Ohio voters strike down ban on unions

November 8, 2011

Oh, I get all sorts of e-mail.  This one made me smile — I remember when Rich Trumka was a young coal miner calling us at the Senate Labor Committee, agitating for mine safety and better working conditions and railing against mine union officials who didn’t agree with him.

So he ran for president of the union.  Today, Trumka is president of the AFL-CIO.  But he’s still campaigning for better working conditions.

Trumka sends news from Ohio.

Dear Ed,I’m in Ohio right now, where working families just won an incredible victory.Ohioans overwhelmingly voted to repeal Senate Bill 5—Gov. John Kasich’s attack on middle-class jobs that was designed to destroy collective bargaining rights in Ohio.

We pieced together a short, powerful video summing up the amazing energy that went into this. I hope you’ll take a moment to watch:


Watch now.
Tonight’s victory represents a turning point in our collective work to protect good jobs, working families and workplace rights. But it’s more than that. It’s a long-overdue return to common sense.

From the very beginning of our jobs crisis, anti-worker politicians like Ohio’s Gov. Kasich have used our poor economy to push a cynical political agenda that favors the richest 1 percent at the expense of the 99 percent. Today, Ohio voters rejected that agenda.

During this campaign, firefighters, nurses, teachers and other public employees were joined by construction workers, bakery workers and all kinds of private-sector workers. They came together to ensure the survival of the middle class. And together, we’ll keep doing it. Politicians who side with the richest 1 percent will find their radical efforts stopped by working people who want America to work for everyone.

Watch the energy and dedication that went into this huge victory—and join us.

This is our moment, and we won with solidarity. We won because the working people of Ohio—public and private sector, union and nonunion—stood together.

But the solidarity went even further than that: Volunteers traveled not just from neighboring Wisconsin—but from states as far away as California and New York—to help get out the vote. And activists from dozens of states as far away as Alaska gave up their nights and weekends to call Ohio voters from home.

Solidarity means that when workers anywhere are under attack, we will all do whatever we can to help. It means we’re in it together.

Watch our video. See what solidarity looks like.

I hope you’ll celebrate this moment in your own way. But the most important thing is to find a way to keep your own energy going and growing—so you can be a part of sustaining and growing our movement for all working people—the 99 percent.

This fight we’ve taken on and won—and the threats we face going forward—are about more than Democrats or Republicans, or 2012 battleground states. They are about good jobs and our right to a voice on the job.

Together, we’re building a new kind of politics. A politics that works for the 99 percent, not just the 1 percent.

We’ve got to start getting ready now to win tomorrow’s victories. Over time—together—we’ll build a future that works for working America.

Thank you for being a part of this movement, and for all you do for America’s workers.

In Solidarity,

Richard L. Trumka
President, AFL-CIO

P.S. America is waking up. Here’s one big reason we won in Ohio—people can see that the firefighters, teachers, nurses and snowplow drivers hurt by SB 5 didn’t cause our economic problems. Wall Street did. Ohio voters saw through Senate Bill 5—they understood it was a plan to make the 99 percent bear the burden of Wall Street’s recklessness—and that it would do nothing to create jobs.

Take a moment to watch the incredible energy that went into this win.

To find out more about the AFL-CIO, please visit our website at www.aflcio.org.

More:

Here’s the video direct from YouTube (above, the link goes to the AFL-CIO site) — note it features more than a few teachers who worked to repeal Ohio’s SB5:

2 Comments | Collective Bargaining, Elections, Labor and unions, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

While you’re celebrating Labor Day . . .

September 5, 2011

Remember that the weekend was a Crazy Liberal Idea™, and that union men and women died for the right to have them.

See this and more at PoliticalLoudmouth.com

Text of the poster:  “The weekend was a crazy liberal idea.  In 1886, 7 union members in Wisconsin died fighting for the 5-day work week, and 8-hour work day.”

Source:  PoliticalLoudmouth.com

 

4 Comments | Democracy, Democracy in action, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, Labor and unions, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Wisconsin Republicans ignore Wisconsin voters’ views, and teachers

June 16, 2011

It is now quite clear that the people of Wisconsin disapprove of the union-busting, school-busting, library-killing antics of Wisconsins’ Republican Gov. Ahab Walker, and the Republicans in the legislature.

So, why don’t the Republicans do what the people of Wisconsin want, instead?  Why are Wisconsin Republicans acting as a special elite, ignoring voters’ wishes?

Forbes columnist Rick Ungar wrote:

A Rasmussen poll out today reveals that almost 60% of likely Wisconsin voters now disapprove of their aggressive governor’s performance, with 48% strongly disapproving.

While these numbers are clearly indicators of a strategy gone horribly wrong, there are some additional findings in the poll that I suspect deserve even greater attention.

It turns out that the state’s public school teachers are very popular with their fellow Badgers. With 77% of those polled holding a high opinion of their educators, it is not particularly surprising that only 32% among households with children in the public school system approve of the governor’s performance. Sixty-seven percent (67%) disapprove, including 54% who strongly disapprove.

Can anyone imagine a politician succeeding with numbers like this among people who have kids?

These numbers should be of great concern not only to Governor Walker but to governors everywhere who were planning to follow down the path of war with state employee unions. You can’t take on the state worker unions without taking on the teachers – and the teachers are more popular than Gov. Walker and his cohorts appear to realize.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Wisconsinite Jean Detjen.

14 Comments | Democracy, Education, Elections, Labor and unions, Politics, Polling and Public Opinion, Teachers | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

FOIA “request” in Wisconsin could be violation of whistleblower protection law

March 27, 2011

Wisconsinite Jean Detjen sent me a note correcting my misinformation:  Wisconsin does indeed have a whistleblower protection act.  The law protects Wisconsin state employees, against retaliation for disclosing information about wrongdoing.

William Cronon, Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, University of Wisconsin

William Cronon, Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, University of Wisconsin - University of Wisconsin photo

My reading suggests that, since professors are not specifically exempted, Prof. Cronon, at the University of Wisconsin, is specifically protected.

If the University of Wisconsin gives that answer to the Wisconsin Republican Party, however, the Party will argue that it is not a government official prevented from retaliating against a government employee.  That would be ample reason for the state to deny the FOIA request of the Party flatly and completely.

There is another, potentially more pernicious angle here:  The Republican Party in Wisconsin is, in this case, an agent of the Republicans in the state legislature, those whose tails are on the line for violating Wisconsin law, and as Prof. Cronon outlines it, Wisconsin tradition and historical norms.  It’s likely that the Party is acting at the direction of legislators.

In short, it’s kind of an organized crime action.  I think that the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) would cover this sort of action — any retaliation for hire, or by an agent, which creates a pattern or practice of organized crime activities.  Worse for the Wisconsin Republicans, if there were an ambitious U.S. attorney out there somewhere, there is no scienter requirement on RICO actions — that is, there need not be a clear formation of criminal intent.  The mere actions of an organized crime group, even with no intent to break the law, can be a RICO violation.

Even worse for the Republicans, RICO is available for anyone to use.  Were I Prof. Cronon, and were the Republicans to press their FOIA request to court, I’d counterclaim in federal court with the RICO statute.

That’s a nasty escalation.  But in these days, in this case, where a state party organization has gone to the employer of a university professor to get his job after he merely reported history, I wouldn’t take chances that the Republicans would later play fair or nice.

Every step against Cronon, every press release, every statement from a legislator or party apparatchik, provides more evidence of the coordinated effort, and establishes further the “pattern and practice” of organized crime activity.

Maybe cool heads will soon prevail, maybe patriotism and love of the First Amendment will break out among Wisconsin Republicans, and they will retract their demand that Prof. Cronon deliver them all of his e-mails as a professor at  the University of Wisconsin.

Maybe badgers will fly.

“Badger” is supposed to be the mascot of Wisconsin’s top-flight university, not a tool of partisan politics.

10 Comments | Freedom - Political, Freedom of Information, Freedom of the Press, Higher education, History, Labor and unions, Politics, Republican Party | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Surely ALEC wouldn’t be purging e-mails that are now evidence, would they?

March 26, 2011

You could write a soap opera about this stuff.

You remember Wisconsin?  Remember the teachers, cops, firefighters and other public employee unions?

Of course.  And it’s still a mess.  Gov. Scott  “Ahab” Walker signed into law a bill that would have the effect of abrogating union contracts without any bargaining, but the skullduggery used to sneak the bill through the Wisconsin legislature opened the door to charges that Wisconsin open meetings laws were violated, and a judge has stayed the implementation of the law.

In the meantime, a Wisconsin historian stepped up to lend historical perspective to the whole affair.  He thought he was turning on some lights, but Wisconsin Republicans have treated it like great heat.

[Off-topic note:  Some creatures are negatively photo-tropic, which means they avoid light.  You know, like the way the cockroaches in your first New York apartment scattered when you’d turn on the light.]

So, just as Virginia Attorney General and Chief Inquisitor and Witch Hunter Ken Cucinelli tried with those pesky scientists who keep finding the global temperature rising, Wisconsin Republican legislators have turned on the historian.  Here’s how the  New York Times‘ editorial, “A Shabby Crusade in Wisconsin,”  described it:

The historian, William Cronon, is the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas research professor of history, geography and environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin, and was recently elected president of the American Historical Association. Earlier this month, he was asked to write an Op-Ed article for The Times on the historical context of Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to strip public-employee unions of bargaining rights. While researching the subject, he posted on his blog several critical observations about the powerful network of conservatives working to undermine union rights and disenfranchise Democratic voters in many states.

In particular, he pointed to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group backed by business interests that circulates draft legislation in every state capital, much of it similar to the Wisconsin law, and all of it unmatched by the left. Two days later, the state Republican Party filed a freedom-of-information request with the university, demanding all of his e-mails containing the words “Republican,” “Scott Walker,” “union,” “rally,” and other such incendiary terms. (The Op-Ed article appeared five days after that.)

American Legislative Exchange Council.  ALEC, in K Street lobbyist parlance.

But, Dear Reader, do you see the potential problem here for Republicans in Wisconsin?  They have based their request on a Wisconsin law that prohibits private use of state-supplied e-mail — no politicking, no religious proselytizing.

What about all those ALEC e-mails to Wisconsin Republican legislators?  Sure, they’re more than fair-game for such a witch hunt, too.  And, since it’s the state Republican Party, and not a state or other public official making the FOIA request, surely that means the Republicans would not mind a similar request to cover contacts legislators had with the Wisconsin Republican Party, to the National Republican Party, or even ALEC itself.

Fair is fair, right?

ALEC generally has better lawyers than state legislators, and so we’d expect a group like that to recognize they could be in trouble.

Of course, purging of e-mails now would be a crime, a Watergate-style cover-up, destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice — after it’s become clear that there could be court action and claims of violation of law.

Jean Detjen provided links to the stories of the attacks on the distinguished Prof. Cronon over the last couple of days.  In a Facebook exchange, I noted that ALEC is fair game for such a witch hunt fishing expedition FOIA inquiry, too.

Don’t look now, Ms. Detjen said — but the ALEC site is down.

Server Error

The server encountered an internal error and was unable to complete your request.

JRun closed connection.

[Here’s a general link — try it, and let me know when the site is back up, if Paul Weyrich and the other ALEC-ians don’t skip to Brazil.]

Surely ALEC wouldn’t be illegally purging e-mails to Wisconsin, New York, Ohio, Texas, Idaho, Washington, California, Arizona, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana and Florida legislators, would it?

Update:  As of this evening, March 26, 2011, the ALEC site is back up.  Why was it down?

The NYT editorial closed with this:

The party refuses to say why it wants the messages; Mr. Cronon believes it is hoping to find that he is supporting the recall of Republican state senators, which would be against university policy and which he denies. This is a clear attempt to punish a critic and make other academics think twice before using the freedom of the American university to conduct legitimate research.

Professors are not just ordinary state employees. As J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a conservative federal judge on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, noted in a similar case, state university faculty members are “employed professionally to test ideas and propose solutions, to deepen knowledge and refresh perspectives.” A political fishing expedition through a professor’s files would make it substantially harder to conduct research and communicate openly with colleagues. And it makes the Republican Party appear both vengeful and ridiculous.

Well, yeah, Wisconsin’s Republicans wouldn’t want to be caught stifling discussion, nor taking revenge on a whistle-blower — because certainly if Cronon’s e-mails are discoverable with an FOIA request, he is a Wisconsin state employee.  “Whew,” the Wisconsin Republicans might wheeze:  Wisconsin has no specific whistleblower protection.  Ah, the plot thickens:  There are general laws that would appear, to me, a no-longer-practicing-in-that-area lawyer, to offer some protections for any employee engaged in general political speech, or in speech protecting the employee’s rights, or in speech designed to shed light on a wrongful or wrongfully executed official act — that is, Cronon’s evidence showing the unsavory and potentially illegal links of legislators to businessmen and business groups, and the potential conspiracy issues of ALEC’s nationally-directed efforts to use state legislators to gut union laws.

I wish Ahab would just get Jesus and quit thickening the plot.

More, resources, links from Jean Detjen and others:

Obviously, big tip of the old scrub brush to Jean Detjen, in Wisconsin.

7 Comments | Dissent, Free speech, Freedom of Information, Freedom of the Press, History, Political Smear, Politics, Republican Party | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

EDUSolidarity Day After, Part 3: Why would a teacher like me hang with a union?

March 23, 2011

I mean, really.  I have two degrees after attending three colleges.  I’ve taught at three different universities.  My parents were (nominally) Republicans.  I worked the Republican side of the U.S. Senate, for Orrin Anti-Labor-Law-Reform Hatch, for heaven’s sake.  I sat  through the hearings on the graft in the Operating Engineers local, the graft in the welders union in Pennsylvania that provided workers to the nuclear reactors, and the graft in the Central States Teamsters Pension Fund.  Two of my staff colleagues went on to chair the National Labor Relations Board, one is a well-known anti-labor lobbyist, and I’ve sat through the “no union here, ever” courses at three different corporations as a member of management.

What gives?

Why do I and other teachers stick with the union?

Diagram of a Liberty Ship

Diagram of a Liberty Ship

My father did carry a union card, though he was a Republican.  He had lots of stories about the difficulty of working with unions from his days with the United Cigar Stores in Los Angeles, and he probably had plenty of reason  to dislike them — but he got a job as a pipefitter building Liberty Ships.  He had to join the pipefitters union, and so he did.

Deep at heart, my father wanted to be a successful businessman.  After the war, he went back to sales.  He wound up in Burley, Idaho, managing a Western Auto store, when he struck out on his own.  Well, he and a partner.  Sedam and Darrell Furniture.  They had a disagreement, and it ended up as Sedam’s on one side of town, and Paul Darrell Hotpoint on the other.

Liberty Ships under construction during World War II

Liberty Ships under construction during World War II

It was about that time that he got a lung x-ray for something, and they found the spot.  He’d given up smoking in the 1930s, but as a pipefitter, he put a lot of asbestos on pipes to shield merchant marines from heat, to insulate the pipes, to prevent shipboard fires.  That was before the dangers of asbestos were well understood.  On the x-ray, it looked like cancer.

But it didn’t grow.  The spot just stayed there, for years.

The store in Burley fell victim to a bad economy when the union at J. R. Simplot Potatoes struck one year, in November.  The strikers weren’t buying Christmas gifts.  There were about 16 furniture and appliance stores in a county with about 16,000 people total.  Several of them didn’t survive the strike and my father’s was one of them.  A lot of people in town cursed the union for causing the strike.  On one of our trips moving to Utah, I rode with Dad and asked him about it, and why the union went on strike.  As a victim of the strike, he could have unloaded.  But he didn’t.

He explained how workers organized to get power to negotiate with big businesses.  Jack Simplot was a man we knew, a good man and a customer from all we knew — but the workers were good people, too, my father explained.  Sometimes workers and employers can’t agree.  My father explained that a strike was one of the few tools workers could use to get an employer to change his position against his will.  I told him I thought it was unfair that workers could strike and force other businesses out.  My father explained that it was tougher on the workers who didn’t buy from us — they needed the stuff they didn’t buy.

Over the next few years I watched as my father got screwed over by good people running good companies, people who were anti-union, but more, anti-employee.  He lost guaranteed bonuses.  He lost promised promotions.  He didn’t get promised raises.  My father never again owned his own business.  Instead he was an employee, unprotected by unions in a string of positions where union protection would have been a good deal for him.  He could not strike, as the workers at J. R. Simplot had.

One of the investigators for the Senate Labor Committee was a character of great proportion — no central casting bureau could have thought up a character like Frank Silbey.  Silbey headed Orrin Hatch’s investigations into unions, and he was a marvel to watch.  Soon after Hatch took over as chair of Labor, Silbey and I had a long lunch to work out just how we would work together.  I expressed to him my concern that any investigation of a union might hurt unions, and hurt workers.

Silbey thought for a minute, and took in a deep breath.  He started to put his finger in my face, but he stopped, and used it to doodle on the table cloth at the old Monocle, near his office in an odd building the Senate owned.

“Listen,” he said.  “You need to know that I am not anti-union.  I can’t be.”  And he told me about his own father.

I don’t remember the business.  I remember that Frank talked about how his family was not rich by any stretch, and his father worked hard at a union job.  The old man had not a lot of time for friends off the job, not after spending the time he wanted to with his wife and kids.  And so it was that, when he died unexpectedly, too young, Frank’s mother knew that it would be a sad funeral, with very few people attending.

When they got to the synagogue for the funeral, though, there was a huge crowd.  The place was literally overflowing with people.  The union had closed the business in honor of Mr. Silbey, and the union turned out for the funeral.  Each of the workers spent time meeting the widow, and telling her what a great man and good friend her husband had been.

“And that’s why I can’t ever be anti-union,” Frank said.  “When all is said and done, the union will stick by you when nobody else does.”

Over the next five years we found a few unions where that was not exactly true, but in most of those cases, those people who made that not true, went to jail.

The health care side of the Senate Labor Committee had a hearing into lung diseases, including black lung, brown lung, and the mesothelioma, the disease pipefitters got from asbestos.  One of the witnesses came from a pipefitters union.  Among other things, he testified to the astonishing rates of illness and untimely deaths among the pipefitters on the World War II Liberty Ships.

On the way out of the hearing I mentioned to the guy that my father had worked on the Liberty Ships, as a pipefitter.  He looked stricken, and paled.  He pulled me off to the side of the hallway, and said, “I am so sorry for you.  Your father did heroic work and the nation owes him a deep debt.”  No one had ever spoken about my father like that to me before, and I teared up.

“How long has he been gone,” the guy asked.

“Well, he’s got a spot on his lung, but it hasn’t changed.  He’s still alive,” I said (my father would die within the decade).

The pipefitters representative smiled, then laughed.  “He’s one of a very small band of survivors.  He’s still a hero, though.”

Throughout his life, my father was a very good man.  Think of the character Jimmy Stewart played in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  That was my father.  He organized across party lines for local elections.  He organized blood drives.  During the Korean War he headed the local program to take care of soldiers passing through town who ran out of money, or got sick, or got thrown in jail.  My father served on more Troop Committees for the various Boy Scout units my brothers and I joined than anyone had a right to expect.

For all his good work, he didn’t get anything but his own satisfaction out of it.

It was a staffer who never met him, for a union he hadn’t worked in for 40 years who called him the hero he was.

“When all is said and done, the union will stick by you when no one else does,” Frank Silbey said.

It’s still true.  In America, we still need that kind of loyalty to working people, especially to teachers.  We need it now more than ever.

13 Comments | Government, History, Labor and unions, Politics, Teachers | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

EDUSolidarity Day, Part 2: Stanley Fish, formerly opposed to teacher unions, changed his mind — “We’re all badgers now”

March 22, 2011

WordPress was down for a few hours this afternoon, and I had a longish meeting this evening.  I’m running behind.

While I’m gearing up to get my promised comments up, take a look at Stanley Fish’s post at his New York Times blog:

In over 35 years of friendship and conversation, Walter Michaels and I have disagreed on only two things, and one of them was faculty and graduate student unionization. He has always been for and I had always been against. I say “had” because I recently flipped and what flipped me, pure and simple, was Wisconsin.

When I think about the reasons (too honorific a word) for my previous posture I become embarrassed. They are by and large the reasons rehearsed and apparently approved by Naomi Schaefer Riley in her recent op-ed piece “Why unions hurt higher education” (USA Today). The big reason was the feeling — hardly thought through sufficiently to be called a conviction — that someone with an advanced degree and scholarly publications should not be in the same category as factory workers with lunch boxes and hard hats. As Riley points out, even the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) used to be opposed to unionization because of “the commonly held belief that universities were not corporations and faculty were not employees.”

Good discussion from smart guys.  Go see.

1 Comment | Education, Education blogs, Education reform, Education spending, Government, Politics | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Quote of the moment: Goodbye unions, goodbye democracy

March 20, 2011

Nelson Lichtenstein, University of California - Santa Barbara

Nelson Lichtenstein, University of California - Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Independent photo

Most jobs in America are not in manufacturing or subject to international competition. So the service sector, retail, construction — there are a huge number of jobs where international competition has nothing to do with it. The obstacles there are domestic. Labor law is totally dysfunctional. Workers really don’t have the right to form unions of their choosing. So you’re right to be pessimistic, just for different reasons.

I also have a mega-historical answer to that question, though. If you look at the last 150 years of history across all nations with a working class of some sort, the maintenance of democracy and the maintenance of a union movement are joined at the hip. We’ve seen this dramatically reconfirmed in Spain and South Korea and Poland over the years. If democracy has a future, then so too must trade unionism. Sadly, that doesn’t offer much hope for my lifetime. But there is such a thing as conflict between capital and labor.

Nelson Lichtenstein is arguably the most influential living historian of American labor; interviewed by Ezra Klein of the Washington Post blogs, March 10, 2011

1 Comment | Democracy, History, Labor and unions | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Bathtub reading near the end of spring break, 2011

March 18, 2011

No, they are not trying to get rid of unions, just trying to balance their budgets.  Right?

Other than Rand Paul, Republicans don’t need low-flow toilets, because when it comes to conservation, climate change and the facts, Republicans just don’t give a s—.

Oooh.  Signs from the teacher protests of budget cuts in Austin, Texas!

Does this ass, Rick Perry, make my sign look big? Austin, March 2011

Protester in Austin, Texas, March 2011

Peace Corps celebrates 50 years this year.  Steve Mott tells of his first year as a Peace Corps volunteer in a remote corner of Nepal. (From the Norwell (Massachusetts) Mariner Wicked Local online.) (Suitable for a warm-up at least, teachers — maybe good for your unit on the 1960s and the Kennedy administration.  “In 1966 it was the Beach Boys and when I got back in ’68 it was Janis Joplin,” he said.  “A lot of social changes had taken place in two years.”

Oh, those jocular Tea Partiers!  Now they want to bring back child labor, in Maine, and in Missouri.  They’re serious when they say they oppose all the “progressive agenda” from the Progressive Era.  Look out Women’s Christian Temperance Union and anti-child abuse laws.  (Tea Partiers get all get their marching orders from Tea Bag Central — surely other states will follow; let us know if similar bills are in the hopper in your state legislature, eh?)

I keep finding good and interesting stuff in the Imperial War Museum.  Have you ever been there?  I wish they would do more online.  “War Shapes Lives,” a motto on their website.  An understatement of history.  This painting hangs in the museum, John Singer Sargent’s  “Gassed.”  At the museum, you may view it in its majesty, 20 feet along the wall, 7½ feet high.

Gassed, by John Singer Sargent. Imperial War Museum

Gassed, by John Singer Sargent. Imperial War Museum

1 Comment | Accuracy, children, Climate change, climate_change, Labor and unions, Museums, Teachers, World War I | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Teachers standing up for teachers, unions, and education: EDUSolidarity

March 15, 2011

Teaching is a lonely profession, oddly enough.  All too often teachers get stuck on an island away from other adults, away from socializing with colleagues even just a few feet away in the next room.  Different from most other professions, teachers in most schools are required to function without basic support for much of what they do, or with minimal support.

Consequently, teachers organizing to support teachers is difficult and too rare.

Unions become vital organizations to fight against unhealthy social isolation, to fight for teachers, to fight for education.

On March 22 union teachers in New York will wear red as an expression of solidarity with and support for teachers under attack in Wisconsin, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Indiana, and dozens of other places that we don’t know much about because, after all, brutal legislative attacks on teachers and teaching are so commonplace these days — “dog bites man” stories.

I was asked to join a group of bloggers who will blog on the importance of teaching, the importance of education, and why we support teacher unions on March 22.

If you teach and blog, will you join us?  If you had a teacher who made a difference in your life, and blog, will you join us?

Here’s an invitation from our group, EDUSolidarity:

edusolidarityIMAGE

Please join us!

 

As we all know, teachers and our unions, along with those of other public sector employees, face unprecedented attacks in the national media and from local and state governments. It is easy for politicians and the media to demonize the “unions” and their public faces; it is far more difficult to demonize the millions of excellent teachers who are proud union members. Those of us who are excellent teachers and who stand in solidarity with our unions are probably no stranger to the question “Well, why are you involved with the union if you’re a good teacher?” It’s time for us to stand up and answer that question loudly and clearly.

On Tuesday, March 22, teachers in NYC will wear red in solidarity with our brothers and sisters who are under attack in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee and elsewhere. We also stand with teachers in places like Idaho, California, and Texas who are facing massive layoffs. We would like to take this stand on the web as well. We encourage you to publish a piece on March 22 entitled “Why Teachers Like Me Support Unions.” In this piece, please explain your own reasons for being a proud union member and/or supporter. Including personal stories can make this a very powerful piece. It would be great to also explain how being a union member supports and enables you to be the kind of teacher that you are. We want these posts to focus not only on our rights, but also on what it takes to be a great teacher for students, and how unions support that.

After you have published your post, please share it through the form that will go live on March 22 at http://www.edusolidarity.us. Posts should also be shared on Twitter using the tag #edusolidarity.

In Solidarity,
Ken Bernstein – Social Studies, MD – teacherken
Anthony Cody – Science Instructional Coach, CA – Living in Dialogue
Ed Darrell – Social Studies, TX – Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub
Nancy Flanagan – Educational Consultant, MI – Teacher in a Strange Land
Jonathan Halabi – Math, NY – JD2718
Jamie Josephson – Social Studies, DC – Dontworryteach
Stephen Lazar – Social Studies/English, NY – Outside the Cave
Deborah Meier – Professor of Education, NY – Deborah Meier’s Blog
Doug Noon – Elementary, AK – Borderland
Kate Nowak – Math, NY – f(t)
Jose Vilson – Math, NY – The Jose Vilson

4 Comments | Economics, Education, Education reform, Education spending, Government, History, Labor and unions, Teacher Pay, Teachers, Teaching, Texas | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Interesting parent/teacher conference coming in Wisconsin

February 24, 2011

What do you want to bet Wisconsin Gov. David “Ahab” Walker will skip the conference with his son’s teacher next time?

(From the Wisconsin Democratic Party)

The woman, Leah Gustafson,  is very brave.  This is the sort of thing that invites local retaliation by administrators, without even consulting with the governor’s office.  Let’s hope her district’s administrators have a clear understanding of the law, and will back her right to state her views.

Heck, let’s hope they agree with her views.  If they don’t, they should get out of the business.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Michael A. Ryder.

18 Comments | Collective Bargaining, Democracy in action, Democratic Party, Education, Education Administration, Education spending, Government, Labor and unions, unions, Video and film, War on Education | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Little Hoovers should ask: Are we in a Second Great Depression?

February 23, 2011

Stalking America and haunting the shadows of every capitol building in America today are people who would profess, if asked, that they fashion themselves in the mold of Herbert Hoover.  Little Hoovers, we might call them.  Unlike Hoover, and unlike the friendly “Little Hoover” phrase we might apply to them, the welfare of America is not their concern.  We might worry about that.

President Harry Truman in 1947 appointed former President Herbert Hoover to head a commission on how to reform the federal government.  I do not know of a high school history text that even mentions this effort today.

Herbert Hoover on the cover of Time Magazine, 1925

Herbert Hoover on the cover of Time Magazine, 1925

Hoover’s commission made 273 recommendations that were taken to heart, then taken to Congress.  Many were enacted into law.

Several states followed the example, as in Utah and famously in California. These groups were often called “Little Hoover” commissions.  In no case that I have found did any of these commissions ever recommend stripping union collective bargaining agreements out of any situation.

But again, this history is mostly lost.  Hoover is remembered today for his failure to stop the Great Depression, for his seeming unwillingness to do what was necessary in great enough effort to relieve the nation’s serious hurts.  That’s too bad, really.

Herbert Hoover was not opposed to government action to fix the depression on most counts.  In his correspondence with Franklin Roosevelt, especially after Roosevelt replaced him in the presidency, Hoover often complained that Roosevelt’s actions were in the right vein, but too much.

We should remember this.

Are we in a Great Depression?  Economically, technically, our nation is in “recovery.”

Realistically, our nation is teetering on the brink of great financial disaster.  Sadly, most people ignore the lessons of history, and consequently, actions of many governmental units today seem driven to push the nation over the brink.  Home prices have not recovered.  Millions are out of work — millions of highly-trained workers cannot find jobs with pay adequate to support a family.

We appear not to have learned these lessons that should not have been forgotten:

  • Stimulus from the government creates demand, which fuels manufacturing recovery, and more jobs.  Tax cuts, such as Hoover’s 1932 tax cut for the wealthy, drive us deeper into recession.
  • Labor unions form vital components of a healthy manufacturing segment; they stand up for worker health and safety, for fair pay and work conditions that spur productivity.  When we ignore or fight unions, we damage economic productivity.  When we work with unions, we make progress.
  • Cracking the whip may get a temporary reaction from workers that looks good.  In the long run, if not immediately, such actions damage productivity and creativity.
  • Unions do not make the big financial decisions that cripple industry.  Unions don’t decide the products to be produced.  Unions cannot gamble a company’s future on ill-advised acquisitions or switches in corporate focus, usually.  Union demands for restrooms improve the sanitation and health of our food supplies.  Union demands for limited work hours lead to productive workers, better safety, and better products.
  • In almost every case where foreign corporations compete successfully with U.S. companies on high-tech and high-skill jobs, and take away U.S. jobs, the government of that foreign nation provides health care for all citizens, so that health care costs are not a cost of business.  In the case of most industrial nations, foreign pension laws are much stiffer than U.S. laws, stiffer in protecting generous benefits for pensioners.
  • All workers benefit when unions gain, traditionally.  It wasn’t Andrew Carnegie who invented the two-week vacation.
  • Workers can do more for consumers when they are treated well and listened to by company management.

I’m depressed at the nasty actions in so many places, in so many ways, designed to thwart progress to good ends, and instead drive our nation into mediocrity.  I find it difficult to post when there is so much disaster looming in so many places.

When political movements from the right go after one group with hammer and tongs, we might do well to remember the old, wise words.  With a full-on awareness of Godwin’s Law, we might do well to remember the words attributed to Martin Niemöller,  and the moral of that story:

“Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.”

What has Scott Walker done for anyone who makes less than $500,000 a year, anyway?  So you should ask:  What has Scott Walker ever done for you, or your family?  If the bargaining rights of any union are removed, anywhere in the U.S., who will speak up for your vacation, pension, health care benefits, and job safety?  OSHA?  Are you sure?

Update: It’s not paranoia when they are coming after you with more ill-will than you can imagine — see this Mother Jones update. It appears some people didn’t learn anything from the Tucson shootings.


More:

Cover of Gordon Lloyd's Two Faces of Liberalism: How the Hoover-Roosevelt Debates Shape the 21st Century

A book you should buy: Gordon Lloyd's Two Faces of Liberalism: How the Hoover-Roosevelt Debates Shape the 21st Century

10 Comments | Business, Business Ethics, Communication, Demagoguery, Democracy, Democracy in action, Labor and unions, Organizational leadership, OSHA | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

NJ Gov. Christie applauds video/cyber assault on special education teacher

November 28, 2010

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Teachers, they hate you out there — some people do, at least.  Who?  Republicans.  The War on Education is getting pretty serious, now with Republican operatives using techniques of public shaming made famous in Moscow in the 1920s and in Mao’s China in the 1970s.  Consider this:

  1. Sleazeball political hack James O’Keefe, R-Sodom,  tried to get a New Jersey special education teacher drunk, to hit on her, to get her to dish on her colleagues.
  2. Not just any teacher — a special ed teacher commended by President Clinton for risking her life to save the lives of her students.
  3. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) then applauded the resulting video, saying it indicates a problem with teachers.  (Christie has his own anger management issues, it appears.)

Godwin’s law prevents us from making the obvious comparisons.

James O'Keefe, hired thug

James O'Keefe, undercover political hoaxster -- teachers, if you see this man and he asks you about education, call the police and your education association that provides your liability insurance, and do not talk to O'Keefe.

Details at The New Republic.

It’s Republicans Gone Wild, with all the depth of analysis and moral backbone such a title implies.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Ed Brayton at Dispatches on the Culture Wars.

7 Comments | Education, Hoaxes, Labor and unions, Political Smear, War on Education | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Left out of the textbooks: The Great Cowboy Strike of 1883

June 10, 2010

It wasn’t in the textbooks before, and after the Texas State Soviet of Education finished work on new social studies standards last month, the Great Cowboy Strike of 1883 remains a topic Texas students probably won’t learn.

Unless you and I do something about it.

From University of California at Davis's Exploring the West Project: Cowboy at work, TX, c. 1905. Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Erwin Smith photo. http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/khapp.php?SlideNum=2721

From University of California at Davis’s Exploring the West Project: Cowboy at work, TX, c. 1905. Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Erwin Smith photo. http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/khapp.php?SlideNum=2721

In the history of labor in the U.S., the common story leaves out most of the great foment that actually drove progressive politics between, say, 1865 and 1920.  Union organization attempts, and other actions by workers to get better work hours and work conditions, just get left behind.

Then there is the sheer incongruity of the idea.  A cowboy union? Modern cowboys tend toward conservative politics.  Conservatives like to think of cowboys as solitary entrepreneurs, and not as workers in a larger organization that is, in fact, a corporation, where workers might have a few grievances about the fit of the stirrups, the padding of the saddle, the coarseness of the rope, the chafing of the chaps, the quality of the chuck, or the very real dangers and hardships of simply doing a cowboy’s job well.

Until today, I’d not heard of the Great Cowboy Strike of 1883.

Check it out at the Texas State Historical Association’s Handbook of Texas Online:

COWBOY STRIKE OF 1883. In the two decades after the Civil War the open-range cattle industry dominated the Great Plains, then died and was replaced by closed-range ranching and stock farming. In West Texas during the 1880s new owners, representing eastern and European investment companies, gained control of the ranching industry and brought with them innovations threatening to many ranchhands. Previously, cowboys could take part of their pay in calves, brand mavericks, and even run small herds on their employers’ land. New ranch owners, interested in expanding their holdings and increasing their profits, insisted that the hands work only for wages and claimed mavericks as company property. The work was seasonal. It required long hours and many skills, was dangerous, and paid only an average of forty dollars a month. The ranch owners’ innovations, along with the nature of the work, gave rise to discontent.

In 1883 a group of cowboys began a 2½-month strike against five ranches, the LIT, the LX, the LS, the LE, and the T Anchor,qqv which they believed were controlled by corporations or individuals interested in ranching only as a speculative venture for quick profit. In late February or early March of 1883 crews from the LIT, the LS, and the LX drew up an ultimatum demanding higher wages and submitted it to the ranch owners. Twenty-four men signed it and set March 31 as their strike date. The original organizers of the strike, led by Tom Harris of the LS, established a small strike fund and attempted, with limited success, to persuade all the cowboys in the area of the five ranches to honor the strike. Reports on the number of people involved in the strike ranged from thirty to 325. Actually the number changed as men joined and deserted the walkout.

It was the wrong time to strike.  With a full month remaining before the spring roundup, ranchers had plenty of time to hire scabs and strikebreakers, to replace the striking cowboys.  Some ranches increased wages, but most of them fired the strikers and made the strikers crawl back to beg for jobs.  Santayana’s Ghost is tapping at the chalk board about the potential lessons there.  (You should read the whole article at TSHA’s site.)

It didn’t help that the striking cowboys didn’t have a very large strike fund, nor that they drank a lot of the strike fund up prematurely.

The Great Cowboy Strike, unimpressive as it was, is part of a larger story about labor organizing and progressive politics especially outside the cities in that larger Progressive Era, from the Civil War to just after World War I.  It involves large corporations running the ranches — often foreign corporations with odd ideas of how to raise cattle, and often with absentee ownership who hired bad managers.  The strike talks about how working people were abused in that era, even the supremely independent and uniquely skilled cowboy.  It offers wonderful opportunities to improve our telling the story of this nation, don’t you think?

Resources:

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3 Comments | Agriculture, Education, History, Labor and unions, Lesson plans, Progressive Era, Texas, Texas history, unions | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Sources: Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, and Trial

November 28, 2009

More than just as tribute to the victims, more than just a disaster story, the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. fire, and the following events including the trial of the company owners, lay out issues students can see clearly.  I think the event is extremely well documented and adapted for student projects.  In general classroom use, however, the event lays a foundation for student understanding.

A couple of good websites crossed my browser recently, and I hope you know of them.

Cartoon about 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, New York Evening Journal, March 31

Cartoon about 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, New York Evening Journal, March 31, 1911

Events around the fire illuminate so much of American history, and of government (which Texas students take in their senior year):

  • Labor issues are obvious to us; the incident provides a dramatic backdrop for the explanation of what unions sought, why workers joined unions, and a sterling example of a company’s clumsy and destructive resistance to resolving the workers’ issues.
  • How many Progressive Era principles were advanced as a result of the aftermath of the fire, and the trial?
  • Effective municipal government, responsive to voters and public opinion, can be discerned in the actions of the City of New York in new fire codes, and action of other governments is clear in the changes to labor laws that resulted.
  • The case provides a dramatic introduction to the workings and, sometimes, misfirings of the justice system.
  • With the writings from the Cornell site, students can climb into the events and put themselves on the site, in the courtroom, and in the minds of the people involved.
  • Newspaper clippings from the period demonstrate the lurid nature of stories, used to sell newspapers — a working example of yellow journalism.
  • Newspapers also provide a glimpse into the workings of the Muckrakers, in the editorial calls for reform.
  • Overall, the stories, the photos, the cartoons, demonstrate the workings of the mass culture mechanisms of the time.

Use the sites in good education, and good health.

2 Comments | Disasters, Government, Historic documents, History, History images, Icons of history, Images, Immigration, Journalism, Jurisprudence, Justice, Labor and unions, Newspapers, Progressive Era, Public education, Student projects | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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