Why the Coming Supreme Court Decision Might Not Be The End of the World for Teachers Unions and Labor
The coming Supreme Court decision elminating mandatory dues check off by public employees unions will create a crisis in the labor movement- especially for the big national teachers unions- but it need not destroy them
A look at labor history suggests why labor supporters, and teachers union members should avoid a doomsday scenario.
The greatest gains in the history of the US labor movement took place between 1933 and 1941 when unions, without any government support for dues collection, and sometimes in the face of violent attacks from police and private armies, fought an heroic battle for workplace rights, freedom of expression and higher living standards for the nation's industrial workers. To secure these gains, they not only had to convince workers and their families to take unprecedented risks, they had to convince a majority of the people in the communities where they organized that labor's gains would improve living standards for them. Without that community support, the unions could never have won the great strikes that marked labor's struggle for recognition, especially the Minneapolis Teamsters Rebellion of 1934, and the Flint Sit-Down Strikes of 1936-37,
The labor leaders of that era were not career bureaucrats with comfortable salaries. They didn't hold conventions at fancy hotels or resorts.. They, along with their members, risked With A Brooklyn Accent: Why the Coming Supreme Court Decision Might Not Be The End of the World for Teachers Unions and Labor:
" am in the middle of reading Robert Snyder's 'Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York City' and will tell you straight out, it is one of the best pieces of New York City social history I have read in a long time. It contains incredible interview material as well as displaying a familiarity with every documentary source available and is written with clarity, insight and occasionally with eloquence. Few people have written with greater insight about how race, religion and nationality shape life in rapidly changing New York City neighborhoods. The book begins at a time when Washington Heights was a predominantly Jewish and Irish neighborhood, discusses the sometimes fierce resistance to Black and Latino migration inside its borders, covers years of disinvestment and drug epidemics and deals in great depth with the huge Dominican presence within its boundaries which is now threatened by gentrification. It was extremely helpful to me in writing the introduction to my book of Bronx Oral Histories, but I recommend it to anyone interested in NYC neighborhood life.With A Brooklyn Accent http://bit.ly/1l3didn