Teachers have it pretty darn good
By Ari Kaufman (04/12/08)
In 1894, President Grover Cleveland stepped up to a challenge with the boldest act of his two presidencies. On Chicago's South Side, 125,000 employees of the Pullman Co., which manufactured railroad cars, went on strike over a wage dispute.
Within weeks, Eugene Debs, head of the American Railway Union, and later a five-time presidential candidate from the erstwhile Socialist Party of America, lent support by voting to boycott all Pullman cars. This act crushed the transportation industry throughout the Midwest. Throughout the summer, mail went undelivered while commerce halted around Chicago Land, before Cleveland, in a foreshadowing of President Calvin Coolidge's 1919 dictum to the Boston Police Department, "There is no right to strike against the public safety by anyone, anywhere, any time," attempted to end the boycott.
The union ignored the injunction, and the typically laconic Cleveland famously exploded. "If it takes the entire Army and Navy of the United States to deliver a postcard in Chicago, that card will be delivered."
Cleveland sent 12,000 federal troops – commanded by Civil War veteran Col. Nelson Miles – to restore order. The strike collapsed, and Debs, whose union set fire to buildings and destroyed locomotives, causing $8 million damage, was imprisoned for interfering with the mail. He was sent to prison, where he promptly became a Marxist.
Though many historians have been critical of Cleveland's actions, and the "friends of labor" sought his ouster from the Democratic Party, the Constitution gave the president the right to interfere where mail delivery is obstructed, even at a local level. More importantly, it was also reported that "the public, without reference to party lines, are unanimous in approving and supporting the action of the president."
I bring up this century-old story to reinforce a constant theme of my writing on unions (specifically, teachers unions): that, although political party lines seem stronger than ever in 2008, people's negative views on unions regularly supersede political affiliation. And despite labor unions being a main financial engine of today's Democratic Party, most Democrats I know are not union members. Most, like President Cleveland, have little respect for them, and often ponder why they still exist. They're curious as to why a fairly well-paying, white-collar profession like education still needs a union to "fight the power" and ostensibly protect teachers from being exploited.
When I was a teacher, I did not comprehend how a veteran colleague pulling in over $75,000 for a 35-hour workweek and 180-day school year needed to boycott faculty meetings (never with reprisals) and march in downtown Los Angeles for an 8 percent pay raise instead of 7 percent. Performance-based pay, an idea that, as a friend recently e-mailed me, "not only makes sense but is standard practice in corporate America, but cannot see the light of day because the union wants to protect its members," would lead to extra cash, while students and teachers both benefit from higher morale and better test scores.
Alas, thanks to union lies about merit pay, obfuscation of the plan's intents and an endemic fear of accountability, those types of important referendums regularly fail in large cities like Los Angeles. It's a tragedy. Our students are "at risk," and it's no fault of their own.
After leaving teaching, I realized how incredible the benefits of a teacher can be. Not only are teachers' salaries higher than for nearly any entry-level government employee, for about 80 percent of the workload, but the health insurance, pension/early retirement, vacation time and much else stand out above most all other government workers.
With all this considered, as my co-workers and others note, let's stop acting as though being a teacher is such an overwhelming and underappreciated task. Call teachers role models and so on, but don't believe they are overworked and underpaid, when ambitious teachers I know who work summers and tutor after school for over $125 per hour easily pull in six-figure salaries by age 35.
Don't make emotional movies about the hurdles of "going to war" each day in East Los Angeles, when soldiers are dying for our country in real wars. And please don't believe for a moment that a teachers union is essential in public education in 2008. It's an insult to teachers to believe otherwise.
Ari Kaufman
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/union-teachers-cleveland-2015958-president-party
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