With Chicago school teachers having completed their third day of striking, impacting an estimated 350,000 students with no agreement in sight over Mayor Rahm Emanuel's demand for tougher teacher evaluations; this might be a fitting time to review a brief history of teacher labor unrest in the United States.
• The National Education Association (NEA) founded in 1857 encouraged professionalism and strongly discouraged collective bargaining or striking through much of the 20th century.
• The Chicago Teachers Federation was founded in 1897.
• Women comprised 86 percent of the teachers in urban schools in 1920, up from 59 percent in 1870.
• The American Federation of Teachers, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, was founded in 1916 and today represents 1.5 million members in more than 3,000 local affiliates nationwide.
• The AFT membership rose from 22,000 in 1941 to 42,000 in 1947 or 4.5 percent of the workforce.
• The first single salary schedule for teachers, (which provides salary increments according to a teacher's years of experience and number of college or university units and degrees), was developed in the Denver, Colorado school system in 1920. By 1931, 22 percent of school systems used the single-salary schedule, and in 1941, it was 31 percent.
• Due to perceived anti-patriotism among AFT’s leadership, especially among some of its more prominent members who opposed the U.S. entry into World War I, the American Legion targeted many teachers as being ``disloyal’’, pushing for their dismissal and even pushed schools to include lessons on dutiful patriotism in their curriculum.
• Concerned that teacher unions known for ``contemptuous and rebellious’’ attitudes toward authorities might pass similar characteristics on to impressionable children, Chicago School Board president, Jacob Loeb, in 1917, passed the infamous ``Loeb Rule,’’ which prohibited Chicago teachers from joining trade unions.
• Political repression, and lack of support for the right to strike; this in addition to the Great Depression led to the stagnation of teacher salaries through much of the 1930s, including teachers taking on larger workloads and class sizes, while state governments slashed school budgets .
• With teacher strikes rare during much of the 1930’s, the Chicago teachers in District 1 in 1936 led a protest in front of the Board of Education when they defaulted on their salaries.
• Wartime inflation after War World II resulted in economic hardships for many teachers nationwide as they found much of their income eroded. According to historian Marjorie Murphy, during the war years, the average real income of industrial workers rose 80 percent while teachers' real income fell 20 percent.
• By 1943, teachers went on strike in 12 states. Their militancy paid big dividends as the average teacher salary increased by 13 percent since the end of World War II.
• Post-war strike fever was sparked first by Norwalk, Connecticut teachers in September 1946, who successfully won increased pay along with their union being recognized. New Jersey teachers also staged a short strike in 1946. The biggest and most successful teachers strike, by far of that year took place in November in St. Paul, Minnesota when teachers went on a five-week strike which eventually led a pay increase beginning in April, 1947.
• The Condon-Waldin Act law passed by the New York State Legislature in 1947 called for the immediate firing of employees if they struck and were prohibited from reinstatement under a three-year pay freeze and five-year probation.
• In Buffalo, NY in 1946-1947 teachers struck and won major concessions when other labor unions struck in support of the teachers; Minneapolis teachers also struck in May, 1948 winning a pay raise despite the school board attempting to lock them out.
• Also in 1948, AFT locals in San Francisco, California, and Jersey City, New Jersey, w o n pay raises after combative teachers struck.
• The post-war strike wave prompted a number of state legislatures to pass harsh anti-strike laws for public employees, including in Delaware where a bill was passed which would impose a $500 fine and one year in prison for any public employee who struck.
• Teachers in Providence Rhode Island hit the streets for a week in 1950 and won a historic basic contract, one of the first in the nation for teachers.
• During the 1950’s, with the menace of the Cold War filling the air and many teachers being accused of ``subversion’’, teacher militancy was practically nonexistent through much of the decade; one of the lone exceptions being in New Jersey where there were a total of nine strikes through the 1950’s.
• By 1959, Wisconsin was the only state with collective bargaining legislation.
• The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) was founded in 1960 as Local 2 of the now 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
• On November 7, 1960, the UFT with its 50,000 public school teachers launched a one-day strike to convince New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr., and the board of education to hold an election that would give teachers to right to choose a collective bargaining unit. Their demands were met in June, 1961.
• In response to the successful New York City strike, between 1961 and 1965, there were as many as six public school teacher strikes nationwide.
• In 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10968, giving federal employees collective bargaining rights, and providing momentum for similar changes in state laws.
• In 1963, AFT repealed its ``no-strike’’ pledge; and by early 1965, AFT locals secured collective bargaining rights in Detroit, Cleveland and Philadelphia.
• By 1968, AFT locals had become the collective bargaining agent for teachers in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Boston, Kansas City, Cleveland, Newark, Toledo, St. Louis, New Orleans, Washington, DC, and a number of other cities.
• During the 1960's, 22 states passed laws granting collective bargaining to local and state employees.
• In 1968, the San Francisco Federation of Teachers (SFFT) staged a one-day walkout that won salary increases, improved benefits, smaller class sizes, including the hiring of 300 new teachers under a union-negotiated affirmative action plan.
• Thousands of New York City teachers, more than 54,000, went on strike in 1968 during the height of the city's racial tensions when the black school board of Ocean-Hill-Brownsville, a Brooklyn district at war with many of its teachers, dismissed as many as 13 teachers and administrators who were predominantly white and Jewish and were represented by the United Federation of Teachers. The UFT demanded the reinstatement of the teachers. The strike dragged on for 36 days before the local board finally agreed to reinstate the dismissed teachers.
• May, 1969: Chicago teachers go on strike for the first time in the city’s history. The strike was resolved after one day when teachers agreed to an increase in salary of $100 a month, raising starting pay of teachers to $8,400. The contract also guaranteed regularly assigned teachers wouldn't be dismissed, established the maximum allowed students in each course, and guaranteed that no educational programs would be eliminated.
• In 1970, Newark teachers w o n a modest pay increase with the board agreeing to hire 252 teachers' aides to take over many of the "nonprofessional duties."
• January, 1971: The second strike by Chicago teachers lasts for four days before agreeing to an 8 percent pay raise, making them one of the best paid in the country.
• On January 10, 1973, unable to reach an agreement on higher wages, smaller classes and a shorter school year, Chicago teachers strike for the third time in four years. The strike lasted two weeks.
• The nation witnessed a marked increase of teacher militancy during the 1970s, as teachers' unions began to push for more of a voice in educational policy.
• By the end of the 1970's, collective bargaining agreements covered 72 percent of public school teachers.
• Between July 1960 and June 1974, the country experienced over 1,000 teacher strikes involving more than 823,000 teachers.
• Nationwide, there was decline in teacher strikes in the 1980s and 1990s, but also saw increased political activism in teachers' unions.
• October 4, 1987: The Chicago Teachers Union agreed to end their 19 day strike, the longest in the city’s history, after winning a four percent pay increase in the first year, with any raise in the second year contingent on funds received by the Chicago school board. The agreement also included reductions in class size in some schools. It was the ninth strike in the Chicago Public Schools system in 18 years.
• There were four Chicago teacher strikes between 1980 and 1987 due to the local and state government’s failures to fund salary increases and school improvements.
• Skyrocketing health care costs led to a number of teacher strikes nationwide by the late 1990’s.
• September 10, 2012: Chicago teachers, some 26,000, the third largest school district nationwide, go on strike for the first time in 25 years with the most contentious issues splitting the two sides apart centering on a new teacher evaluation system and health care benefits.
• According to the Chicago Tribune, there were 10 teacher strikes throughout Illinois in the 2001-02 school years, but since then, the state has had just five since 2007-08.
• The longest teachers' strike in Illinois history took place in the town of Homer in southeastern Champaign County that lasted from October 16, 1986, to June 23, 1987, an eight-month strike which swallowed up a staggering 156 school days, beating the record once set in Cleveland, Ohio in the 2002-03 school year which lasted 62 days.
• Since the 1960’s, there have been well over 3,000 teacher strikes which have lasted more than one day.
• Full-time and part-time public school teachers in 2007–08, some 76 percent of public school teachers were female, 44 percent were under age 40 and 52 percent had a master’s or higher degree.
• Among both males and females, 83 percent of public school teachers were White, seven percent each were Black or Hispanic, one percent each were Asian or of two or more races, and less than one percent each were Pacific Islander or American Indian/Alaska Native in 2007.
• The average salary for full-time public school teachers in 2010–11 was $56,069 in current dollars (not adjusted for inflation). In constant (inflation-adjusted) dollars, the average salary was about three percent higher in 2010–11 than in 1990–91.
Bill Lucey
[email protected]
September 12, 2012
Source: ``Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History; `` Teachers and Reform: Chicago Public Education, 1929-70’’ By John F. Lyons; National Center for Education Statistics
Two strikes in Jersey City 1968 and 1969 the strike of 69 sent 19 teachers to jail for 25 days...the first time in the history of the US A teachers incarcerated....
Posted by: Dan Cupo | 03/22/2018 at 09:05 PM