’s bargaining efforts. The DTOCU claims it is “not at all” anti-union; rather, the organization just opposes the agency shop’s “compulsion.” The DTOCU further claims that many Detroit teachers actually oppose the agency shop clause. According to the DTOCU, the clause was only included in the contract because many of the union’s membership were unaware of it and because the “majority of the [Detroit] Board [of Education] are union-sponsored, union-backed and union-financed.”
Mirel, Jeffrey. The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System: Detroit, 1907-81. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999.
Mirel explains that the “history of the Detroit Public Schools…offers a unique opportunity to explore the rise and fall of a great urban school district. Virtually every major educational reform and innovation of the twentieth century took root and flourished in Detroit.” (xiv) Mirel’s book is about the many individuals and organizations that influenced Detroit’s public school system. But some segments of the book are especially relevant to teacher unionism in that city:
- The section entitled “Teacher Unionism and Educational Conflict” is about the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) original unionization (111-124).
- The section entitled “The Road to Financial Ruin” is about the circumstances surrounding a DFT strike in 1967 (313-326).
- The section entitled “From Decentralization to Recentralization, 1971-1981” is about the circumstances surrounding another DFT strike in 1973 (359-370).
Warczak, Christine. Letter from the Detroit Teachers Opposed to Compulsory Unionism. August 22, 1969. (Provided by Jon Shelton. Ernest C. Smith Collection, Folder 2-18, “Detroit Teachers Opposed to Compulsory Unionism; Mailings, 1969-1970”; Walter P. Reuther Library)
This letter was part of a mailing campaign by the Detroit Teachers Opposed to Compulsory Unionism (DTOCU), a Detroit organization supported by the National Right to Work Committee. In the letter, Christine Warczak, a Detroit teacher who was the DTOCU’s president, asks Detroit teachers to not sign the local teachers’ union collective bargaining agreement because it includes an “agency shop” clause. This clause required even non-union members to pay union dues, since non-members also benefit from the union’s bargaining efforts. Warczak calls this “compulsory unionism” and attributes the clause to “a tiny group of union leaders.” Warczak also points out that the “right not to join a union” is a “civil right” that ought to be protected, which the DTOCU is attempting to do in court.
Minneapolis/St. Paul
Rachleff, Peter. “The Present, Past, and Future of Collective Bargaining.” Twin Cities Daily Planet, March 19, 2014. http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/blog/rachleff/present-past-and-future-collective-bargaining
Rachleff explains the victory of the Saint Paul Federation of Teachers Local 59’s victory in winning a new contract. SPFT, says Rachleff, “began to prepare their campaign a year before the contract’s expiration, they organized internally by creating a “Contract Action Team” to survey rank-and-file teachers and encourage them to attend bargaining sessions. Externally, SPFT 59 brought parents, community members, and teachers together at house parties, book discussions and focus groups. Union officers and staff held listening sessions to hear the range of ideas generated by this multi-part process. The union then produced a detailed pamphlet, The Schools St. Paul Children Deserve, which was unveiled at a public meeting where the Union pledged to bring the primary recommendations of both teachers and community members to the negotiating table. They also invited parents and community members to witness bargaining sessions and, on occasion, to speak on specific issues. SPFT 59’s reliance on rank-and-file teachers, parents, and community members expressed a new approach to the very process of collective bargaining.” Rachleff also points out that “SPFT 59’s leadership was quite explicit that teachers’ compensation would be the last issue they would address.” Rachleff predicts that Local 59’s new methods of collective bargaining “will prove crucial in reshaping a labor movement committed to advancing all working peoples’ interests in the decades ahead.”
Wisconsin
Beilke, Dustin. Wisconsin Education Association Council: A History. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Education Association Council, 2001.
Beilke provides an overview of the history of the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) from its founding in 1853 as the Wisconsin Teachers Association. One of the major themes Beilke explores is WEAC’s evolution from a professional association of teachers and administrators—in which the administrators often dominated—to a full-fledged teachers’ union in the early 1970s. Throughout this transformation, WEAC centralized its leadership, hired full-time union organizers in the Unified Service or UniServe system, established its own insurance trust, and helped pass educational standards and reductions in class size. Beilke also mentions the 1974 teachers’ strike in Hortonville, Wisconsin. Further, Beilke describes the successes WEAC enjoyed from the late 1970s to the early 1990s and the obstacles WEAC faced thereafter.
Boardman, Arlen (reporter). “Ultimatum to fired teachers issued by Hortonville board.” Appleton Post-Crescent, May 3, 1974, p. B-1. (Provided by Adam Mertz)
Nearly two months into the Hortonville, Wisconsin teachers’ strike, Hortonville Superintendent Marvin Obry released a statement to the press on behalf of himself and the Hortonville school board that attacked the Hortonville Education Association (HEA), the 88-member NEA local in Hortonville. The board fired 84 of the striking teachers on April 2. The statement implied that the very structure of the teachers’ union was to blame for the strike’s duration. The statement condemned the “HEA’s all-or-nothing attitude” as a “disservice” to the individual HEA teachers who might want to be reinstated “were it not for [the] group pressure” from the HEA. The statement also accused many HEA teachers of being “intent on disrupting the educational processes in the school system.” Also mentioned are the allegations that the Hortonville school board broke an open meetings law and that Wisconsin Governor Patrick Lucey met with representatives from the HEA.
Greenhouse, Steven. “Wisconsin’s Legacy for Unions.” The New York Times, February 22, 2014.
Greenhouse briefly explains Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s passage of the infamous Act 10, which severely limited the ability of public sector unions (except firefighters and police officers) to collectively bargain. Greenhouse goes on to explain the fallout of Act 10 in the three years since its passage. Greenhouse emphasizes the negative effects on public sector unions, mainly the staggering decline in union membership and the overall “[d]emoralization.” Greenhouse also mentions the public employers, who enjoy the new “flexibility” afforded them by Act 10, which helps them balance municipal and county budgets.
Hellwig, Jason F. “Big Labor in a Small Town: The Hortonville Teachers’ Strike.” Voyaguer: Northeast Wisconsin’s Historical Review 19:2 (Winter 2002-Spring 2003), pp. 10-18 and 21-26.
Hellwig chronicles the 1974 Hortonville, Wisconsin teachers strike and reveals the tactics of the striking teacher—along with those of their allies and their opponents. Hellwig also comments on how the strike took its toll on the teachers, the district’s children, local officials, and community cooperation. Hellwig explains the causes of the strike and follows the striking teachers’ legal and personal battles. Ultimately, Hellwig offers the Hortonville strike as a cautionary tale to showcase the dangers of declaring a strike in a small town.
Johnston, Robert D. “The Madison Moment: Labor Historians as Public Intellectuals during the Wisconsin Labor Crisis.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 9:2 (Summer 2012), pp. 7-24.
In this essay, Johnston surveys the words of various labor historians who publicly expressed their opinions about the 2011 battles over public sector collective bargaining in Wisconsin. Johnston notes that, overall, those labor historians acted as responsible public intellectuals who advocated for labor and criticized the arch-conservative Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Yet, Johnston also pointed out many historians’ oversimplifications and moralizing. “Insofar as labor historians should be proud of their contributions during the Madison crisis—and, by and large, they should be—it is because they upheld prime intellectual values of deep research, reflection, and critical engagement. When they fell down—when scholars became cheerleaders unconcerned about the complexities of the past (or even the past at all) and refused to take seriously their obligation to truly debate—it was when the more problematic temptations of the political realm became just a bit too difficult to resist.” (23-24)
Kersten, Andrew E. The Battle for Wisconsin: Scott Walker and the Attack on the Progressive Tradition. New York: Hill and Wang, 2011.
Kersten provides an account of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s political career before becoming governor, his new policies while in office, and the implications for Wisconsin’s people, economy, and environment. Kersten contrasts Walker’s conduct with Wisconsin’s progressive tradition, which valued labor rights, the environment, and democratic voices. For Kernsten, “the battle in Wisconsin is about two grand political traditions. On one side are the advocates of unrestrained capitalism” On the other side are “modern-day progressives and liberals whose predecessors in the early decades of the twentieth century fashioned new engaged and concerned governments at the local, state and federal levels in order to guard the economy, society, politics, and environment against the excesses of capitalism.”
McCartin, Joseph. “Public Sector Unions and Worker Rights in Wisconsin” interview on “History for the Future.” March 1, 2011.
In this interview, McCartin explains the history of the public sector labor movement and its relation to the private sector labor movement, showing the parallels and differences. McCartin describes the factors that led to public sector unionism rapid upsurge in the 1960s and early 1970s, which he compares to private sector unionism’s gains in the 1930s. Public sector union growth, says McCartin, had much to do with the era’s Civil Rights Movement, since both movements held overlapping goals to overturn second-class citizenship. McCartin also provides a list of factors that placed strict limits on public sector unionism’s continued expansion in the late 1970s, including budget shortfalls, rising unemployment and inflation, and a conservative resurgence. McCartin pays special attention to Wisconsin and teachers.
Mertz, Adam. “The 1974 Hortonville Teacher Strike and the Public Sector Labor Dilemma.” Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 98, No. 3 (Spring 2015), pp. 2-13.
Mertz explores a teacher strike that occurred in the small town of Hortonville, Wisconsin, which lasted many months, much longer than most teachers strikes and got extremely contentious. Mertz argues that the strike “spiraled out of control largely because of the importance of public opinion in public sector strikes. In their attempts to gain the public support necessary to win, teacher unions and their allies, as well as those who opposed them, all claimed to speak with the legitimate voice of ‘the people.’ … This mutual tactic increased the conflict’s intensity and broadened its scope, which further disrupted a small community and contributed to a contentious atmosphere across the state.” (12)
Rachleff, Peter. “‘Rebellion to Tyrants, Democracy for Workers’: The Madison Uprising, Collective Bargaining, and the Future of the Labor Movement.” The South Atlantic Quarterly 111:1 (Winter 2012), pp. 195-204.
Rachleff briefly provides the national historical background to explain the shortcomings of organized labor—both from outside the movement and within it. At greater length, Rachleff explains Wisconsin’s labor history, including its successes and the attacks against labor. He also describes Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s attack on the state’s public sector collective bargaining rights and the inspiring protests that sprang up in response. Rachleff also briefly compares the Wisconsin protests to the uprisings of the 2011 “Arab Spring.”
Rury, John L. and Frank A. Cassell, eds. Seeds of Crisis: Public Schooling in Milwaukee since 1920. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993.
In this collection of essays, the various authors explore many important topics in urban public education by studying the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) system. Michael Stolee examines “white flight” and desegregation. Marc V. Levine and John F. Zipp explain Milwaukee’s changing social and economic landscape that shaped the city’s school system. James G. Cibulka and Frederick I. Olson reveal the politics surrounding MPS. Rolland Callaway and Steven Baruch discuss the curriculum in MPS. William J. Kritek and Delbert K. Clear explain the relationship between teachers and principals in MPS. And Paul Haubrich explores student life in MPS high schools.
Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce. “A need to control the biggest ‘monopoly’ of all.” Hortonville Star, May 8, 1974, p. 2. (Provided by Adam Mertz)
In this newspaper article, the Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce exploited the bitter, two-month-old teachers’ strike in Hortonville, Wisconsin in 1974 to indict all public sector unions. The Chamber warned Wisconsin citizens of the increasing “scope and arrogance of the public employee monopoly.” Public employees grew more organized, and as a result, the Chamber’s statement continued, their influence was “coalescing to increase their political power.” This growing clout, the publication reminded its readers, meant public employees could secure salary and benefit gains that are often “higher and increasing at a more rapid rate than those paid to privately-employed taxpayers,” who were “wholly dependent” upon the public employees’ services. In short, the Wisconsin Chamber attempted to separate public sector unions from private sector taxpayers and “the public” in general.
Wisconsin Education Association Council. “The Hortonville Teachers’ Strike of 1974.” in Workers and Unions in Wisconsin: A Labor History Anthology, edited by Darryl Holter, 240-243. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1999.
This essay provides an overview of the 1974 teachers’ strike in Hortonville, Wisconsin, a city of only 1500 residents. The essay explains the legal and political climate that led to the strike and discusses the people and organizations involved on both sides of the dispute at the local and state levels. The essay highlights the stubbornness of the Hortonville school board, the resilience of the 84 Hortonville teachers who went on strike and their allies, and the sometimes violent confrontations that occurred on the picket line and around the community.