#660 – Dick Bernard: Don Hill on organized teachers, and union organizing generally.

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There are benefits of being on too-many e-mail lists. Surprisingly often, into the inbox, will come a nugget, as happened today, when Kathy forwarded to me, something Howie had forwarded to her: a 30 minute radio conversation with former Minnesota Education Association President Donald C. Hill of Northfield.
You can listen to the entire conversation, with retired teacher and host David Bly, here. The show was apparently first aired September 16, 2011 in Northfield MN. No matter. It is as current as today.
Anyone involved with Minnesota Public Education would immediately know the name and the voice of Don Hill. Many in other states would know of him as well.
He came on the scene at a turbulent time in Minnesota public employee union development.
I began my staff career in 1972, at about the same point in time that the name “Don Hill” was increasingly being recognized as an up and coming MEA teacher leader.
Best as I recall he was MEA President for approximately ten years, leaving office by the mid-1980s.
Love him or hate him, Don Hill made a big difference – and a positive difference – for Minnesotans, and not only for public school teachers. People like him do not come along often, and when they appear they are larger than life. They’re not in the business of being ‘average and ordinary’.
Listen to Don’s story of his years in teaching and as President of Minnesota’s teacher union.
The current attack on teacher unions in particular is largely because they have maintained at least a semblance of solidarity with each other.
Unions are fun to attack; even union members who dislike unions – yes, there are some of those – have reason to greatly appreciate the advocacy in their behalf over their careers.
But for unions to remain effective, the members of those unions need to put shoulder to the wheel, first recognizing that what they have can not be taken for granted, and that a stable future for themselves and their colleagues depends on their working together for a common cause.
I’ve often written about Unions, primarily during the Wisconsin spectacle of 2011. My most recent piece, immediately before the 2012 election, can be found here. (JoAnn, mentioned in the post, won her seat in the legislature. She will serve with distinction, in nobody’s “pocket”, which is as it should be.)
Thanks, Don, and thanks to all who endeavor to represent their peers, particularly in union settings.

undated photo of Don Hill submitted by a reader.

#658 -Bob Barkley: Teaching as a Team Sport: Thoughts after the Chicago Teachers Strike (Sep 10-19, 2012); and What I've learned so far (as of Nov. 19, 2012)

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Pre-Note: This post has been held for some time, with precedence given to Election 2012. The topic of Public Education is timeless and crucial.
Bob Barkley has very strong “street creds” in public education, from beginning public school teaching in 1958, through years of Quality Ed work within the National Education Association, through Executive Director of Ohio Education Association and post-retirement consulting.
Teaching as a Team Sport:
Bob Barkley: Yes, you read that title right. Traditional schools are structured and managed as if teachers were individual performers. Evidence and common sense say that’s far from being the case.
Given the recent furor over the Chicago teacher strike and the accompanying union bashing that dominates the mainstream media, we’d do well to give thought to what can be learned from successful schools around the globe.
We talk much about American exceptionalism. A key element of that exceptionalism is our deep-seated belief in the merits of competition. So thoroughly have we adopted the notion that market forces inevitably lead to superior performance, we have great difficulty accepting the fact that schools that emphasize collegial relationships, encourage shared faculty planning, and make use of cooperative approaches to designing and implementing teaching and learning strategies, routinely outpace those that stress competition.
Most teachers know this intuitively, although too few articulate it well. Professional organizations, unions, school administrators, and schools of education are also familiar with the research and conclusions based on experience, but are no more successful than individual teachers at getting the message across. The narrow preoccupation with raising test scores at the expense of all else seems to have so rattled educators they can’t get their sensible messages out.
The need to work together is a major reason why private sector pressure to rate and pay teachers on the basis of test scores and other individual performance measures is a huge mistake. Predictably—given political reliance on corporate funding for campaigns—neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to listen to educators. Vouchers, choice, charters, merit pay, school closings and “turnarounds,” and other silver bullets being fired by politicians and rich entrepreneurs block dialogue that could be productive if they came to the issues open to the possibility that the hundreds of thousands who actually do the work might just possibly know something about how to do it best.
Corporate fascination with competitiveness notwithstanding, in teaching and learning, competitiveness is almost always counterproductive. It blocks a host of useful strategies for evaluating performance, gets in the way of freely sharing good ideas, and wastes the benefits of knowing one is part of a team, the work of which will inevitably be smarter than that of individual members.
It’s ironic that teamwork—an idea the merit of which is taken for granted on factory floors and playing fields, in neighborhoods and families, and just about everywhere else that humans try to be productive—is seen as counterproductive in classrooms. Within companies managers want employees to collaborate with colleagues. An accountant sitting next to a fellow accountant is required to work with that person. No one wants the two of them to compete, withhold trade secrets, and crush the other by the end of the day.
Finding scapegoats, fixing blame for poor performance on a percentage of teachers or on a few individuals, has an appealing simplicity about it, but it’s a lazy, simplistic, misguided approach to improving system performance. As management experts have been pointing out for decades, if a system isn’t performing, it almost always means there’s a system problem. Since teachers have almost no control over the systems of which they are a part, it’s necessary to make the most of a bad situation, and the easiest way to do that is to capitalize on their collective wisdom. If they’re being forced to compete against each other, there’s no such thing as collective wisdom.
For a generation, under the banner of standards and accountability, teachers have been criticized, scorned, denigrated, maligned, blamed. Accountability in education as indicated by standardized test scores is no more about individual teacher performance than accountability in health care as indicated by patient temperatures is about individual nurse performance.
I’m not making excuses for poor educator performance. Teachers should be held accountable for identifying, understanding, and applying practices that produce the highest level of student achievement. Administrators should be held accountable for creating an environment that encourages the identification, understanding and sharing of effective practices. Schools of education should be held accountable for whatever improves the institution.
But the new reformers aren’t interested in improvement, just replacement. Management experts say, “Don’t fix blame; fix the system.” Just about everyone in the system would love to help do that if given the opportunity, but the opportunity hasn’t been offered, so nothing of consequence changes.
Case in point: The Chicago teachers’ strike. Rahm Emanuel, like the rest of the current “reformers,” came to the table having bought the conventional wisdom in Washington and state capitols that educators either don’t know what to do or aren’t willing to do it. He obviously went to Chicago with the same tired suspicion of teachers, the same belief that they’re the problem rather than the key to a real solution, the same confrontational, competitive stance.
Will we ever learn? Don’t hold your breath.
What I’ve Learned So Far (as of Nov. 19, 2012):
In February of 1958 I began student teaching in a small rural Pennsylvania town. Approximately one month into that experience my master teacher was drafted into the military. And since there were no other teachers in my field in that small district, I was simply asked to complete the school year as the regular teacher.
From that day on I have been immersed in public education at many levels, in several states – even in Canada and with some international contacts, as well as from many vantage points. So some 54 and a half years later, here’s what I have learned so far.
1. There will be no significant change in education until and unless our society truly and deeply adopts a sense of community attitude. And a sense of community is first and foremost based upon an acceptance that we all belong together – regardless of wealth, race, gender, etc.
2. The views of amateurs, otherwise known as politicians and private sector moneyed interests, while they may be genuine and well intentioned, are, at best, less than helpful if unrestrained by the views of the professionals working at ground level. Put another way, the view from 30,000 feet may give a broad sense of how the system looks, but the view from street level gives a sense of how the system actually works. Neither is wrong, but both are inadequate by themselves.
3. Moneyed interests such as test and textbook manufactures and charter school enthusiasts will destroy general education for they have little commitment to the general welfare and common good
4. No institution or organization will excel until and unless it adopts at all levels a shared sense of purpose – a central aim if you will, and agrees upon how progress toward that purpose will be measured over time. Education is no different.
5. At the basic levels all education must begin with the recognition and nurturing of the natural curiosity and the current reality of each student.
6. Teaching is a team sport. In other words, the structure and general practice in schools of teachers operating as independent sources of instruction is flawed. Anything that exacerbates this flawed structure, such as test score ratings of individual teachers and/or individual performance pay schemes, will be harmful and counterproductive.
7. The separation of knowledge into separate disciplines may be convenient to organizing instruction but it is counter to the construction of learning. Therefore, integrated curriculum strategies are essential if neuroscience is to be appreciated and taken into account.
8. School employee unions can be useful or problematic to educational progress. Which they become is dependent upon their full inclusion in determining the structure and purpose of education. The more they are pushed to the sidelines, the more their focus will be narrow and self-serving.
Robert Barkley, Jr., is retired Executive Director of the Ohio Education Association, a thirty-five year veteran of NEA and NEA affiliate staff work. He is the author of Quality in Education: A Primer for Collaborative Visionary Educational Leaders, Leadership In Education: A Handbook for School Superintendents and Teacher Union Presidents, and Lessons for a New Reality: Guidance for Superintendent/Teacher Organization Collaboration. He may be reached at rbarkle@columbus.rr.com.
Ed. Note: Bob Barkley did a great deal of significant work within NEA on quality initiatives in a number of states, including Minnesota. Here’s a recent article, “Guerrilla Baldrige in the Classroom” outlining a long term impact of his and NEAs work towards quality systems in public education.

#642 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #60. Bludgeoning "Union"

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It doesn’t take close attention to notice that a prime Republican narrative in this election is anti-union, particularly public sector unions.
Union hating is in. What are the Republicans afraid of?
I spent most of my career – 27 years – representing teachers as an employee of the teacher’s union, first Minnesota Education Association (MEA), now called Education Minnesota.
Before that I was a junior high school teacher and teacher union member and, immediately pre-staff, a local union leader. Before that I was in the Army.
I know a bit about that word “union”.
The first contract under Minnesota’s Public Employment Relations Act (PELRA) coincided with my first year on MEA staff 40 years ago, 1972. Best as I recall, PELRA passed because it was jointly supported by Republican and Democrat leaders of the time. In those quaint old days there was a healthy mix of cooperation and competition. People worked to get the peoples business done in a healthy way.
My last staff assignment included the teachers of South Washington County Distrct #833. I retired from Union work in January 2000, and since October of 2000 I have lived in the same house in Woodbury.
The propagandists in the GOP have long identified the very word, “Union”, as evil, something to be stamped out.
Employees banding together must be fearsome and dangerous, or so it is made to seem. We must have mythical powers to control others.
The argument is absurd, but apparently is thought to be salable to working people who, ironically, owe much of their status as members of the middle class to unions, even if they never belonged to one of the unions which negotiated the wages and benefits people take for granted, and are now losing.
It doesn’t take long to learn that unions are collections of people of differing opinions and concerns. Union members and leaders know this.
Union staff people like myself were and are constantly in a position of having to help people of different minds come to some semblance of agreement. This might be between labor and management; often it is person to person within the union.
Once in my time with #833 there was a very close call on a threatened teacher strike. It was a very cold January night in the mid-1990s, with pickets set to go up the next morning. Very late at night another union staff member and myself had to take the lead to get some very reluctant members to reach a tentative agreement with school district management. Tempers were high for some time; but the resulting proposed contract was easily ratified. The bargaining process had worked.
I don’t recall hearing of a strike in South Washington County #833 in 40 years of collective bargaining; for certain, there were none on my watch, and there have been none since I’ve lived here.
In the early years, when we neophytes in bargaining were learning, there were more strikes. But most of those were clustered in a single year, over 30 years ago.
Union members, like management, learn it is preferable to negotiate and settle differences.
Some do not like the idea of employees being able to negotiate. Public Workers, it seems in particular, are supposed to be Public Servants. My parents were career public school teachers. I know what “Public Servant” means….
My proudest accomplishment in this district, at the very end of my career, was to help organize a Union sponsored and financed Community Conversation About Public Schools in 1999. With the cooperation of the School District, and volunteers like current candidate for legislature JoAnn Ward, a 23 member committee helped community members engage in civil conversations about public education in this community.
Financing for the pilot project came from the National Education Association and Education Minnesota.
The model worked well, but unfortunately was not continued.
I still have the file from 1999, and the 12 page participants guide from the final conversation. It could/should be resurrected.
Like any institution, public or private, unions are not perfect. They are, after all, made up of people.
I dislike the Republican Party and assorted “Independent Expenditure” groups targeting Unions as the problem when, in fact, they are as they have always been, an important part of the solution.
Unions are positive society assets not liabilities. The Democratic Party seems to realize that.
What does the union look like? Here’s a recent picture of one union member, now a 12-years retired Senior Citizen, me:

Dick Bernard, speaking at a recent Fench-Canadian cultural event in Minneapolis.


Tomorrow at this space: the thus far untalked about ‘time bomb’ in the MN Voter ID Constitutional Amendment.

#635 – Dick Bernard: An evening of resonance in the midst of dissonance with the LoMoMo (Locked out musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra) and Maestro Stanislaw Skrowaczewski

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UPDATE: October 20, 2012. Page E1 of Variety Section of Minneapolis Star Tribune by Larry Fuchsberg, here.
(click to enlarge all photos)
The musicians union website is here; e-address contact@MinnesotaOrchestraMusiciansDOTorg.

A volunteer at Minneapolis Convention Center Auditorium October 18, 2012


To the best of my recollection, this is the first time I’ve published two blog posts on the same day. (#634 is below, on this same page.)
Insignificant as my little blog space on the internet might be, this is my tribute to a great orchestra.
From the beginning when I saw the first “Labor” button, to the last of many standing ovations for an exhausted Stanislas Skrowaczewski and his great band, tonight with the musicians of Mn Orchestra was a magnificent experience.
There are major management problems at the Minnesota Orchestra (MSO).
The Orchestra Board has locked out its Orchestra, apparently refusing to negotiate, except on its terms. More in a moment on this. Here is the Union position as distributed this evening after its performance: MN Orchestra Union Posit001 The management position can be found below, in #634.
Here is the program all of us received this evening: Orch Program Oct 18 2012001
We gathered at the large auditorium at Minneapolis Convention Center Oct. 18. It was a full house, someone said 2100 of us in the audience.
I would guess that most of us were regulars at the Orchestra. I saw several I knew: Andy Driscoll from KFAI; the Borgens, the Harings, the Knutsons (who didn’t see me). There were likely others somewhere in that large, crowded space.
Unusual for the Orchestra, after warmup, all members exited the stage, then all filed in to sustained and greatly affectionate applause. We saw one of the violinists was in tears. I’m guessing there were others in the band similarly affected.
Then, to an equal or even greater positive response, came Maestro Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. At 89, the maestro marked his 52nd consecutive year making at least one appearance at the podium of the Minnesota Orchestra.
Skrowaczewski led the Orchestra from 1960-79, during which time it changed its name from Minneapolis to Minnesota Symphony, and it was under his leadership that the new concert hall was built in downtown Minneapolis – a hall presently closed for renovation.
An October 6 letter to the editor by Skrowaczewski and other emeritus conductors of MSO concerning the management-labor conflict was posted in the lobby.

October 18, 2012 - lobby


Tonight we were in magnificent company. From the opening Star Spangled Banner, to the last measures of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, in D Minor, Opus 47, where some members of the audience stood in silent tribute to something important and as yet unknown to me, I felt I was part of a very important event in American labor history. (A clue to the answer to my question might be found here, note the section on the Composition).
Tomorrow will dawn, and it will be back to the work of getting a settlement and getting back to the work of making wonderful music.
It will not be easy.
I spent an entire career, in person, trying to make sense of small and large disputes between management and labor, and I know the dynamics and angst likely going on within the union itself, and how difficult it is to find a way to help someone who has made a stupid mistake – in this case Minnesota Orchestra management – save face so that they can at least settle and at least appear like winners.
When you plant your feet in cement, the cement hardens, you’re stuck, and someone has to help you out….
Having “been there, done that”, I hesitate to make judgements on labor-management issues from outside.
Best as I can tell, though, the Musicians Union has done the right thing.
Now the right thing for us is to give support in the many ways available to us.
Bravo to the Orchestra. Bravo to Maestro Skrowaczewski. Bravo to those volunteers, and Bravo to all of us who give support.
Bravo.
A few snapshots:

The Orchestra rises to be recognized by the audience October 18.


Sam Bergman explains the issues after intermission.


Maestro Skrowaczewski takes one of many bows.



Skrawaczewski's final bow October 18


Comments:
Judy: This one made me cry. We are so very blessed to have this magnificent orchestra in our midst. Please, please hang in there folks. We desperately need you. What is life without music?
Will: Graydon Royce [Minneapolis Star Tribune] wrote in his review today that a few civic officials finally are getting off the dime to try to achieve a settlement for both orchestras. It’s going to take more than that.
I urge separate letters to the [St. Paul Pioneer Press] PP and [Minneapolis Star-Tribune] S-T now briefly recapping last night but urging the governor and the leaders of both Houses to get involved now.
Ask them publicly why they [went all out] for Zygi Wilf and a football team that extorts big bucks from the state treasury and adds nothing to the commonweal but not for two orchestras which are the crown jewels of Minnesota’s cultural community.
Jermitt: Great Blogs on the lock-out. Thanks for sharing….
(in responses, below)
Andy : Great blog, great concert, incredible orchestra. We were as caught up in that as any rally we’ve ever attended. The stunning performances of the Dvorak and Shostakovich had to have been better for the support given those great musicians.
Good to see you there last night, Dick. Keep on keepin’ on.
Nancy: Although musicians honor the composers and performance traditions, and are sustaining an art form into the future, the most important relationship an orchestra has is with its audience. They’re why we do it!

#634 – Dick Bernard: Supporting the Locked-out Minnesota Orchestra Musicians Union

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Tonight we go to a special concert given by the locked out Minnesota Orchestra. The details of the concert are here.
You likely still have an opportunity to attend this concert.
At the very least, become aware of the issues in this most important attempt to break the back of a proud union of outstanding musicians.
Last week I submitted the below op ed to the Minneapolis Star Tribune which was declined for publication.
Stand with the Orchestra, and with union workers everywhere.
To the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
I’ll be keeping the Oct. 11 column by Jon Campbell and Richard E. Davis about the financial woes of the Orchestra (Orchestra Makes a Stand). Later they made sure we Minnesota Orchestra subscribers had a chance to see the column, through an e-mail.
We’re small fry within the MnOrch family, but regulars. This year as most always a six-concert series and perhaps an occasional additional performance. We’re the half-dollar customer versus the $1000 contributor (translation: $500 a year versus a $1,000,000 benefactor.)
Some years ago a docent who’s a friend happened to notice my ticket, and remarked we must’ve been orchestra fans for a long time – we had a relatively low subscriber number. The revelation surprised me.
But we’ve sat in row four behind the podium at Orchestra Hall for a long time. We were in the hall when guest conductor Itzhak Perlman took his scary (but still graceful) tumble off the platform; when Eije Oue led the Orchestra in the Star Spangled Banner in September 2001.
We saw the memorial rose on the vacant chair of the violinist who had died of cancer….
And now we see this failed negotiations where the Big People with the Purse are saying “enough is enough”.
Good fiddlers are a dime a dozen, after all.
I spent an entire career in and around negotiations as part of a union, so I have a strong sense of what goes on when there’s a labor conflict.
Both sides own their version of truth, and as Campbell and Davis are doing, management holds the financial hammer and thus, they will presume, control.
It is not quite so easy.
I find myself not terribly interested in exchanging my season tickets for other kinds of programs – we’ve got the e-mail and the phone call.
$500 is serious money to us, but I’m willing to take the hit in support of the musicians union.
At minimum that $500 for tickets translated into another $500 from us for Minneapolis business: eating, parking and the like. Every dollar counts.
For the Orchestra itself, the problem with we small fry is much longer term.
I’ve had season tickets for quite a number of years. Once you lose loyalty of customers like me, it is not easy to rebuild it.
And it is we little people who will sustain this operation in the long term, not the big benefactors who are carefully watching the return on investment in the Orchestra endowment.
For obvious reasons, my heart is with the musicians union.
I know there are two sides to every story, and Mr. Campbell and Mr. Davis articulate only their own very biased side.
Find a way to settle.
Now.

I sent this opinion on to the LoMoMo and received this response from a locked out Orchestra member serving a PR function for the Union. Speaking in support has real meaning. Consider sending your own letter of support, today.
Dick,
You will get a another thank you from someone who is better at words than I…..but I wanted to let you know right away how wonderful your oped made me feel. I will send it to the entire Orchestra (we compile letters each week). You have been through so much with us…..thank you for your support. We are deeply grateful.
Ellen
on behalf of
The PR Committee
Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra
contact@minnesotaorchestramusicians.org

#616 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #41. Labors Last Day?

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UPDATE Tues Sep 4: This long post, Just Above Sunset, entitled “Another Labored Day”, pretty well describes the tension existing on this Labor Day, Sep 3, 2012.
click on photos to enlarge them

An annual tradition at the Minnesota State Fair: the free photo calendar at the Education Minnesota booth.


Last Friday I was at a very stimulating conversation about the future of my teacher’s union: the one for whom I worked full-time for 27 years, representing public school teachers.
One of the group, a retired teacher from a metropolitan area suburb who still substitutes regularly in his old school district told of a conversation he had with a young teacher who thought unions and work rules like contracts were no longer relevant. The youngster had better use of his money than to pay union dues. Unions only got in the way.
His wise colleague, who had had a great part in making a decent contract and working conditions for the young teacher, thought a bit and responded.
“Everything looks great for you now”, he said. “Try to think out 20 years, when your career is well along, and one year things aren’t going quite so well. There’s no union any more, and no rights such as you now have under law and contract. Your Principal calls you in and says ‘ sorry, we don’t need you any more. We have somebody who’ll cost less and is fresher than you are’. And there you are, fired at a most vulnerable time in your own life. What will you think then?”
Our conversation continued.
There was no closure on how the young teacher responded. There didn’t have to be. It is a common scenario.
The siren song of “I/Me/Now” easily trumps “We/Long Term” today. I see this shortsighted individualism in many quarters, in many ways.
The campaign to demonize unions has been successful. It’s been going on for years. Newt Gingrich memorialized it in his 100 words GOPAC literature in 1996, but destruction by use of code words preceded him, and is very much alive and well today.
(Newt’s list actually lists 128 labeling words, 64 that are good words, 64 that are evil. One of the evil words is “unionized”.)
The same week of the conversation came a Republican Party mailer inveighing against the local Democratic candidate and made four false and demonizing assertions, two of which were as follows:
“SCHOOLS THAT SERVE TEACHER UNIONS FIRST – KIDS LAST
Putting teacher unions before kids by blocking common sense solutions to improve our children’s education.”
“FORCED UNIONIZATION
Mandating that workers and small businesses, even in-home child care providers, become union members and pay costly union dues.”
Labeling.
Saturday, I walked by a booth at the State Fair which claims to put children first, but whose main objective is destruction of any union rights. At the end of this month this bunch says it is going to roll out a well financed movie presumably advancing its claims.
I haven’t lost hope. I care a great deal especially since we have many grand kids in Minnesota public schools.
But it is the youthful employees who think they don’t need a union who’ll have to rethink their self-righteous arrogance. Failure to do so will have big consequences for them.
They are the one who’ll wonder, in 20 years, why they were fired, and why they had no recourse.
And nobody – not teachers, not administrators, not students, not parents, not taxpayers, not business – will benefit by the destruction of labor unions.

A conversation about the future, August 31, 2012

#611 – Dick Bernard: A couple of Union Reunions

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Friday evening, enroute home from a trip to my home state of North Dakota, I stopped at a freeway restaurant for a cup of coffee with a retired teacher friend from Anoka-Hennepin Education Association days.
Kathy gave me the below photo, and asked if I would scan it for her. It wasn’t labeled (a usual malady for photos – hint!) but we basically came to consensus that it was probably taken at the 1989 NEA Convention (New Orleans) in an expression of solidarity for the students who had occupied Tienanmen Square in Beijing in 1989.
(click on photos to enlarge)

AHEA Delegates to NEA Convention, probably 1989 in New Orleans


It was common for these kinds of actions at union gatherings. Most of we union members and staff had a keen and sincere sense of justice. Indeed, that is why I became active as a union leader in the late 1960s, then staff member of the Minnesota teachers union (MEA/Education Minnesota) for the rest of my career.
Sunday night came another event: a retirement celebration for Lee J., a union staff colleague for many years, who said he’d been in the profession either as teacher or staff for 40 years.
It was a great celebration, with a great number of family, current and retired colleagues and friends.
Lee likely went home pleased and proud last night.
I’ve never been much of a ‘dress for success’ kind of guy, but last night I decided I needed to choose an accessory for my evening ‘ensemble’. It is below:

I don’t recall where I got the button, but occasionally it adorns me like a piece of jewelry. It is something to be proud of. (People who know me would chuckle at the ‘thug’* part. No matter. I care about Unions.)
There were the usual memories last night, spoken and unspoken. We were regaled with the never-ending “grapefruit tree” grievance which, at one point, snared me for a time though I was nowhere near the teachers district.
After the event, I recalled to Lee the time, I’m guessing it was 1984 or 1985, when he was still a teacher and local leader, that he and his family borrowed my meager apartment in Hibbing for free accommodations for a summer vacation. My place was nothing fancy, that’s for sure, but for Lee and Becky and their two young kids it worked just fine.
Today is not the best of times for Unions generally, public employee unions in particular.
It seems that working for economic and social justice is viewed as a threat.
Newt Gingrich’s infamous 100 words from 1996 includes among the 64 repulsive words, “Taxes” and “Unionized”.
(Actually, Newt’s list emphasizes 64 “optimistic and positive governing words”, and 64 “contrasting words”. He didn’t invent the language, but to this day if one looks carefully at this list of words, one can identify the theme of most every campaign for or against…. These days, these words are called ‘dog whistle’ words – you are either supposed to have reverence for, or be repulsed by certain words. Much like a Pavlov’s dog reaction. It is not healthy for us as a society.)
Those who buy the nonsense of Newt’s words, especially from within the dwindling middle class, will rue the day they chose to buy the propaganda that certain words represented good, and others, evil.
It’s been 40 years since I started my union staff career, and a dozen since that career ended with my own retirement.
To Kathy and Lee and to all who have toiled in the often thankless task of seeking justice for working people, thank you.
And to the younger folks who need to take on the duties going forward, be mindful of the fact that what you now take for granted came at great cost in time and energy by people just like yourselves, too busy, but committed to justice.
What was gained, can be lost.
* – I can’t say that I know a true “union thug”. Doubtless they exist somewhere, but they’re rare. Closest call I had was once talking to a management representative who negotiated with Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters on occasion. He said Hoffa was a really decent guy, but he knew what he needed for his members, and that was that.

#593 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #30. The Politics of Resentment

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Over a year ago, in mid-April 2011, a coffee acquaintance, a generation ‘south’ of me in age, asked me a question.
As a second job, he’s long been a local volunteer fireman. One of his duties was to handle his units retirement investment fund. Apparently their fund was not doing well – they were getting virtually no return on investment.
He knew I’d been involved in education and teacher unions, and at the time there was rage against teacher unions and teacher pensions, especially across the border in Wisconsin. The essence of his obvious questions were framed in a manner you can detect in an instant: “who do they think they are?”; “how can they have such good pensions when mine is so bad?”
I’m not sure what he expected me to do: to grovel and beg forgiveness? For starters, I knew little or nothing about Wisconsin teacher pension history, policy or law. I’d never lived or worked there.
But he didn’t know two things about me: first, that I not only grew up in the family of two career school teachers, and had all of their one year contracts, and know the general how’s and why’s of teacher pensions, including their history; second, that I had just been at a national conference of retired teachers where, understandably, a major topic of discussion was the status of teacher pensions nationwide.
But in such situations as our conversation, there is no room for argument.
I did tell him I had a document at home that might be useful for him, and indeed I had such a document which I had picked up at the conference. It is here: Pensions 2011001. It speaks clearly for itself.
A few days later, I gave his Dad an envelope with the document, and that is the last I heard from the man about the topic, though I continue to see him from time to time.
My document, plus a note to him about the reality about how teacher pensions came to be and are funded, apparently did not fit his particular bias, which was that teachers were abusing the system with plush pensions provided, of course, by gullible taxpayers.
He (and doubtless many others) were stuck in first gear on the issue: teachers had something they didn’t, or at least didn’t have quite as abundantly, and somehow that was wrong.
What he was articulating, in my opinion, was ginned up resentment of others in his economic class who were doing better than he, and even worse, that these were public employees who were also union members (as if volunteer firemen were not public employees or organized – as his group certainly was).
Over and over again I have seen this dynamic in play as the rich and powerful fashion sound bites and literature pieces to prove that somebody, such as those teachers, are ripping off the system.
It isn’t true, of course, but that doesn’t matter. Neither does it matter that those employees in Wisconsin had likely deliberately, and over a long term, bargained away part of their short-term wages and benefits in favor of the longer term retirement benefits – really a prudent conservative trait (and I know teachers as basically being conservative). All that mattered is that they were a bit too uppity for “Public Servants”, and must get back in their proper subservient place as, literally, “public servants”.
Oddly, similar resentment does not seem to flow from middle and lower class to the aristocrat class. Somehow or other, there is admiration for wealthy, however that gain has been made.
It is really quite crazy making.
The poor and the middle class are in very large numbers defending the rich who, by and large, could care less about their less affluent brethren….
The plutocrats and oligarchs are badly outnumbered, and know it.
Their solution: endless media buys and incessant lies stoking resentment – person against person – over the coming months. In other words: “divide and conquer”.
The lesser folks – some call them the 99% – had best figure out some way to stick together and take the offensive, or the situation will only get worse, and all 100% of us will be adversely affected.
For other political related posts, simply enter Election 2012 in the search box, and a list will appear.

#549 – Dick Bernard: Part Two. The slow but certain suicide of Capitalism

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I’m not an enemy of Capitalism. From my earliest years some deference was paid to the person who lived in the biggest house in town; who occupied a position of status or rank; the most “successful” relative…. Right or wrong, they were thought to be deserving of being a bit better off.
Today, Capitalism funds my retirement pension (unless its most ruthless advocates achieve a goal of destroying my Union which provides the funding to assure my private pension solvency.)
I also have no apprehensions about Socialism. Indeed, without very strong elements of Socialism in the American economy, Capitalism would die, and Capitalism knows it, but doesn’t have the common sense to know when to quit bludgeoning the middle class and government, which are largely creatures of Socialist largesse – public schools, health and the like.
Examples to debate are endless. The Bible quote in last Sunday’s Passion (see it here) was a most interesting one, cutting the apparent Capitalist of the day considerable slack in how she spent her money.
Oh, if it were so simple.
If I were to pick an exemplar of unfettered Capitalism it would be desperately impoverished Haiti, once the jewel of the French Empire. You can find many examples of extreme wealth there; elite families benefit by friendly laws and have destroyed competition. As one gets richer and richer and richer, defeating a potential competitor is easy.
Poor as it is, I’ve heard post-earthquake Haiti described as a “goldmine”. So, somebody has a monopoly on cement; someone else on school uniforms, etc., etc., etc. And the wealthy in Haiti can enjoy their lifestyle wherever in the world they wish, while the overwhelming vast majority of the people subsist. It is a society of, by and for Capitalism; and in the last 100-200 years it is largely of the American variety. Its cruel circumstances were imported from France and the U.S., largely.

In our own U.S., the Capitalist impulse towards self-destruction is harder to see than in Haiti, but nonetheless it is apparent. We are killing ourselves.
The accelerating imbalance in wealth in America (and elsewhere) is apparent to anyone who cares to look. Last Sunday, 60 Minutes had a segment on burgeoning art markets for the super wealthy.
The wealthy have far more than enough. But, it seems, the more they have the more they want.
A friend of mine, a retired corporate manager and no friend of government or taxes, described this dynamic a few days ago, without intending to do so.
He and his wife spend February and March at one of those Florida Gulf Coast condominium complexes, and they had just returned home.
We were chatting, and the topic got around to where they stay each year.
They rent: $5,000 a month. Two bedroom, 9th floor, Gulf side.
We chatted: The owners of their condo have three or four homes. The 19 floors of their condo has over 100 units; only 6 are year round residents. The condo they rent cost $1.3 million when purchased a few years ago, and probably on a good day would now sell for $600,000. Monthly Association fees are $891, and my friend guessed that the place is rented perhaps four months a year. Most of the year it is empty. There are additional costs for upkeep. There are numerous other similar buildings in this community….
One can gather how a conversation about government, taxes, liberals, unions, etc., would go at dinner in one of the restaurants in this wealthy ghetto. Likely the owners pick as their legal residence the state which has the lowest taxes, and extract every entitlement that they can.
Yes, we have always had the better off, and mostly they were accepted and respected.
But like the semblance of balance necessary to keep a tub of clothes on spin cycle from ruining the wash machine, the obsession with more and more wealth – escalating inequity – is ruining everyone, including the very wealthy.
The wealthy are already a victim of their own greed – imprisoned by their own wealth – but its all they know. The rest of us will just tag along as their (and by extension, our) self-destruct mission continues…unless we decide to do something about it in our still free elections.
Happy Easter.
(Part one is here.)
UPDATE April 4:
John Borgen: Yes, we are a country of the corporations by the corporations for the corporations. Making profit is our holy grail. So many believe they will strike it rich, win the lottery, inherit the big bucks. Consumerism is our religion. Our citizens are drunk on TV, sports, video games, alcohol, drugs, sugar, gossip, blame, selfishness, American elitism.
Ah, the rugged individual! The entrepreneur who cashes in. Only in America!
I heard on the radio,according to the Gallop organization, the top three happiest countries are Denmark, Norway and Finland. The USA
is # 11.

#512 – Dick Bernard and Jack Burgess: "…There ain't no power like the power of the people, say WHAT?…."

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Is there change in the air?
Sometimes you just have to take the time to look…and then you need to double down, and go back to work, hard, hard work. Yes, I said “go to work”. Human nature seems to minimize accomplishments, and denies how much work is necessary to make changes, and to sustain changes once made.
But it is interesting to watch what is happening.
At the end of this post is a column written by a retired teacher leader in Ohio LAST YEAR. It is instructive for today.
More currently:
1) The Komen Foundation badly miscalculated the little people who make it a success, and even with ‘spin’ will have trouble recovering. It has tarnished its ‘brand’. There are tens of thousands of words out about it. Suffice to say, Komen blew it.
2) Employment numbers are up, and they’re distressing to the critics of Obama who wish to exploit hard times. No, they’re not up enough, but they are up. Yes, there are plenty of additional problem, like wages, and attacks on organized employees, but the numbers are up. Personally, I think they reflect some recognition by the business sector that people need money to buy the stuff that generates business profits, and the biggest market is right here in the USA. Cynically, I might say that much as they would have liked to, they couldn’t hold the recovery hostage until Obama was thrown out in November….
3) Over a million people in Wisconsin signed a recall petition against Gov. Scott Walker, and these were actual paper petitions, collected by real people – not clicking a box on an internet link. Recalls are tough, tough, tough sells, and there’s a lot of work ahead. But the volley across the bow was damned strong.
4) And in Ohio, what the year ago column talks about, a year made quite a difference, and the Republican Governor and legislators found out that they couldn’t run roughshod over the people affected.
There are other many other ‘snips’ I could write about, like the few billionaires organizing their zillions of $$$’s to rule us all, permanently, and I could write a whole lot more about what those “power of the people” folks – people like me – have to do, but that can wait. Watch this space for more on Minnesota Precinct Caucus day Tuesday, February 7.
And attend and participate in your caucus.
And “Here’s a piece that appeared in the Chillicothe [OH] Gazette, back when we were demonstrating at the Statehouse against SB 5, which would have taken away much of what Bob, I, and thousands of others worked so hard for, way back when.”
Jack
Labor Peace or Labor “War”?
A column by Jack Burgess
3/8/11
Overlooked in the furor over Governor Kasich’s efforts to take away rights and benefits from Ohio’s public employees is the question of what life would really be like if he is successful. Apparently, he and his supporters hope that teachers and other public employees will just “get over it,” and learn to live with less salary and benefits, as well as less input into educational policy. Reality check time. Government offices and schools across the state will be staffed with unhappy people with no official channels for their complaints or suggestions. The probability is that Ohio will endure what used to be called, in the days before collective bargaining was legalized, “labor unrest.”
Pardon this old history teacher for pointing out that, as William Faulkner said, “The past is not dead. It isn’t even past.” While we need history books to remind us of the robber baron era when workers were shot for going on strike, there are plenty of folks around today who can remember what it was like before public employees had rights. They can recall when married women weren’t allowed to teach. Later, women teachers, married or not, had to resign if they became “with child.” As recently as 1967—before a moderate Republican Ohio government changed it—elementary teachers, who were almost all women, were paid less than secondary teachers, who were more often men. Almost all administrators were men. Women were allowed to be elementary principals, but rarely high school leaders or superintendents. Teachers’ unions have successfully advocated for the rights of women and girls in education. If bargaining were abolished, would national civil rights laws keep the reactionary Republicans who now run Ohio government from discriminating again?
Of course, men who taught before collective bargaining and the right to file a grievance, can remember when a male teacher could be told his sideburns were too long, and sent home in embarrassment to shave. How would administrators, pressured to get test scores up, and equipped with power that couldn’t be challenged by unions, treat their staffs? In one school in the “good old days” before unions, teachers, who were regularly berated over the P.A., system hung a sign on the teachers’ lunch room that said, “Incapable Fools Club.” At a faculty meeting, when a teacher disagreed, she might be told, “Shut up and sit down!” These attitudes, so common when school boards and school administrators had unlimited power over teachers, not only kept a lot of self respecting people out of teaching, they sometimes led to abuses of children. Maybe most important, they deprived schools, and the children for which they exist, of teacher input into educational decision making.
After all, teachers are the real educational experts. It’s the teacher who works with the children, day in and day out, while many administrators get further removed every day from the realities of the classroom. It was the teachers’ union, in Columbus for instance, that negotiated the creation of the alternative schools, as well as the requirement for libraries in every school, and lower class sizes at the lowest grade levels, so that children could get enough teacher time to get off to a good start with reading, math, and the other basic subjects. Unions in Columbus and elsewhere also fought racial segregation, and while Columbus may have been a bit unique, teachers everywhere always push—through their unions—for what children need.
And here’s a point that has yet to be discussed in the media. What will happen to the unions if they can’t officially represent their members? They’ll probably do what they did in the past—continue to represent their members as best they can, unofficially. OEA, AFSCME, SEIU, and the other unions will still have their staffs, their offices, and most of their members, now sad and angry. They will not just fold up and go away. Thankfully, the Governor can’t nullify the U.S. Constitution, which will still give public employees the rights of free speech, public assembly, and the right to petition the government for “redress of grievances.” If teachers can’t file official grievances over any of the thousand problems they face, they’ll probably find other channels. What if all the teachers in a school district—several hundred or several thousand—go to the school board meetings to present their views? Or present them around the buildings, on the public sidewalks? They can’t be fired or fined if they’re on their own time, on public property. And if dozens call in “sick,” how would management know who was and who wasn’t? How could they all be fired and replaced? There’s a shortage of science teachers and some of other subjects, now. Firing good teachers would, thus, punish the kids and the community.
Before legal collective bargaining, when teachers and other public employees demonstrated for things they and their students needed, school boards found the demonstrations—and the logic of the unions–most uncomfortable. Ultimately, school boards around Ohio, and in much of the nation, found it made good sense to negotiate or bargain with their teachers, so informal bargaining was born. But the process was messy, not regulated, and subject to mistakes and abuse by all parties. That’s why the collective bargaining bill was passed in 1983. And it worked, reducing the number of strikes and other problems.
Now, if Governor Kasich and his supporters win this fight over public employee bargaining, it looks like we’ll go back to those days when creative union leaders and courageous public employees risked fines and jail time to be heard. But they won’t go away. The choice is not between unions and no unions, but between labor peace, as we’ve mostly had since 1983, and labor unrest. We’ve seen what that unrest looks like around Ohio’s Statehouse in recent weeks.
And this is aside from the blow that will hit Ohio’s economy when 350,000 lower and middle income people have less money to spend in their communities.
Jack Burgess is a retired Chillicothe teacher and former Executive Director of the Columbus Education Assn., as well as Chief of Arbitration Services in Ohio’s Office of Collective Bargaining.