From: nyt%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (NY Transfer News)
Subject: Detroit teachers defy court, win strike /ww
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 19:41:39 GMT

 Detroit teachers defy court, win strike
 By Cheryl LaBash Detroit

Only three days after 10,500 Detroit teachers defied a court
order and refused to return to the classrooms without a contract,
a two-year settlement was reached and ratified. When the court
order was read Sept. 23 to a mass Detroit Teachers Federation
meeting in Cobo Center, the strikers stormed out and marched to
the School Center Building, the headquarters of Superintendent
Deborah McGriff and the school board.

Chanting, "Hell no, we won't go!" the teachers' picket line
filled the sidewalk all around the block.

Teachers won a 4 percent raise in the first year in return for an
hour per week devoted to school improvement, and 3 percent in the
second year to be funded by borrowing against uncollected
property taxes. Concessions in health care for new hires and
adult education teachers were given up, as well as limited
providers for some special services like x-rays.

Although the media, superintendent and school board used
frustration among some parents, students and religious leaders,
the teachers and other school workers are not to blame for
prolonging the strike. The teachers did not move industry out of
Detroit, eroding the tax base funding the schools. Nor are they
responsible for the racist and anti-working class system for
financing Michigan schools, which provides nearly twice as much
money per student in wealthy areas as in some urban and rural
districts.

The union offered to go back to into the classroom with binding
arbitration. But the superintendent rejected it and instead went
to court to try to force the teachers back to work. In the final
settlement, the school board pared down union proposals to
improve the schools for all children by reducing class size and
increasing the number of books in the schools.

Instead of aggressively battling to make the banks and
corporations foot the bill for the education of the next
generation of workers whose labor makes those institutions rich,
the school board is promoting an "empowerment" scheme that
transfers financial decision making to individual schools.
Although in some cases this plan can improve the deteriorating
conditions in a few schools, "empowerment" merely shifts the
responsibility for stretching extremely limited resources. An
equal and quality education will not be provided to all
neighborhoods under this plan.

The school board and superintendent intend to pay for the
contract increases for the teachers through cutbacks in other
areas, including not filling current teacher vacancies.

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted
if source is cited. For more info contact Workers World,46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; "workers@mcimail.com".)

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