![]() Their members are not trying to shut down education, but rather to ensure that schools don’t reopen until they are safe for teachers, students, and their families. ![]() Paul that have embraced a far-sighted strategy of mutual support called Bargaining for the Common Good, which has now evolved into a network of the same name. Its impetus comes from local teachers’ unions in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and St. The central demand of the Day of Resistance is not a wage increase, but safe schools. Today’s teachers will not make the same mistake. Controllers believed they could win their fight alone-that they would never be replaced if they only stuck together. PATCO not only challenged a popular president, it made no effort to cultivate allies even in the AFL-CIO, after alienating union leaders by endorsing Reagan’s election a year earlier. It was an illegal walkout whose most important demand was a large across-the-board wage increase-a demand levied during a recession in which other unions were offering concessions. The controllers’ strike, even many of its most ardent supporters later conceded, was poorly conceived. The differences indicate both how much public-sector unions have learned from history and the crucial role their members are poised to play in pushing our leaders to finally deal seriously with this raging pandemic. Their protest is every bit as audacious as the 1981 strike, yet the teachers’ strategy, and the context behind their protest, could not be more different. Today, thirty-nine years to the day after the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) strike began, teachers across the nation are staging a National Day of Resistance demanding safe schools. We might soon witness a similarly momentous showdown. Following Reagan’s example, private-sector employers made the 1980s synonymous with strikebreaking and union-busting, initiating a decades-long labor retreat. While few contemporary observers immediately grasped its significance, that confrontation soon led not only to defeat for the controllers-who were permanently replaced when they defied Reagan’s order-but to disempowerment for American workers generally. President Ronald Reagan walked into the Rose Garden that morning to deliver an ultimatum: unless they returned to work within forty-eight hours, the controllers would be fired. On August 3, 1981, federal air traffic controllers in the United States launched an illegal strike, grounding flights from Guam to Puerto Rico. McCartin ▪ August 3, 2020Įducators protest plans to reopen schools in Nashville, Tennessee, on July 27 (Brett Carlsen/Getty Images) No group is better positioned than organized teachers to force Washington to develop a national plan to deal with the pandemic.
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