Solidarity among educators, workers is imperative

Mark Naison, professor of African and African American Studies at Fordham University in New York and chair of the department of African and African-American Studies, authored a great column I found over the weekend. Given what's happening in our legislature, funded by out-of-state contributors, I thought it appropriate to feature Naison's thoughts here.

All over the nation, teachers are under attack. Politicians of both parties, in every state, have blamed teachers and their unions for the nation’s low standing on international tests and our nation’s inability to create the educated labor force our economy needs.

Mass firings of teachers in so-called failing schools have taken place in municipalities throughout the nation and some states have made a public ritual of humiliating teachers. In Los Angeles and New York, teacher ratings based on student standardized test scores — said by many to be inaccurate — have been published by the press. As a result, great teachers have been labeled as incompetent and some are leaving the profession. A new study showed that teachers’ job satisfaction has plummeted in recent years.

Big budget films such as "Bad Teacher" and... "Waiting for Superman" popularize the idea that public school teachers prevent poor children of color from getting a good education, while corporate funded organizations perpetuate the idea that the only way for children to excel is if their teachers lose their job security and bargaining rights.

Why has this campaign attracted such strong bipartisan support and why has the public failed to speak out loudly against it?

Attacks on teachers have occurred in the midst of a broad-based attack on the bargaining rights and benefits of all public workers — but even by that standard, teachers have been singled out.

In New York State, where teacher evaluations were just released to the press, the state Legislature just passed — and the governor signed — a bill that exempted police and firefighters from having their evaluations released to the public. What better symbolizes the way teachers have become “fair game” for public demonization?

There are huge profits to be made in the testing industry, in educational technologies that replace teachers, and in constructing and managing charter schools, so it is not hard to see why some people in the corporate world would benefit from attacking public education and teachers unions.

Sooner or later, it all comes back to money, doesn't it? And not little money, but massive corporate profits.

But why are so many parents and the general public buying into this campaign? Certainly politicians wouldn’t be voting to take away teachers’ rights if they didn’t think it would get votes.

Let’s look at the way many in America’s shrinking middle class and battered working class view the teachers in their midst.

Large numbers of people are losing their jobs and homes, earning sub-standard wages and taking in their children who can’t find jobs. All the while, they see teachers, 80 percent of them women, who make better salaries than they do, have better health plans and pensions, and get two or three months off in the summer!

Many say to themselves: “Who do teachers think they are? Why should they live so well on my tax dollars when I can barely keep my head above water? At the very least, they should feel some of the insecurity I feel every day and face the kind of performance assessments workers in the private sector deal with all the time.”

That is the same sentiment that America’s unionized blue collar workers faced in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s and ‘90’s when big corporations started closing factories and slashing wages and benefits. The non-unionized work force in big industrial states refused to rally to the defense of their unionized counterparts, and industrial unions lost battles to maintain their wage and benefit levels that allowed them to live a middle-class life style or prevent plants from relocating.

That posture is short-sighted for two reasons.

First the same policies that create an insecure, deeply resentful teaching force will end up harming children.

Not only will excessive standardized tests — now used to evaluate teachers — make children hate school, but the whole test-based accountability movement has served to narrow the curriculum and turn many classrooms into test-prep factories. Parents are discovering that their children are not only unhappy at school but not well prepared for higher education or challenging careers.

There is another more insidious consequence of the attack on teaching. Every time you undermine the job security, working conditions, and wages of one group of workers, it makes it easier for employers to undermine them for all workers. This is why, during the Depression, many unemployed people organized in support of workers on strike, even though anybody with a job in that era was relatively privileged. They believed in the concept of solidarity — the idea that working people could only progress if they did so together, and if one group of workers improved their conditions, it would ultimately improve conditions for all.

This is an important point, I think. Demean a worker over here, and it sends a signal to the worker over there. Demean a whole class of workers in this industry, and it sends a signal to the workers in other industries.

Remember that Ronald Reagan fired air traffic controllers rather than address their concerns in 1981, less than two years after the film "Norma Rae" highlighted the value of solidarity among America's working class. One impact of Reagan's action was a chill on American workers. Consider, further, that the decade is now represented in popular culture by Oliver Stone's "Wall Street," a film about corporate raiders destroying companies and stealing their workers' pensions.

For two generations now, we've suffered from an organized effort to demean one and all who derive their livelihoods from work rather than from wealth.

But the converse is true too: Battle for the rights of workers here, and you battle for the rights of others there, too. Progress spreads. Solidarity empowers everyone.

That kind of solidarity, for the most part, is gone now. If American workers are ever going to regain their fair share of national income and win back respect on and off the jobs, it is something they are going to have to re-learn. The Occupy Movement has brought back the idea of solidarity with its image of “the 99 percent fighting the 1 Percent,” but this idea has not yet spread fast enough to stop the war on teachers.

There are, though, signs of hope. In Chicago and New York, Occupy groups are uniting with teachers, parents and students to fight school closings; in New York, parents groups have rallied to the defense of teachers stigmatized by the publication of outrageously inaccurate teacher ratings; in Florida, a pernicious “parent trigger” law favoring charter schools was just defeated in the legislature with a big push from parents.

These actions are, hopefully, just the beginning of a transformation of public consciousness that will lead to an end of the war on teachers.

Poll: Americans reject attacks on public employees' rights

Give average Americans an opportunity to demonstrate their humanity and intelligence, and they'll take it.

Bloomberg News Service conducted the poll and is reporting its findings, so no one can argue that this is a liberal-biased poll.

A new Bloomberg News national poll finds that Americans believe, by a wide margin, that public sector workers should have the right to collectively bargain. 64 percent of respondents, including a plurality of Republicans, believe public workers should be able to bargain collectively for their wages, while 63 percent believe that states should not be able to break pension agreements they’ve already made. This, of course, comes after a number of Republican governors used budget woes to justify removing collective bargaining rights from public employees.

Just as educators and other public workers are being assaulted from all sides, thanks to zombie legislation drafted by the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council and being revivified in states from Maine to Louisiana -- including the voucher-and-tax-deduction bill right here in South Carolina -- ordinary Americans are saying they side with the nation's rank-and-file working class.

It's a powerful and moving piece of news.

As battles rage between state workers and Republican governors in Wisconsin and Ohio, 63 percent don’t think states should be able to break their promises to retirees, and respondents split over whether governors aim to balance their budgets or weaken unions that back Democratic foes, according to the poll conducted March 4-7.

The poll shows that political challenges to government workers are failing to draw broad support from a public more concerned about unemployment than government deficits.

Overreach. That's what Americans are calling the actions of a far-right movement that took advantage of bad economic times to storm state houses across the nation in 2010, and immediately set to work dismantling the social fabric that it took the entire twentieth century to weave.

“The Republican Party sees an opportunity to attack and possibly destroy the base of their opponents’ political power,” says poll respondent Dale Palmer, 59, a Democrat and retired teacher from Zephyrhills, Florida.

Palmer says budget deficits are a result of the economy and years of tax cuts, not the actions of public employees. “They’re putting it now on the backs of their enemies even when these particular unions are willing to bargain,” he says.

That's the influence of blind and aggressive ideology, not pragmatic governance.

And here's the kicker:

Sixty-three percent of those surveyed -- including a majority of Democrats and independents -- say corporations wield more political clout than unions. Public employees, meanwhile, are viewed favorably by a large majority: 72 percent, compared with 17 percent who have an unfavorable view.

Government employees account for the majority of union members in the U.S. as a result of the long decline in manufacturing industries. In 2010, 7.6 million of the 14.7 million U.S. union members worked in the public sector, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

Sixty-four percent of respondents, including a plurality of Republicans, say public employees should have the right to bargain collectively for their wages. Sixty-three percent, including 55 percent of Republicans, say states without enough money to pay for all the pension benefits they have promised to current retirees shouldn’t be able to break those obligations.

The awareness of the injustices being perpetrated on public employees is widespread and deep. Sixty-four percent of self-identified conservatives in America can't coalesce behind a single candidate for the United States presidency, yet that many of them agree that fair is fair, hard work deserves respect, far-right governors and legislators have misinterpreted their elections, and that corporations are the real power behind the damage being done to America. That's a powerful set of conclusions.

Randy Turner, a 32-year old construction worker from Springfield, Missouri, who participated in the poll, says he sees unions as a corrective force against a government that exerts enough power.

“Trying to make us not have a right for unions for anything is wrong,” says Turner, an independent voter who isn’t a union member. “They help our economy, they help the job market -- all kinds of things our government doesn’t help.”

The skirmishes have intensified support for unions among their members and Democrats, a potential challenge to Republicans in the 2012 elections, says Scott Keeter, a pollster with Pew Research Center in Washington.

“That fact might not change the outcome of the current battles, but could have implications for voter turnout among these groups next year,” he says.

Any chance this might lead governors like Nikki Haley to review their anti-worker positions and rhetoric? Probably not. Haley and others like her were elected largely because of their far-right supporters and blood-red messaging, and they'll be loathe to leave those hardline positions behind so quickly.

But the Bloomberg poll shows that they're not reflecting the views of most Americans.

A majority says unions are appropriate for firefighters, nurses, teachers, prison guards and police officers. Respondents were divided only over whether custodians and office workers also should be unionized.

Poll respondent Margaret Coakley, 72, a retired psychiatric social worker from New York who lives in New Harbor, Maine, says politicians are wrong if they blame public employees for the financial ills of their state.

“It’s outrageous they’re pointing to public employees now,” she says. “That’s not where the problems are.”

American workers accomplished great things when they organized

Monday will be the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's assassination in Memphis. It's worth noting every year, but it's especially worth noting this year, why King was in Memphis on that date: He was there to support city sanitation workers appealing for better wages, benefits and working conditions. The city, we may recall, said it couldn't afford its workers' requests.

King knew, as we know today, that what we CAN afford and what we CHOOSE to afford is often separated by the paper-thin wall of political will. It was illustrated at a rally last month in Columbia that South Carolina is, in fact, a wealthy, wealthy state, when we consider the volume of business done here and the profitability of our corporate neighbors.

In a column published in Memphis's newspaper today, though, the president of the National Education Association focuses on the work done by organized labor to improve life for average working people in America. The president is Dennis Van Roekel and his words speak for themselves, so here they are:

At that time King had already helped win passage of landmark legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but he realized that removing legal barriers alone would not bring about equal opportunity and economic justice for African-Americans. He recognized that workers of all races -- including public employees like the Memphis sanitation workers -- would have to use their collective strength to win a fair deal for themselves and their families.

Organized labor played an important role in the civil rights movement. One of the greatest American labor leaders was A. Philip Randolph, who organized African-American railroad workers into the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in the 1920s. He drew on his experience as an organizer to plan early marches on Washington, D.C., protesting racial segregation and discrimination. These demonstrations paved the way for the 1963 march and rally where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.

Unions such as the United Auto Workers also provided financial support to the civil rights movement, and the National Education Association merged with the all-black American Teachers Association in 1966 -- a move that was controversial in many areas of the country, especially the South.

Private-sector workers had won the right to organize and bargain collectively during the Great Depression, but public workers wouldn't gain the same rights until the late 1950s and '60s. Like the civil rights movement of the same era, the emerging power of public workers would improve the lives of African-American families.

Public jobs had long been a mainstay of the black middle class. Workers with education and skills encountered less discrimination in public agencies than in many private companies, and even unskilled black Americans could often find work in sanitation or other public services. That is why King saw the sanitation workers' strike as part of the struggle for civil rights.

Today African-Americans are still more likely than people of other races to work in public jobs. About 17 percent of white workers in the United States are public employees, compared with almost 21 percent of all black workers and 23 percent of black women. Overall, the public sector is the leading employer of black men and the second-leading employer of black women.

We can't ignore that history or those statistics today when we see public workers and their rights under attack in state after state -- including in Tennessee, where the legislature is considering a bill to weaken the bargaining rights of teachers. If King were still alive, he would no doubt say that attacks on public workers are an attack on the African-American middle class -- and he would be right.

The politicians behind these attacks are trying to stoke resentment of public employees and other union members among workers who aren't represented by a union. But no American should resent a neighbor for earning a decent living. Instead, middle-class Americans should be concerned about the widening gulf between an ultra-wealthy elite and everyone else.

In our country today, 5 percent of the people hold almost 64 percent of the wealth, and 1 percent receive almost a fourth of the total income.

The New York Times recently reported that General Electric paid no federal income tax in 2010 despite making $14 billion in worldwide profits. Meanwhile, more people received food stamps last year than ever before, and more than one out of every five children in the United States lives in poverty.

At the time of his assassination, King was fighting to correct this kind of economic imbalance. He knew that unions -- including public unions like the Memphis sanitation workers -- were a critical part of that struggle.

"The labor movement," he said, "was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress." That holds true for all American workers, but especially so for African-Americans.

By the way, for those who argue that labor organizing is a patently evil and unproductive force, consider the news from Aiken today. Rob Novit of the Aiken Standard reports that, after less than a month of negotiating, organized workers at the local Owens-Corning plant won a new agreement and have returned to work:

An employee of the Teamsters Union Local 509 office in Aiken said the company returned to the negotiating table with a revised proposal. Workers approved a new three-year contract Monday and were back at work the next day.

Union representatives could not be reached for comment Thursday. Jason Saragian, an Owens-Corning spokesman at the firm's corporate office in Toledo, Ohio, said the company offer improved the plant's competitiveness and was fair to the employees. He declined to discuss details of the original offer and how the subsequent negotiation differed.

"The offer was modified in a mutually agreeable manner," Saragian said. "We're pleased they ratified it."

Union Local 509 president L.D. Fletcher said after the strike started that the Aiken plant has 90 employees with 75 of them union members. Each plant negotiates separately with its employees, and the large majority of union employees rejected the original contract, he said.

Employees said at the time that the company originally had proposed freezing pensions for workers younger than 60 and reducing salaries of some future employees by $5 an hour. The initial proposal, they said, also included a $1,500 bonus in the first year and raises of 1 percent and 2 percent the next two years.

It would appear that working people can still accomplish great things when they work together.