Nerditorial: Let's Make It Official and Just Start Calling It Management Day...

Over at the Bellingham Herald I read a story about a teachers' strike in Ferndale. Here is a link.


There were over 350 comments already on a story that just broke yesterday, and I had the nerve to be surprised that the comments were strongly opposed to the teachers who were striking and in support of the superintendent and school board.

If you celebrated Labor Day as most Americans do (by getting a great deal on a mattress) and you are siding with the School Board or the Superindendent instead of the Teachers... then you suck. Out loud.

Yeah, that's right. You suck. We are talkin' an order of magnitude of suction capable of drawing a golfball through a garden hose. You suck like a Dyson vacuum cleaner at a gay pride parade.

Labor Day, for those with chronic selective historic amnesia, is a holiday which is taken to celebrate the right of people who work for wages to collectively bargain with their management and be treated like civilized human beings.

From Wikipedia's article on Labor Day...

It became a federal holiday in 1894, when, following the deaths of a number of workers at the hands of the U.S. military and U.S. Marshals during the Pullman Strike...

From Wikipedia's article on the Pullman Strike...

During the course of the strike, 13 strikers were killed and 57 were wounded.

Historically, when a labor union's membership went on strike, its members were placing more than just their paychecks at risk. They were also risking life and limb. Literally.

There are people who are old enough to bear witness to workers who went on strike and got beaten with ax handles by professional "union busters". There was a time in living memory when beating the crap out of striking union workers was considered a legitimate job.

Whatever violence has been inflicted on management and owners during even the ugliest strikes in labor history, I can find no evidence of any union ever ordering military troops or the national guard to engage members of management in hand to hand combat. Whenever there is archival footage of a fire hose being trained on someone at a picket line, the only thing you can be sure of is that the person geting hosed is not with management.

Today it's different. A person who joins a union or guild or what-have-you is only placing their job at risk when they make the fateful decision to go on strike.

Those of you who are siding with the Superintendent or the School Board need to remember a few things about this strike.

While the Teachers are picketing, they aren't getting paid. The Super and the School Board are getting paid the same no matter when this strike is resolved.

While the Teachers are picketing, they are at risk of losing their jobs. The Super and the School Board have job security through this entire strike. The Board has to lose an election to lose their jobs.

So, it is easy for the Super and the Board to refuse to budge in negotiations and make it look like they are standing on principle. They aren't risking anything. Except someone else's kids education.

The Teachers placed their paychecks, their mortgages, their car loans, and their ability to send their own kids to college on the crap table right along with the education of the kids in the Ferndale school district, when they went on strike.

The Super and the Board have ante'd up their pride and their philosophical beliefs. How noble of them.

In light of the job market, this strike was not entered into lightly.

I find few things more difficult to sympathize with than citizens who pay lip service to supporting teachers and then oppose teachers every time they collectively bargain. You can't love teachers and hate teachers unions. You can't hate the player, and love the game.

Teachers ain't in it for the money, folks.

We can't treat teachers like they are wildcat oil rig workers or coal miners or factory workers.

If we are going to instinctively side with management on a labor dispute just days after a national holiday to celebrate the rights of workers to collectively bargain, then lets just make it official and change the holiday to Management Day.

Or Mattress Sale day.

I'm with the teachers, and you should be too.

If you aren't with the teachers, you suck.

Hugs! (Mean it!)