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As important as this topic is, Bob Petersen's article is a poor introduction to it. It is over a decade old, and even when it was written, it was marred by errors of fact and errors of omission, and by tendentious interpretations of teacher union history. Let's start with errors of fact. Taking on what he says are examples of teacher unions insisting upon teacher seniority to the detriment of schools, Bob writes: “One example of a questionable seniority rule is the practice, common in some large districts such as New York City, in which teachers who are put out of assignment at one school because of a closing or program shift have the right to bump teachers at another school based on seniority. (In most districts, teachers who are put out of assignment are given positions at another school only when that school has a vacancy.)”

This is an inaccurate characterization of what takes place in NYC, today and when the story was written. When a teacher is placed in excess as a result of a downsizing or closing of a school or a program, the teacher goes through a process of being placed in a vacant position, starting with openings in the geographical district in which the old school was located and going on to the entire city, if there is no opening in the immediate geographical vicinity. In the case of closing schools, excessed teachers are given priority for open positions in other schools. If an excessed teacher could simply "bump" another, less senior teacher in any school s/he chooses, as Bob suggests was the case, massive chaos would result, with a cascade of bumping, as teachers who were bumped then bump other, less junior teachers in succession. In reality, a teacher bumps another teacher out of a position only when there are no openings in the entire city and a layoff situation is imminent, a rather rare event which usually only occurs in dying licenses such as distributive education. [Truth be told, I know of no district which has the policy described by Bob -- this seems to be an argument against a straw man.]

Bob appears to have based his comments on confused and garbled sources of information on what was happening in NYC – although one short telephone call to someone who would know the reality here would have allowed him to straighten it out. Ten years ago and up to recently, NYC did have a problem in staffing, which was pretty much unique to it in New York State, and was probably quite rare in the nation. Due to low salaries, difficult working conditions and poor recruitment and hiring systems, every year the system hired "on a temporary basis" thousands of teachers who did not possess the minimum state requirements for a teaching license a teaching license. They were known as TPDs and then PPTs. The gallows humor was that a "breath test" was used to hire these teachers: if you presented yourself with a B.A., they would be put a mirror under your mouth, and if you were alive and breathing, you were hired. Until such time as a temporary teacher actually met the minimum requirements for a license, most often having the proper course work in the field of education, they had no claim on a position and the position was considered vacant. That was not a problem of seniority and bumping, but rather a problem of being unable to recruit and retain minimally qualified teachers. NYC made great strides towards eliminating that problem after the last contract, as significant pay raises almost completely wiped out the problem of "temporary," unlicensed teachers. However, under the current Bloomberg-Klein regime, a new contract is long overdue, and does not appear to be on the horizon, so all of that ground is now being lost.

Part of the problem here is that Bob fails to address the solid educational reasons for having seniority as an important factor – not the only factor, but an important one – in personnel decisions in education. A good teacher is not born: teaching is a difficult and complex craft, and it takes a couple of years for even the most skilled of novices to master the fundamentals of teaching, and many more years to become truly accomplished. There is an important relationship between experience and quality in teaching, and a sound personnel policy will be developing incentives to retain experienced, skilled teachers in schools. If a district invests in the development of an experienced, accomplished teacher, which is a matter of considerable expenditures of human and other capital, it needs to have a return on that investment in a long career of quality teaching. And if you expect a teacher to stay for a full career, you need to have a sort of implicit compact with her or him: you give us twenty-five to thirty years of your life, and in return, we give you a measure of job security, a solid pension, decent health care and a salary which increases with time and experience, such that you could actually afford to send your own children to the same college you went to. Seniority plays an important role in that compact.

The issue really is how one balances one good, due deference to seniority, with other goods, such as diversity of staff, the matching of individual schools with particular themes and programs with staff who want to be there, and so on. Bob goes on to suggest a possible reform in the area of seniority which would mitigate the problems he attributes to NYC, and help maintain such a balance: “One possible solution to this particular problem, I believe, lies in the area of school governance and reforms that give teachers more responsibility at the local school level. In some schools around the country, school-based committees of teachers, parents, and administrators make certain staffing decisions and, for example, choose between the top several senior applicants.”

The irony here is that NYC has had precisely such a procedure for many years, including during the period when he wrote this article. At the initiative of the UFT, an option for a SBO staffing and transfer personnel committee was place in the collective bargaining agreement. [Article 18, F: http://www.uft.org/member/rights/contracts/current_teachers_contract/article_eightee/] With the agreement of the school's Principal and Chapter Leader, and the consent of 55% of the school staff, the school can adopt this plan and fill all of its UFT represented positions [teacher, guidance counselor, para-professional, school secretary, etc.] through this committee. The majority of the committee must be teachers, and the committee has the authority to consider other qualifications in addition to experience/seniority in filling the position. The UFT and the DOE run joint training sessions to ensure that the school based committees act fairly and reasonably, and there is an appeals process for teachers who believe they have not been treated properly. Each year, more and more schools enter into this plan.

Bob's article is also filled with errors of omission. He emphasizes a number of moral shortcomings in the NEA's history -- that it did not support the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision until almost a decade after it was laid down, and that it had segregated locals in the South well into the 1970s. That makes it all the more striking that he has nothing to say about the fact that the AFT was the only teacher organization in the US to support the plaintiffs in obtaining the Brown, submitting a friend of the court brief on their behalf to the Supreme Court; the fact that, after WW II, the AFT refused to charter any locals which were racially segregated; and the fact that, at considerable consist to itself in members, it expelled all locals which refused to integrate in the 1950s. The AFT was among the earliest and the most fervent of union supporters of the civil rights movement in the South. Certainly the AFT should get credit for doing the very things that the NEA is rightfully chastised for not doing. And certainly if, in an article about teacher unionism, you give the UAW credit for being a strong supporter of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, as Bob does, you need to mention that the AFT has a record its equal.

One is left with the unavoidable conclusion that Bob has a political agenda which drives his failure to give the AFT credit here. If he cites its history of support for civil rights and opposition to racial segregation, it will makes his one-sided conclusions about the 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike hard to understand. Here is what Bob has to say about the 1968 strike: “The most notorious AFT example of disregarding the interests of the community occurred in 1968 in New York City. During a struggle for community control of the schools, a struggle centered in the African-American community in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, the AFT went on strike protesting the removal of several teachers who were accused of sabotaging the project of community control. Many African-American teachers and progressive whites crossed the picket lines, reopening schools with the assistance of community organizations such as Congress for Racial Equality (CORE). The strike greatly damaged the AFT's reputation among many people in African-American communities throughout the nation.”

We could easily spend a whole year, much less one month, discussing the Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike. While most accounts of the 1968 strike treat it, like Bob Petersen does, as a medieval morality play, with the enlightened forces of good doing battle with the dark forces of evil, I find that it is much more like a Greek tragedy, in which all of the main characters play out different personality flaws to ends that are destructive to all. I have done a little writing on my own memories of the strike – I was a high school student at the time, and both of my parents were NYC public school teachers who had rather strong and bitter disputes over the strike – and I would be happy to share that with folks, if there was an interest.

There can be little doubt about the effects of the strike – it tore apart the historic alliance between the Jewish and African-American communities, and in so doing, harmed the civil rights and progressive coalitions which had been built, in no small part, upon that alliance. Especially in NYC, but elsewhere as well, we continue to struggle with the effects of this rupture, nearly four decades later. But a careful study of the strike makes it hard to assign blame for that result in the way Bob so simply and neatly does. The teachers dismissed from the Ocean Hill-Brownsville schools included many of the leaders of the union in that district, and they were clearly targeted for that very reason; moreover, there was not even a pretense of `due process,' in which a case was made against them and they had the opportunity to defend themselves. They were simply told that the Superintendent and Community Board had decided that they were "racists" opposed to community control, and so they were to be removed from their schools. In fact, when an African-American judge heard the district's case against the teachers in a process agreed to by the Ocean Hill-Brownsville district, the Board of Education and the UFT, he dismissed all of the charges, and directed that they be restored to their positions, but the Ocean Hill-Brownsville district refused to comply. No union worth its salt could allow its leaders and members to be dismissed in such a fashion.

To understand just how these events looked from the viewpoint of the union, one episode in this year long struggle provides a great deal of insight. The leaders of the Ocean Hill–Brownsville district insisted upon installing as a principal of one of their schools, a black nationalist with little by way of educational credentials named Herman Ferguson. What was significant was that they installed Ferguson as principal two months after he had been indicted for conspiring to assassinate a number of moderate civil rights leaders, including the leaders of the Urban League and the NAACP [a crime for which he was eventually convicted, leading him to flee to Cuba for a number of years], that they did so for the express purpose of "getting the teachers into line" and that they refused to back down when they met a chorus of criticism.

All of this is not to say that the UFT handled the absolutely necessary defense of its teachers the way it should have. The union highlighted and publicized a number of expressions of anti-Semitism by its opponents, expressions which were arguably initially marginal to the struggle, on the logic that this would discredit their foes in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville district; what it did was racialize and polarize the struggle. As the struggle wore on [there were actually three separate strikes that year], the union also made the mistake of calling for a special session of the state legislature to address the question of community control, a move it had previously promised to avoid, as it would almost certainly mark the end of community control. These missteps contributed to a racial polarization which engulfed the issue of the due process rights of the dismissed teachers, making the struggle into a symbolic one of support for or opposition to community control. The African-American trade unionist A. Phillip Randolph and the civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, two democratic socialists who believed in an alliance of the working class and African-American poor on the basis of common economic interests, had organized an advertisement in the fall of 1968 which proclaimed that the UFT's strike was over "the right of every worker to be judged on his merits, not his color," but the UFT's missteps let the issue become transformed into one of Jew v. African-American. Class was also a factor, as the main supporters of Ocean Hill-Brownsville and community control outside of the African-American community were wealthy WASPs from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the John Lindsays, John Doars and McGeorge Bundys, who expressed a patrician disdain for the white working class and middle class that coalesced behind the UFT. As tempers rose, expressions of anti-Semitism began to be met with expressions of racism among rank-and-file teachers: Pandora's box had been opened, and there was no getting the furies back in. The resultant polarization set loose passions which, I can testify from my own family experience, did not bring out the best in people.

This is a long story, I know, and I have gone on too long in even telling a small part of it, but one needs to have a sense of perspective on how misleading Bob Petersen's interpretation of teacher union history is. It is important to know that, contrary to the impression he leaves, the 1968 strikes [there were actually three separate strikes over the course of the year] had incredible solidarity, as there were very few teachers who crossed the picket lines, and they were very effective in eventually forcing an end to the conflict on essentially the UFT's terms. But it was the sort of victory that did as much long-term political damage as a defeat. And there is no simple morale to the story, other than the obvious need to avoid a repetition of such events.

There is a need to do a critique of Bob Petersen's notion of social
justice unionism, but that I leave for another day.

Leo Casey
New York City
3/4/05

I agree with Leo that Bob Petersen's article is dated and biased, and thank him for filling in Mr. Petersen's errors of omission and offering much-needed background that deflates many of the author's claims.

However, I think Petersen's article is actually a fine introduction to the debate surrounding teacher unionism because it is dramatic and volatile and old! As I read about unions in local and national press, including union publications, I am struck by the one-sided accounts that appear, including Petersen's. I am also intrigued by what agendas critics and champions of teachers' unions are consistent over time; though Petersen's article may be old, his general points are ones that resonate today as teacher unions are queried by the public.

Petersen's article may be an example of how claims are made by both sides of the union discussion that -- I believe -- undermines the core of issues that need debate and discussion. A recent CTU publication criticized the charter school movement in Chicago by using an example of a teacher at a charter in California who had been dismissed for inappropriate relations with a student. This example was published at the same time as a Chicago public school teacher was dismissed for a similar violation. I found this "support" for cracking down on charters to avoid an important argument, just as I feel the "other side" may do on matters such as tenure, union negotiations for health care, and charters. It seems that the debate over teachers' unions have become entrenched, and Petersen's article is a way to show that, react to it, and discuss why the institution of the teachers' union is mired in a bitter battle.

I see Petersen's article as an example of one side of an increasingly politicized and multi-faceted debate; his is an earlier "model" of what challenges surround the discussion of unions ten years later, and his argument, as Leo has shown, has an agenda that leads Petersen to skew his story. I encourage our diverse group of teachers to add their perspective to this discussion so that we have a vision of teachers unions from their members, and from there we can more fully understand how the politics of the union debate affects us, our classrooms, schools, and districts.

So, I wonder: what is your role in your union? As Christina wrote, has your role in your teachers union changed over the course of your time in your district? Also, does wanting to teach and do what is best for our kids (again, Christina) either in some way prevent us from active roles in the union or inspire us to work more actively with our unions? How has your union's role changed over time? In what debates do you see or not see your union playing a role?

Nora Flynn
Chicago
3/7/05

I wanted to put out my experience as a former CTU member. I have joined the dark side as an Assistant Principal and so now am in a different union (one much less powerful around 1,000 members vs. 50,000 members strong).

I have mixed feelings about the CTU. Chicago is a closed shop so teachers pay union dues regardless of whether they are members of the union. The amount is different by maybe $20.00 a paycheck for member vs. nonmember (I believe the dues are about $60.00 a check - $120.00 a month x 50,000 employees - sounds like big business). Our most recent contract negotiations were bitter and ultimately involved the involvement of outside agencies to formally confirm officers - an embarrassment really.

Today the new officers as well as the old are still finger-pointing and Chicago is continuing to face more accountability with less funding than ever. The new contract was appealing to younger members who had significant financial incentives (I was among them). More veteran members basically received a cost of living increase which locks in at year 12 (I almost there) and continues through our careers. The contract is front end loaded.

The union supports an NBCT certification program and actually is now working with the Board of Education on a similar program. However now as previously I am frustrated by a lack of leadership in making our profession - professional. The union stands firm on keeping jobs however it does little to promote excellence in education. In order to terminate a teacher, it takes approximately 2 years. The union does little to police its own members but is happy to continue to take the cash because their mission is not to promote excellence but just maintain jobs to keep the money rolling in.

I believe the Board of Education has found a way around this issue by promoting Renaissance 2010 where we are now outsourcing our lowest performing schools to charters, contract schools, and performance based schools - all designed basically to cut the union out of the picture (with the exception of some contract and performance based schools who will maintain the option of using CTU members or not). Isn't it sad that public
education is giving up on educating its most needy students? We couldn't figure it out so hopefully someone else can. My guess is that the answers are not as elusive as they would appear but we don't want to discuss social programming in an era of accountability.

As first and foremost a teacher, I understand the historical purpose of unions especially living in a city where early union activity is at the forefront of our cities history. However, I have to question: What is the role of the union today? Is it effective? Or does it serve as
another bureaucracy in a city mired with bureaucracy? Does it really represent the teachers equitably, professionally and in the best interests of educating children?

Have a wonderful week.

Trish Meegan
Chicago
3/7/05

I am a frequent reader, but not often enough responder to our listserve. I teach a high school class about teaching to seniors who are aspiring education majors. Since I am a NC teacher and have been for almost 20 years, unions are a quite foreign entity to me. I shared the article with my class after asking their opinions. As a result of the article which surprised them because they thought that it would be pro-union, my students had some questions:

How does the union support teacher time? We have many meetings after school and during our planning periods. Do unions sanction time for teachers to get individual work done? For example, on a typical day, teachers at my school may have 45 minutes that is not scheduled in a meeting.

In what other ways besides negotiating salaries and providing representation (in employee relation-type matters) do unions support their members.

How much are union dues?

Suzanne Newsom
Charlotte, NC
3/10/05

There are three primary mechanisms teacher unions use to accomplish these ends -- collective bargaining, political action and professional development.

Take the issue of violence and safety in schools. In NYC, the UFT addresses that issue through all three mechanisms. There are sections of our collective bargaining agreement which require school safety plans, developed in consultation with the union chapter in the school, which outline procedures to deal with disruptive students, and which establish teachers' rights when assaulted in the line of duty. The union has also been pivotal in having legislation passed regarding school safety, with strong provisions for dealing with disruptive and violent students. The union runs a School Safety department which does violence prevention workshops and training for teachers on how to handle potentially violent students, does school safety audits of schools to see how well they are managing issues of school tone and safety, and provides legal and counseling supports when teachers are the victims of violence. Add to all of this the ability of the union to direct media and public attention on instances where the school system is failing in its duty to provide safe school environments for students and teachers. One of the major problems we face is finding ways to communicate to teachers and union chapters [this is a school district of 1.1 million students with hundreds of schools] that all of these avenues exist to deal with the issue in their schools.

In this same vein, the union has extensive programs in fields one would not ordinarily think of as union work, from environmental safety issues [e.g., asbestos in schools, working with students with communicable diseases], pension counseling, and licensing issues, to supporting teachers working for National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification, providing low cost education courses teachers need to fulfill their licensing requirements, a parents program, a homework telephone hotline for students and a professional development arm of scores of Teachers Centers in schools around the city. With a bureaucracy the size of NYCs, we do a great deal of problem solving for teachers to ensure that are being correctly paid, given proper credit for their pensions, etc.

The UFT has an entire section of its contract entitled "Education Reform," which lays out such issues as alternative, more professional methods for the observation and evaluation of teachers. We also have procedures for "professional conciliation," where teachers and supervisors disagree over the appropriate pedagogy.

On the time issue, you will find that differs from union local to union local, depending upon what they managed to negotiate in their collective bargaining agreement.

In NYC, there are different formulas for different levels of schools. Teachers in most of the high schools and middle/junior high schools, for example, teach five classes a day, have a duty free lunch, a preparation period and a professional period. [Some schools don't have the standard 40 minute period, so the configuration of time looks a little different, although at the end of the day or week, the same amount of time goes into each category. The preparation period is the teacher's own to use as s/he sees fit for lesson planning, test grading, etc.; the professional period is dedicated to some ongoing professional task, such as writing curriculum or contacting parents, but other than producing a product at the end of the term, there are no other prescriptions. In practice, the professional period is treated as a second preparation period in most schools. Teachers in the elementary schools have a duty free lunch and a preparation period.

School wide and departmental meeting and professional development time is part of a teacher's paid workday. On certain designated days, the school day is extended for these purposes.

Although the current Mayor and Chancellor would like to take most of that away, and proposed such in the current deadlock over contract negotiations, there is no way that the union or the teachers would agree to such changes. The workday is all too exhausting even with this non-instructional time in it, and any changes would have a dramatically negative effect on teaching. The current configuration evolved out of a situation in which the professional period was often used for very non-professional assignments, such as guarding the door to the students' cafeteria, and teachers who experienced that are adamant about not returning to it.

Issues in NYC tend to focus on how well the Department of Education uses meeting and professional development time, with many teachers in many schools feeling that it is not being used very well or effectively. There are mechanisms for teacher input into how the time should be used, and if we had a different leadership in the DOE and more than a few administrators who actually listened to teachers, it could be used much more effectively. The unfortunate effect of the poor use of professional development time, in particular, is that many teachers have turned against the very idea.

In many schools teachers are also asking for common preparation and professional period times within departments and grades, so they have opportunities to work collegially with their colleagues. A good sign of a progressive school administration is that the school makes efforts to provide such opportunities for teacher interaction.

Leo Casey
New York City
3/10/05

Thanks to Jill, Susanne, and Leo for their further questions and thoughts for our discussion. Susanne's students' questions remind us how teachers-to-be and how the general public may perceive aspects of teachers' unions: questions about how unions function for their members arise; we imagine that an article written by a teacher would be pro-union, but that isn't so clear; how do teachers without union representation relate to issues handled by unions, respond to the idea of unionizing, and fare with administrations and districts, compared to teachers in unions?

Leo's description of how unions work clarified much for discussion, and brings up another set of questions. How does your union effectively collectively bargain? How do our various teachers' unions gather and represent their constituents' perspectives? At the micro-level, how does your voice become amplified or not via your union? For NC, what are your responses to unions given your experiences without them?

Working on the nuts and bolts of our various union or non-union experiences will hopefully lead us to some of the larger questions about the future role of teachers' unions. We'd love to hear representation from a variety of areas, ages, and expertise, so as the first third of
March ends, please join our discussion!

Nora Flynn
Chicago
3/10/05

Last night, I reread Petersen's article "Which Side Are You On?" Even though it was written 12 years ago, I believe it raised many issues that are still relevant and important today.

1) What is the mission of teachers unions? Is it to create and protect the solidarity and interests of teachers? Or is it to bring about the necessary economic, social, political, and intellectual conditions SO THAT teachers can teach their students well? For me, it is clearly the latter; for what is the point of protecting the interests of teachers if they are not teaching their students well?

2) Are teacher unions as involved and effective as they could or should be in the planning and governance of local schools? For me, no. I believe that teacher unions, especially through strong school delegates, can play a leadership role in mobilizing teachers to help improve their schools. Unfortunately, in my experience, most school delegates only concern themselves with personnel and contractual issues; not school reform. I agree with Petersen that teacher unions need to encourage innovative models of local school governance that address curriculum, teacher participation, seniority, tenure, teacher evaluations, etc. in more equitable, satisfactory, and educationally-rewarding ways.

3) Have unions evolved into "hierarchical structures that are rarely capable of capitalizing on their biggest resource, the rank-and-file classroom teacher?” For me, the answer is clearly yes. It seems that grassroots union member discussions only take place during contract negotiations. I would love to participate in ongoing rank-and-file discussions about the full range of educational issues. Only then, I am convinced, will we have a democratic and effective teacher union movement.

I hope everyone will join in this discussion again.

Raymond Lau
Chicago
3/22/05

The insurance provided by the association is critical, especially in our litigious society. No teacher should be without it. The way NCLB is heading, it would not surprise me if some parent sued the teacher because Little Darling didn't pass the TEST!. As a science teacher, I would not be without the insurance.

Here in Delaware, the association has been hard at work to make sure we are not stuck with an evaluation plan that puts inappropriate emphasis on state test scores. Another big accomplishment of our association has been the Due Process legislation. This provides that teachers with less than 3 years of experience receive appropriate assessment of problems and improvement plans before having a contract terminated instead of the old "At Will" system that had been in place for years.

As more and more people tout the charter schools as places where non union teachers will not be as obstructive as unionized teachers, those of us in other schools need to be wary. Perhaps these teachers won't object to losing their planning time to cover other classes or fulfill other duties and requirements that extend the day length or deny the right to refuse extra curricular assignments. Teachers have fought long and hard to have duty free lunches and prep periods as well as the right to lead personal lives free from the oversight of the school board.

To paraphrase Hillel, If we are not for ourselves, who will be for us?

Helen Gieske
State of Delaware
3/22/05

Are teacher unions as involved and effective as they could or should be in the planning and governance of local schools? I like the idea of an organization of teachers affecting the governance of local schools, but in a district as large as Chicago I think the reality is that there are very few things other than bread and butter issues that most teachers can agree on. With that cynical comment out of the way, I do believe we should be able to dialogue and wrestle with the issues such as good instruction and school climate. How could this work with so many teachers with such varied pproaches to education?

What is the future of teacher unions?

In Chicago there seems to be a trend in opening contract schools that are not bound by the union in the same way. I think there will be more and more attempts start schools that are more independent of our union. My hope is that with more options to work outside of our union, teachers will give more thought to what it means to be part of our union and the union will realize they have to make efforts to engage their rank and file.

Katie Peterson
Chicago
3/24/05

David Silberberg
New York City
3/25/05

In my opinion, the UFT reminds me of that saying "If you always do what you did, you will always get what you got". The UFT is still stubbornly ringing the "we aren't paid enough and our working conditions are horrible" bell, when the average non-educator believes that we work a 6-hour day, get summers off, and just have to keep a few kids in their seats. A pretty sweet deal in their eyes.

Politicians understand one thing - votes. The UFT is horrible at framing the debate properly in the public eye, while the city is quite skilled at it. Over and over, the city talks about the union rules that keep bad teachers in the classroom. It makes the union look like it doesn't care about the students, but just about the teachers' jobs.

The union furthers this misconception by ringing their salary and working conditions bell. The public definitely has no sympathy for the union and not that much more for the rank and file. Let's not forget the bad press that teachers often get, between teachers
sexually assaulting students to getting the homeless to impersonate us to take the certification exams.

Politicians understand one thing - VOTES. The UFT does not do an effective job in framing the debate in the public's eye or getting the good teachers (which is most of us) the good press. Until they can do that and begin to get the average voter to truly be on our side and VOTE LIKE IT, we will keep getting what we've got -- not much!

Tim Fredrick
New York City
3/25/05

Maureen Connelly
Bronx, NY
3/25/05

Jill Rumley
State of Delaware
3/26/05

Do you support the 40 hour work week, the 8 hour day, child labor laws, occupational work and safety laws? Well, we would have none of them ifit were not for unions. At this time of growing corporate control of our democracy ( often by huge donations to our political leaders) unions are our best hope of representing the needs of working people.

Most likely all of TNLI-ers believe it is important for teachers and our unions to be involved in educational change that would help our students. That's why we are in TNLI, we believe, as teachers working directly with students, we know best what works and does not work. We see the harm to actual children of this testing craze, partly brought on by the NCLB. (of course some testing is needed, but not these high stakes tests). What better way to effect the powers that be than through the organizational power of our teacher unions. Yes, I am a supporter of social justice unionism.

Now, do all our teacherunions support the kinds of educational change we think should be made. NO, that's why I am in an oppositional caucus! Don't mourn, organize! Let's not just say our unions do not do what we want: Let's get in there and try to change them.

Here is an example of a position the union, the UFT (United Federation of Teachers), an AFT local, has taken that I disagree with: The UFT has attacked our CEO mayor and CEO/lawyer Chancellor of Education for bringing in a "balanced literacy" approach to the teaching of reading and writing, as not a "research based" approach. They have criticized it as a scripted program (meanwhile the UFT has supported Success For All, a VERY scripted program in our failing schools) and have also said the administration is micro-managing teachers and not letting them teach their students based on their professional knowledge.

I support a balanced literacy approach, so it is very disheartening for my union to be working for its demise. Is balanced literacy a scripted program? NO Does balanced literacy require teachers to use their professional knowledge and judgment to teach their students? YES The problem is not balanced literacy, it is the way our corporate CEO mayor and Chancellor have brought in the program. They have NO knowledge of what it is like to teach children and learn a whole new way of teaching. At the same time a whole new way of teaching math and a new word study program were also introduced.. When school systems have brought in balanced literacy it usually takes about 5 years. Our Department of Education said do it NOW. Because teachers did not know how to teach using this system, a suggested list of units of study and mini lessons was given out. The problem has been compounded many times over because supervisors also did not know the new way of teaching, so they told teachers they must follow exactly the suggested units and min lessons. Hence the complaints of scripted program and micro managing.

What our union should have done is attack the DOE (Department of Education) for the way they brought in the program, not the program itself. Because teachers were and are voicing such dislike for what they are being forced to do, rather than being given time to learn the new way of teaching, the union seized on the complaints as a way to show its members it is really there for them. Our contract has been up for 2 years now and teachers are wondering what the union is doing. I have had to explain all of this to members of my caucus also. We have had many in-depth and interesting conversations about what position the union should have on balanced literacy. It has been through those discussions and the ones at TNLI that I have been able to get a clearer perspective on the issue myself. We DO NEED a place to have those kinds of discussions. Because of those conversations my caucus has put out literature saying it is not balanced literacy, but the way the DOE has forced the program on teachers.

This is getting quite long, so I will write another installment soon! I am going to send out information about the opposition caucus that just won the union elections in Los Angeles. It is a combination local of AFT and NEA. Teachers can organize and work to make their unions represent them better!!

Lisa North
New York City
3/26/05

A number of the contributions reminded me of what one experienced unionist once told me when I started out in the UFT, "Remember that as chapter leader, you are the one person in that school that the teachers actually chose to lead them."

That axiom has a corollary for rank and file teachers. You have no control over whom your principal is, for better or for worse. But you do decide who the union leader in your school is. You have no control over who heads the school system, but you do decide, together with the other teachers in your city, who leads the union. The union, unlike the school system, is a democratic institution.

When I tell that to teachers, I often hear a series of alibi answers on why the union leader in the school is not the person they want to lead them. "No one ran against him," is the most common excuse by explanation. "He would have been vindictive against me," is another common one.

I repeat, YOU decide who your union leader is. And YOU decided that the person who now holds that position would be the union leader. By not getting together with teachers of a like mind and interests and finding an alternative candidate, or by not running yourself, YOU decided that he would be chapter leader. Not union headquarters, not the union leader in your city, not the union advocates in TNLI: YOU, and only YOU.

Precisely because teacher unions are democratic institutions, and because democracy is our most deeply held core value, the central union in NYC does not even have the power to remove a union leader in the school. Our Constitution and By-Laws give that power to the teachers in the school, and only the teachers: a leader may be recalled by the teachers, but he can not be removed by the union.

That is why I never find compelling the "union in my school does this that I don't like" and the "union in my school does that that I don't like" complaints. Aren't you a teacher and an union member? Isn't the union in your school and the teachers of your school, whom your leader only represents? If he is not representing you and your concerns, what are you doing about it? We are not talking about a large institution here, where you would have to organize scores or hundreds of like-minded people to have an impact. We are talking about your school, where one thoughtful person making compelling arguments can make a dramatic difference. If there is a failure of democratic leadership in your school's union, responsibility for that failure rests, in no small part, with you. There is that famous Edmund Burke quote, which is a bit hyperbolic in these circumstances, but the basic principle applies: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men [and women, I would add] to do nothing." Misleadership of the union in your school does not exactly rise to the level of evil at a time when the world can watch genocide in Darfur [after recent genocides in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia] and do nothing, but it certainly is something which you can change, quite easily. So why do nothing?

Democratic institutions are necessarily imperfect institutions, because they depend upon ordinary, imperfect human beings like me and you. It is our responsibility, as women and men who enjoy freedom and opportunity that so many still only dream of, as teachers and citizens in a free society, to make them better, to bring them closer to the sort of ideals that inspire us. We are not about to surrender our right and our duty as citizens to elect the President of the US because George Bush won the last election, despite how bitter we might feel that result. But we can turn over the union in our schools to someone who we think doesn't represent the views and interests of teachers, and then complain about what he says and does? This is why I have a great deal of respect for Lisa North and what she said here on the subject of teacher unions, which may surprise some folks, because she is part of an opposition caucus in the union and I am part of the leadership caucus. But Lisa has earned the right to have what she says treated with complete respect, because she has been an activist in the union, worked tirelessly to win it to her views and joined in every effort to pursue our common good together. Truth be told, I agree with Lisa far more on particular issues than even she might think; my primary difference with her is my differing judgment on the educational seriousness, intellectual depth and political acumen of the leading lights of that particular opposition caucus.

Unions are, at core, instruments of solidarity. They make it possible to us to accomplish things together, and achieve goods we have in common, that we could never do on our own. When I decided that my professional life would be dedicated to giving inner city kids the quality education which would open the same doors of opportunity and freedom I had opened for me, I looked around and quickly saw that if I wanted to have any impact outside of my classroom, I needed to be working in the teachers' union, and making it into as powerful a force for that cause as I could. I dare say that there are not many other educational issues near to your heart where a careful appraisal of the educational and political terrain would not lead to the same conclusion. Unless you are the sort of die-hard individualist who does not believe in the common good or in collective efforts, the Ayn Rand sort of true believer who thinks that you are so much better than the rest of humankind or the rest of
the teachers, that you should not have join with them in any sort of common effort, the path to having a meaningful impact on educational policy in this country for ordinary teachers leads through the teacher unions, I would argue.

Leo Casey
New York City
4/1/05