Field Guide To Strike Objectors
In my four decades of teaching, I went through a strike twice--once as a first year teacher, and once as the president of the local union. Writing about education, I have followed dozens more. No matter what kind of public support a strike is getting, there are always some familiar tunes you can expect to hear played in opposition to a teacher walkout. Here's your guide to all the classics.
Don't they understand the district can't afford their demands?
When we were strike, a member of the board's negotiating team said publicly, "Yes, we have the money. We just don't want to give it to them." That's not usually how it goes. Folks all the way up to former US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have been chicken littling the impending financial doom of Los Angeles schools, and that's a fairly typical stance. Here's the thing to remember. When we were on strike, our state association sent us a trained education accountant to dig through the district's records (which, as a public school system, are completely public). By the time he was done, we knew as well as they did exactly what they could and could not afford. We kept that information in mind when negotiating because it would have been stupid to make demands that the district couldn't fund. When it comes to the financial side of negotiations, no union is flying blind, and no union is making demands that can't possibly be met.
It's those damned union leaders.
The teachers are fine, but those damned leaders are forcing them to strike. This tune appears in the coverage citing union president Alex Caputo-Pearl's "blind ambition." While people taking this approach often claim to love teachers, just not the union, this framing of a strike assumes that CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Field Guide To Strike Objectors
