Editor’s note: In These Times has covered the Friedrichs case since the beginning. For more pieces on the case and its potential impact, see this roundup. Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard extended arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. The case is ostensibly a First Amendment case about whether public employees who do not want to join a union can …
You may have heard something about the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case on Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. The main thing you need to know is that this is an attack on working people’s freedom to come together and form unions, plain and simple. These are the nurses who make sure their patients have what …
On June 19, during their biannual semester-end interviews, 17 teachers were informed by school staff that they would not be returning to Chicago’s Urban Prep Academy come fall. The terminations came just weeks after 61 percent of Urban Prep’s teachers voted to form a union; activists say the firings were a blatant act of anti-union …
Teachers Say 17 Firings at Urban Prep Charter Schools Were Retaliation for Unionization Read More »
On Tuesday, May 19, thousands of demonstrators marched through downtown Seattle to support a rolling strike by public school teachers across Washington state. The teachers are protesting what they say are unacceptably high class sizes and low pay, stemming from their state legislature’s failure to fully fund public education. Six thousand teachers and supporters from …
30,000 Teachers Walk Out in Protest of Big Class Sizes in Washington State Read More »
For seven years, the 31,000 members of United Teachers Los Angeles, the largest local on the West Coast, have gone without a salary increase. Their contract has beenexpired for nearly three of those. And the teachers, counselors and school nurses that make up the UTLA can still be sent to so-called “teacher jail”—housed in district offices until …
Los Angeles Teachers Demand a Change, Starting with Union Leadership Read More »
Earlier in the month, a Brooklyn school principal wrote a New York Times op-ed protesting the gag order that testing company Pearson has put on teachers and administrators to prevent them discussing the content of the company’s new Common Core tests. According to Elizabeth Phillips, the test does “a poor job of testing reading comprehension,” and: In general terms, …
Pearson, one of the country’s largest testing and curriculum companies, is paying $7.7 million to settle charges that it used its “charitable” foundation to get business for its for-profit arm: Around 2010, Pearson began financing an effort through its foundation to develop courses based on the Common Core. The attorney general’s report said Pearson had hoped to …
This Week in the War on Workers: Testing Company Used ‘Charitable’ Foundation to Profit Read More »
Despite educators’ best efforts, urban school systems are bleak places to work at and learn in these days, no matter the city or one’s position in the school. But Philadelphia offers a particularly grim view of the dismantling of public education in the austerity era. Few American city school systems have faced measures as devastating …
Dark Days for Philly Schools As Cuts Threaten to Decimate District Read More »
Last month, the success of the Chicago teachers’ strike forced the mainstream media to present a rare picture of public school teachers: as organized, defiant and victorious. But prior to the Chicago teachers winning a major deal, there was no shortage of dismissive, condescending and misleading coverage of teachers unions. Recently, that disdainful media gaze has turned southward. Various outlets–public radio, USA …
On Both Sides of the Border, Teachers Fight Corporatization Read More »
The campaign against teachers is special, and worth paying attention to. It’s not like workers in general get much respect in our culture, at least not beyond vague lip service that only ever applies to the individual, powerless worker not asking for anything. And janitors, hotel housekeepers, cashiers, and a host of others could fill …
Welcome to the culture war against teachers, coming to a theater near you Read More »
Madeline Messa is a 3L at Syracuse University College of Law. She graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism. With her legal research and writing for Workplace Fairness, she strives to equip people with the information they need to be their own best advocate.
