Talkin’ Teachers Union
A Labor Day Message
Come you ranks of labor, come you union core
And see if you remember the struggles of before
When you were standing helpless on the outside of the door
And you started building links on the chain, on the chain
And you started building links on the chain.
And see if you remember the struggles of before
When you were standing helpless on the outside of the door
And you started building links on the chain, on the chain
And you started building links on the chain.
I have always felt that Phil Ochs metaphor of the union activism as “building links on the chain” to be very apt. In his song, Ochs reminds us of the reasons for the union movement (workers at the mercy of the employer, police strike busters hired by companies, horrible safety conditions in the workplace) and also admonishes the unions for their excesses (particularly as it concerned the treatment of minorities in the 50s and 60s).
With teachers’ unions under siege in 2014, it may be a good idea to look back on the conditions for teachers and students before teacher unions had significant power and also to look forward to what the purpose of the union can and should be in the future.
When I began my teaching career in Pennsylvania in1969, the teachers’ association I joined was a largely toothless organization that had no collective bargaining rights, no right to question pay or working conditions and no influence over educational policy. I was paid 6,300 dollars to teach 30 periods a week with two periods a week for lesson preparation, an average class size in the mid-30s in a dilapidated classroom where the temperature rose to 98 degrees on warm June days. I taught using outdated and worn textbooks that were totally inappropriate for my student population using a curriculum that Russ on Reading: Talkin’ Teachers Union: