My father was an electrician, a member of the International Board of Electrical Workers. His union won decent wages and benefits for our family. When he retired, he had a defined benefits pension, and his union provided him Medicare supplement insurance, which he needed badly late in life. The union helped us move into the middle class.
However, when the press would report union agitation for better wages and working conditions, my mother would complain that unions were demanding too much. When I became a teacher, I remember the press would bemoan poor teacher pay and working conditions. When teachers unionized in large numbers and bargained good wage and benefit increases, the press then bemoaned the undo power of teachers’ unions. I wondered why my mother would bite the hand that fed us and why the press turned its back on teachers when they unionized.
I recall these things now because of the way the high school board of education and Wednesday Journal have treated the custodians and their union. Wednesday Journal has described the school board’s threat to throw the custodians out of work in a deep recession and break their union as “tough love.” The school board said it would prefer not to fire the custodians, but that it would go ahead with it anyway if the custodial union insisted on bargaining to a settlement.
There is nothing wrong with hard bargaining. However, when an employer, supposedly progressive, disrespects workers’ rights to bargain as equals to a settlement over their wages and working conditions, then that employer only contributes to the anti-union climate that prevails in today’s America, and to the continuing decline of the middle class that unions once achieved for millions of workers.
Wednesday Journal has become a willing partner in that endeavor. In its editorials and cartoons, it depicts Oak Park and River Forest public employees as an enemy of taxpayers. These employees try to achieve what any worker seeks: better wages and working conditions, to maintain or get into the middle class, to serve their families.
Asked if they support unions, I am sure Wednesday Journal and local public employers – and most progressives in our communities – would resoundingly say “yes.” It’s easy to support unions from a distance. It’s when they come close to home that our beliefs are truly tested. Like my mother and the press back then, we support workers when they are weak. When they unionize, though, they become a threat and we turn on them. It’s an old story in our country no matter one’s political philosophy.
Thomas Amato, a retired 34-year resident of River Forest, worked as a teacher and later as an educational employee union rep.