Education Matters US

Should teachers be able to strike?
Tonight’s last-minute Rockford contract vote stirs questions and unpleasant memories.

ROCKFORD — It happens nearly every summer in Illinois. A teachers union threatens to strike unless it reaches a suitable contract deal with its local school district.

Usually, both sides reach a compromise and a strike is averted. But when a strike does happen, it’s always ugly.

Hononegah canceled its homecoming when its teachers walked off the job two years ago. Parents in the Harlem School District were left reeling last year when teachers walked the picket line for nine days. Julie Beck, a parent of two, remembers Rockford’s devastating four-week strike in 1984.

“It was chaos,” Beck said. “It’s always anxious when you don’t know if there’s going to be a strike or not. For full-time working parents, it really puts them in a dilemma with having to find child care. You think you’re going to go to school Wednesday, and Tuesday night you find out you’re not going.”

As the Rockford School Board votes tonight on a two-year wage pact for teachers, some are wondering whether teachers should have the right to strike at all. Illinois is one of 13 states that allow teachers to strike when collective bargaining fails.

In Illinois, police and firefighters can’t strike because lawmakers deem public safety too important to compromise.

Rockford Superintendent Dennis Thompson thinks the same standard should apply to all public servants.

“Public employees are still one of the few places where you have a pension guaranteed by the state, relatively good health benefits and close to a recession-proof job. I think you should give up the right to strike if you intend to be in public service.”

Teachers and other public-sector employees were granted the right to organize and strike in 1984 when the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act took effect.

State Rep. Dave Winters, R-Shirland, sponsored legislation in February that would preclude teachers from striking unless they initiated the strike before the school year began.

Winters introduced his bill in response to the recent Hononegah strike, but the bill died in the House Rules Committee, where bills generally fail if Speaker Mike Madigan, D-Chicago, does not support them.

“If it happens during the school year, the suddenness of the strike totally disrupts so many families’ lives,” Winters said. “They are public servants, and we just felt that it was more appropriate to not allow it during the school year.”

Teachers don’t like strikes any more than parents do, said Ken Swanson, president of the Illinois Education Association, a statewide teachers union.

Swanson, a sixth-grade teacher in Belvidere School District, took a three-year leave of absence in July to serve the statewide teachers union.

“If Illinois were to fix its school funding problem, there would be less pressure on teachers and school boards because we’d have the resources that the schools need,” Swanson said.

Some states that prohibit teachers from striking have adopted binding arbitration, but it’s not a perfect alternative, Swanson said. Binding arbitration is when a third-party adjudicator resolves a contract dispute and both parties agree to honor the ruling.

“School boards and administrators don’t feel that always works because you lose local control when you leave the contract in the hands of an outsider,” Swanson said

I watched the news this morning about the settlement in the 11th hour thus avoiding the strike. The very next story was about Superintendent Ryan and Saulk Village. Now with press manipulations like that, and the pervasive anti-teacher attitudes that are becoming a ground swell, it’s going to be mighty tough for teachers to get a fair shake going forward.

The CCSD 46 teachers appear to be taking a very moderate approach which should be condusive to a quick settlement. However, this very well may be their last chance to have a strong bargaining position. If I were them, I’d take the same approach that Naperville did and go for broke! They have given more than any teacher should ever be expected to and based on the record of this voting public, there aren’t enough out there that care.