On Nov. 27, current and former members of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers gathered with labor and community leaders to commemorate what their trailblazing brothers and sisters accomplished in 1946 – and to show their solidarity with teachers pursuing similar struggles today.
“To be the first teachers on strike in the nation took a great deal of courage,” said Mary Cathryn Ricker, president of the St. Paul teachers union, in a speech during the celebration.
Gaining a 99 percent strike-authorization vote from members of Locals 28 and 43, Ricker added, took a great deal of organizing, while enduring 30 unpaid days of picketing and negotiating took a great number of friends.
Members of the School Engineers and Janitors Union Local 697 refused to cross teachers’ picket lines. The St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly passed a resolution in support of the teachers, who were not affiliated with the Assembly at the time.
Although 60 years has passed, many of the friendships established during the strike of 1946 remained evident at the anniversary celebration.
“The St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly extended a hand that has never been withdrawn,” Ricker said, pointing to the 1946 strike as a watershed event that put the St. Paul teachers squarely “at home in the labor movement.”
In the end, after walking the picket line from Thanksgiving to Christmas, the teachers gained sizable pay increases from the City Council, which at that time controlled the purse strings of St. Paul’s public schools.
But the strike was about more than salaries. Rather, the strikers boldly solidified the connection between their best interests and the best interests of their students, prodding the Council to more equitably distribute education resources and to renew its investment in the city’s education facilities.
It was, as the strikers dubbed it, a “Strike for Better Schools,” and its lessons, Ricker said, remain vitally important to teachers’ unions today.
“Our working conditions are directly tied to the commitment and concern our community puts into its students,” she said, crediting the strikers with demonstrating that “the success of our profession is tied directly to the health of students who come through our schools’ doors.”
That puts teachers firmly behind efforts to increase children’s access to health care, nutritious food and preschool programs. It means teachers have an interest in seeing their students’ parents and guardians earn living wages and gain access to quality, affordable housing.
Teachers, Ricker said, should “focus our professional organizing efforts on opening opportunities for all of our children and their families.”
Such concern for children, families and schools is, in part, what prompted Local 22 of the Mexican Teachers Union, based in the state of Oaxaca, to strike. Their walkout has inspired passionate support from groups ranging from indigenous peoples to democratic reformers, but it also has met bitter and at times violent resistance from the ruling party.
Ricker made a point of expressing her local’s solidarity with Oaxacan teachers Nov. 27.
“Our colleagues in Oaxaca are being attacked, threatened and blacklisted,” she said. “We owe it to ourselves and to (the strikers of 1946) to stand up for them as we would stand up for ourselves.”
Michael Moore edits the St. Paul Union Advocate, the official newspaper of the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly. Used by permission. E-mail The Advocate at: advocate@stpaulunions.
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On Nov. 27, current and former members of the St. Paul Federation of Teachers gathered with labor and community leaders to commemorate what their trailblazing brothers and sisters accomplished in 1946 – and to show their solidarity with teachers pursuing similar struggles today.
“To be the first teachers on strike in the nation took a great deal of courage,” said Mary Cathryn Ricker, president of the St. Paul teachers union, in a speech during the celebration.
Gaining a 99 percent strike-authorization vote from members of Locals 28 and 43, Ricker added, took a great deal of organizing, while enduring 30 unpaid days of picketing and negotiating took a great number of friends.
Members of the School Engineers and Janitors Union Local 697 refused to cross teachers’ picket lines. The St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly passed a resolution in support of the teachers, who were not affiliated with the Assembly at the time.
Although 60 years has passed, many of the friendships established during the strike of 1946 remained evident at the anniversary celebration.
“The St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly extended a hand that has never been withdrawn,” Ricker said, pointing to the 1946 strike as a watershed event that put the St. Paul teachers squarely “at home in the labor movement.”
In the end, after walking the picket line from Thanksgiving to Christmas, the teachers gained sizable pay increases from the City Council, which at that time controlled the purse strings of St. Paul’s public schools.
But the strike was about more than salaries. Rather, the strikers boldly solidified the connection between their best interests and the best interests of their students, prodding the Council to more equitably distribute education resources and to renew its investment in the city’s education facilities.
It was, as the strikers dubbed it, a “Strike for Better Schools,” and its lessons, Ricker said, remain vitally important to teachers’ unions today.
“Our working conditions are directly tied to the commitment and concern our community puts into its students,” she said, crediting the strikers with demonstrating that “the success of our profession is tied directly to the health of students who come through our schools’ doors.”
That puts teachers firmly behind efforts to increase children’s access to health care, nutritious food and preschool programs. It means teachers have an interest in seeing their students’ parents and guardians earn living wages and gain access to quality, affordable housing.
Teachers, Ricker said, should “focus our professional organizing efforts on opening opportunities for all of our children and their families.”
Such concern for children, families and schools is, in part, what prompted Local 22 of the Mexican Teachers Union, based in the state of Oaxaca, to strike. Their walkout has inspired passionate support from groups ranging from indigenous peoples to democratic reformers, but it also has met bitter and at times violent resistance from the ruling party.
Ricker made a point of expressing her local’s solidarity with Oaxacan teachers Nov. 27.
“Our colleagues in Oaxaca are being attacked, threatened and blacklisted,” she said. “We owe it to ourselves and to (the strikers of 1946) to stand up for them as we would stand up for ourselves.”
Michael Moore edits the St. Paul Union Advocate, the official newspaper of the St. Paul Trades and Labor Assembly. Used by permission. E-mail The Advocate at: advocate@stpaulunions.