Teacher Strike! Public Education and the Making of a New American Political Order by Jon Shelton

Abstract

While many have blamed racial tension in the 1960s for the decline of liberalism, in his book Teacher Strike!, Jon Shelton argues that strikes led by teacher unions in the 1960s through the 1980s helped dismantle the liberal coalition between labor and the Democratic Party constructed during the New Deal era. This coalition helped form a social contract that led to a number of programs that allowed many workers to catapult into the middle class. Programs such as the National Labor Relations Act, the Wagner Act, the G. I. Bill, and Medicare provided “greater access to economic opportunity, more workplace democracy through unions and a social safety net when the job market failed to provide a minimum level of economic security” (3). The Keynesian economic approach championed by the labor-liberal coalition maintained that the state had an obligation to play a role in the lives of citizens. Public sector workers, including teachers, benefited from this alliance, which gave them the right to unionize and collectively bargain.But during the economic crisis of the 1970s, federal, state, and local governments abandoned their obligation to uphold the social contract with workers and instead adopted austerity measures that led to large cuts in social services and massive layoffs of city workers, including teachers. In response to layoffs and demands for greater productivity without pay raises, teachers fought back by using the strike as a weapon. Teacher strikes during periods where liberalism faced challenges only weakened the alliance of Democrats, civil rights, and labor.Proponents of neoliberal policies were successful in portraying teachers as overpaid employees who placed their self-interest above the needs of taxpayers. As the neoliberal agenda of shrinking government and privatizing social services took hold, race and gender were important in the discrediting of teachers. Shelton argues that public school teachers were considered unproductive members of the working class along with welfare recipients and others who relied on taxpayers for their livelihood. He notes that gender was also a crucial factor in the campaign to diminish the role of teachers. Because the majority of teachers were women, many contended that they were violating their role as caretakers by prioritizing their career over the public good.Shelton does not address the political direction teachers unions in New York, Chicago, Newark, and other cities took that hindered them from building alliances with parents and communities. Many of the demands of teachers for higher salaries, due process, improving the grievance procedure, and greater health benefits did not address debilitated school buildings, children receiving less than a full day of instruction, students being assigned the least experienced teachers in racially segregated schools, and other concerns raised by black and brown people in these urban centers. The author does cover the battle between proponents of Black Power who called for community control of schools and teachers who attempted to uphold due process. However, long before the confrontation between teacher unions and community control activists, black and brown communities had developed an adversarial relationship with teachers.Teacher Strike! is a major contribution to the growing literature on teacher unionism. The author’s examination provides the reader with a clearer picture of why strikes in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Detroit, and other major urban centers during a period of deindustrialization helped fuel the political backlash and led to reversing the gains made by the labor-liberal alliance. The author convincingly argues that the attack on teachers unions has been part of a larger scheme to discipline labor and assure that the neoliberal pursuit of privatizing services that were provided by government will not be curtailed.