The recent strike by unionized public school teachers in the Sheridan School District finally ended after 28 days, Colorado’s longest teacher strike in 45 years. Private-sector unionized employees have a legal right to strike, but government employees face more restrictions.
Members of our armed forces are forbidden to unionize, collectively bargain, or strike for obvious national security reasons. In 1981, President Reagan declared a strike of unionized air traffic controllers illegal, gave them 48 hours to return to work, fired 11,000 who didn’t, and decertified the union. In 1937, President Roosevelt informed the president of the National Federation of Federal Employees that strikes by government workers are unacceptable because their employer is “the whole people” and “a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent to prevent or obstruct the operations of government until their demands are met.”
The Sheridan teachers did have a legal right to strike, but not a morally justifiable one, seriously disrupting the lives of innocent schoolchildren and their parents, holding them hostage to the union’s demands. When a grocery union strikes, customers can do business elsewhere. However, teachers are government employees within a school district that has a monopoly on publicly funded education. And unlike private sector employers, Colorado school boards can refuse to allow a union. In 2012, a new Republican majority on the Douglas County School Board decertified its teachers’ union when the collective bargaining agreement expired. (A new Democrat majority on the DougCo school board will likely welcome the union back with open arms.)
That’s too bad. The general quality of public education in the U.S., frankly, stinks. The proficiency of K-12 students in reading, writing, math, and basic academics is at disgracefully low levels. Instruction in history and social studies is overwhelmed by leftist indoctrination. Grade inflation deceives parents into imagining their underperforming kids are doing fine. The biggest obstacles to education reform are the National Education Association, the nation’s largest and most powerful labor union, and its lesser cousin, the American Federation of Teachers, both joined at the hip with the Democrat party. The unions shower Democrats with campaign contributions and deliver their members’ votes to elect school boards and Democratic politicians at every level of government, all of whom return the favor by doing the unions’ bidding. This politically corrupt partnership assures us “it’s all for the kids.” Sure, it is…