Teachers: Test of Strength

The U.S. public schoolteacher is fed up with his longtime pose as a professional too polite to hit the streets in a fight for a reasonable wage. This year he is proving as tough in the pursuit of a buck as the school electrician and plumber, who have long outpaced him in pay. The U.S. taxpayer is sick of soaring school costs. The conflict between these viewpoints has created one of the most strife-ridden school openings in years. This week nearly 2,000,000 schoolchildren from Baltimore to East St. Louis, Ill., face the possibility of extended summer vacations because of teacher contract disputes.

Nearly a fourth of all children in the schools of Michigan discovered last week that no bell tolled for them be cause teachers in 35 districts refused to work without a contract. Aware that a state law bans teacher strikes, both the Michigan Education Association, an affiliate of the N.E.A., and the A.F.L.C.I.O. Michigan Federation of Teachers insist that their members were simply “withholding services.”

The worst of these nonstrikes closed all classes in the 300,000-student Detroit system. There, Mrs. Mary Ellen Riordan, an old-style, fiery unionist who is president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, led her 6,400 members in a fight for a $1,200 pay hike and a two-week cut in the 40-week school year. The city, which pays teachers from $5,800 to $10,000, offered $600 and a one-week school-year reduction. Governor George Romney ruled out any increase in state funds to boost salaries and insisted it was “intolerable that the education of children should be used as a pawn in negotiations.”

Mass Resignations. A similar impasse in New York City may well trigger some 40,000 teacher resignations, mostly by members of the militant United Federation of Teachers, thereby delaying the scheduled opening of school this week for more than a million children. U.F.T. President Albert Shanker, a former junior-high math teacher, argued that there is nothing to prevent a teacher from quitting his job, although under a state law the union can be fined up to $10,000 a day for striking. Union leaders rejected a two-year, $125 million package of benefits proposed by Mayor John Lindsay’s mediation panel, which would have raised starting salaries from $5,400 to $6,200 this year and top salaries (reached in 14 years) from $9,950 to $10,350. The union also demands for teachers the right to remove unruly kids from class and continuation of a program of extra services in ghetto schools.

N.E.A. Sanctions. Most of Florida’s 58,000 teachers have been locked in an angry summer-long dispute with Governor Claude Kirk over state support of the public schools. Contending that teachers’ pay in Florida is substandard and the state’s contribution too low, the N.E.A. has warned its members across the U.S. not to seek teaching jobs there. N.E.A. “sanctions,” which have been applied against only two other states (Oklahoma and Utah) in the organization’s history, led Kirk to claim that the action was an “irresponsible” attack upon the state. He termed the N.E.A.’s state affiliate the “Anti-Florida Education Association.” Pledged to permit no tax increase this year, Kirk has vetoed two bills to raise teacher salaries. Last month more than 30,000 teachers met in Orlando’s Tangerine Bowl to dramatize their protest, were asked to submit resignations for use if the impasse continued. More than 2,300 teachers in the Fort Lauderdale area turned in their quitting notices last week, delaying school opening for 90,000 pupils at least until the end of the month.