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By Stanley Aronowitz
Appointed by the Republican Governor Tom Corbett, the School Reform Commission (SRC) unilaterally canceled the Philadelphia Public Education contract on Monday, October 6th. The agreement covers 15,000 teachers and other staff workers. And SRC announced that it intends to take over the union-controlled benefits program and impose 5%-13% employee contributions instead of its current fee-free features. The union was not notified of the Commission’s move in advance. Its president Jerry Jordan promised to fight and said the union would consider “job actions” if members were ready for them.
Since the financial depression of 2007-2008, public sector unions have been on a seven-year defensive. Many contracts have been negotiated with below-inflation rate salary increases, or none at all. Health and pension benefits almost inevitably require employee contributions, and many programs are diluted. In New York City, the United Federation of Teachers negotiated a nine-year agreement (four of them covering the past years of zero salary raises) that fails to match the actual inflation, although the benefits program remains unchanged.
Philadelphia education workers are not plagued by a Taylor Law prohibiting strikes or job actions, but the Pennsylvania bargaining environment is no less grim.
If the SRC is not effectively challenged, a precedent will have been successfully established. It would not, necessarily, entail contract cancellations, but state and city authorities are likely to demand even steeper cuts in workers’ conditions and further reductions in education budgets.
The beauty of the Philadelphia situation is that the union is no longer bound to no-strike provisions, since it has no contract. Job actions are on the table even if the almost two years of frustrating bargaining no longer is. If the workers have a chance of victory, it will need to mobilize all education workers, but also the rest of the city’s labor movement. And, since the political establishment’s draconian abrogation of the contract is so blatant, their fight is our fight.
We recall that, in 2011, right-wing Wisconsin and Indiana governors defeated public employees by abolishing collective bargaining. In Madison, Wisconsin’s capital city, 100,000 union members and their allies responded by taking the streets and occupied the state capitol, only to be diverted to an ill-fated recall movement. So, what happened in Philadelphia is the latest indignity visited upon public employees by arrogant right-wing public officials.
Make no mistake: although New York is not Pennsylvania, if Organized Labor repeats the errors of the 1981 Air Traffic Controllers catastrophe and the equally severe defeat of TWU local 100’s three day 2005 strike, or fails to grasp the significance of Madison, we are all vulnerable to arbitrary corporate-dominated state anti-labor repression. While the center/right Democrats are not inclined to wield hammer blows, they are perfectly capable of subjecting workers and their unions to a slow death, even as they collect our campaign contributions.
Of course, we await the decisions of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. But it would be appropriate for our unions to express their solidarity now and prepare to join their brothers and sisters on the Philadelphia picket lines.
Stanley Aronowitz is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center.
