Union Busting Redux? Old School History of Teachers Unions
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| Margaret Haley (from the Walter P. Reuther Library) |
Sherman Dorn recently made an interesting comparison between Wisconsin Gov. Walker’s attacks on public sector workers and the Loeb Rule, which was used in the 1910s to attack the fledgling Chicago Teachers Federation, the nation’s first successful teachers union and the first member of the AFT (see The Loeb Rule and pugilistic anti-unionism circa 2011).
The CFT, under Vice President Margaret Haley’s organizing efforts, tried to affiliate with Chicago’s blue collar workers and joined the Chicago Federation of Labor, the city’s largest labor organization. Terrified that Chicago’s already militant labor movement would suddenly swell with thousands of new members, the Chicago Board of
