Political Action: Rebelling against second-class status
Rebelling against second-class status
When Lou Cammarosano started teaching in 1956, members of the profession barely met second-class citizen status. "Forget having any preparation time. Teachers did not have time off for lunch. Principals could call a meeting at any time in the morning or evening and, to keep your job, you had to go," said Cammarosano, who taught for 40 years in the Harrison district in Westchester County. "We were to be seen and not heard."
A different city, 11 years later, and Alan Lubin found the same working conditions.
"The way the city system treated teachers was inhumane," said Lubin, who began teaching in New York City in 1967.
Both teachers discovered that political action through their union could improve working conditions - but political action was a relatively new concept in the teaching profession.
What VOTE-COPE means
The formal history of New York State United Teachers may have begun with a vote to merge in 1972, but its history dates back to predecessor unions. One early teacher union, the New York State Teachers Association, decided it needed a non-partisan political arm. It established Voice of Teachers for Education, or NYSTA*VOTE. Meanwhile, the other large statewide union, United Teachers of New York, set up its own non-partisan political arm: the Committee on Political Education. Both political arms were funded by voluntary contributions - not dues - and both supported voter registration drives and pro-education candidates in local and state elections.
Breaking ranks
Although Cammarosano and Lubin joined different unions, they found the same resistance to political action among rank-and-file members.
"It was considered unprofessional to be political," said Cammarosano, who was branded a militant in NYSTA for forming a group to evaluate legislation.
"People were easily intimidated because everything was against them," said Lubin, a member of UTNY, which won improved conditions in schools for children and staff through its strikes.
But Lubin did not believe strikes were a realistic tool for long-term, significant change. He believed "the only way to get real change was through political action. We had to change the laws."
That belief was shared by teachers upstate, including a young Buffalo teacher who was not in favor of unionism in 1959 when he was hired for a night school program.
Just as vividly, Tom Hobart remembers when he turned to the union.
"I was on the salary committee and we made a presentation to the school board with flip charts showing why we needed a $100 raise.
"The board president got up and he said, 'These teachers are wonderful. I don't think $100 is enough. They deserve a $1,000 raise.' Well, I was happy to hear that but then the president said, 'Only we can't afford it. So as an alternative, I would ask all the members of the Board of Education stand and give them a hand.' And the members did, and we didn't get a raise, and I became converted on the spot."
Cammarosano, Lubin and Hobart were in an admitted minority of teachers who saw the need to become politically involved in the 1960s. But the ranks of the politically active would swell as teachers saw their professional lives buffeted by factors outside their control.
The first Jerabek bill
In 1970, New York's state Legislature overwhelmingly approved a bill to freeze district budgets and teaching salaries in those districts defeating school budgets for the second time.
A young social studies teacher on Long Island was stunned by the news. "I couldn't believe it," said Lynn Costello, who had just joined the East Islip TA and NYSTA. "So even if you had a contract, if the community did not approve a budget you wouldn't get a raise, and we barely made $6,000 a year back then anyway."
Although then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller vetoed the bill because it negated teachers' rights under the Taylor Law, the lawmakers' actions solidified Costello's belief that educators needed a political voice.
That meant money. Twenty-seven years ago, as now, union leaders decided voluntary contributions for political action were more appropriate than using dues money for state and local campaigns.
"As unionists, we already knew the power of unified, collective bargaining," Costello said. "Now we just needed to learn to bring that same power to political action."
"Giving money to political action was an absolutely necessary counter-measure to efforts against us," said Lubin. "Our opponents wanted employees to have few, if any, rights; to have little, if any, pension; to have no say in how many children are in a classroom and what they are taught."
An explosion of wrath
Teachers turned to their respective political action campaigns in record numbers in 1971 when Conservative-Republican Assemblyman Charles Jerabek of Long Island tied a package of anti-education legislation to passing the state budget.
Unions would have been barred from standing up for quality issues, such as speaking out on curriculum or class size. Contracts would have been restricted to salaries and hours. Sabbatical leaves for teachers would be prohibited. The proposal would have mandated drug urinalysis testing, extended teachers' probation from three to five years and mandated classroom hours for State University faculty.
The anti-education package "sparked the greatest explosion of teacher wrath ever witnessed in this state," wrote the NYSTA News Trends.
Members from NYSTA and UTNY raised more than $600,000 to battle the bills. Among those leading the way in the early 1970s were East Islip, West Islip, East Quogue and Port Jefferson locals on Long Island; several Westchester and Rockland county locals; and the United Federation of Teachers in New York City.
David Pearl was teaching in the Port Jefferson schools. He gave, and encouraged others to give, for a basic reason: "Those proposals were attacking the existence of my livelihood," said Pearl. "That's a very powerful incentive."
NYSTA and UTNY pooled their political power. They formed an Emergency Coalition of Teacher Organizations, called legislators, sent telegrams, and hundreds of members lobbied lawmakers in their offices in May 1971. The effort had an impact, and several bills were defeated. Some made it into law: Teacher probation was extended to five years, school districts were prohibited from granting sabbatical leaves to teachers, and a minimum salary law was abolished.
Educators were beginning to flex their political muscle. They kept up the pressure, calling, writing and meeting with legislators, so that the extended probation law was repealed in the next legislative session.