This article from the _Herald_ suggests how the evolution in the
mindset of the faculty at Hartnell took place.
'Talking Union' fired up teachers for strike
Monterey County Herald
October 22, 2006
'Now if you want higher wages, let me tell you what to do, you got to talk to the workers in the shop with you.'
That kind of advice -- from 'Talking Union,' a spoken-word song made famous in the 1940s by Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seeger -- is what transformed a relatively apathetic group of teachers into a fiery strike force, said the organizers of Hartnell College faculty who began picketing Friday.
'They were kind of apathetic. They just didn't care anymore,' said Christine Svendsen, a computer science teacher and president of the Hartnell College Faculty Association.
That was a little more than a year ago. The secret to getting teachers involved, Svendsen said, was talking to them.
'We decided we had to try to talk personally with every single faculty member. There were 117 at the time,' Svendsen said. 'We told them the board of trustees were only paying $6 (per month) for health benefits, while the faculty were paying $300. I became very vocal about those and other kinds of injustices.'
Nationwide, union membership has declined for years, down from 20 percent of workers in 1983 to 12.5 percent in 2005, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Despite the overall drop, union membership rose slightly in 2005 and California, with 2.4 million, has more union members than any other state. Certain occupations -- teachers, police officers and firefighters -- are still heavily unionized.
Getting those union members to commit to sustaining days or weeks without pay while on the picket line is a tough job, according to Marilyn Aden, a strike coordinator for the California Teachers Association in Foster City who is working with Hartnell's teachers.
'They've had an organizing team that has been doing mobilizing for months. There was a lot of hard work that they did, and probably that makes it look like it happened quicker,' said Aden, who on Saturday joined Hartnell strikers on the picket line.
As an organizer, Aden has been involved in school strikes in districts such as Fairfield, Pittsburg and Alum Rock.
'When there's a strike, I'm there.' she said.
Svendsen, on the other hand, was new to all this organizing business when she became the teachers' association president a year and a half ago.
'For a long time, people were saying 'You're not going to get them to strike.' I had flak from faculty who'd been there a long time who said 'We've tried, it's not going to work.''
One important step, she said, was talking to trustees.
'We set up a schedule to get faculty to talk to trustees, we started making it a point. It's still amazing how much trustees don't know and don't care to know,' she said. As some teachers spoke out, others became emboldened, she said. 'More people started coming out of the woodwork, and it made them more vocal.'
The next phase in the talking process was educating faculty on the realities of life on the picket line.
'There are hardships,' said Aden, who was once a striking teacher herself. 'Teachers looked at this hard, about striking. They've made a commitment to go out and they understand there's no guarantee that there will be an overnight settlement.'
Faculty are expected to hit the picket lines again at 5:30 a.m. Monday. Most of the picketing will take place at Hartnell's main campus on West Alisal Street, the organizers said.
The college's East Campus in East Salinas is 'pretty much going to be shut down,' Svendsen said, as is a South County campus in King City.
For the most part, she said, community members and students have been supportive of the strikers.
'We've been flipped the bird, but more times than not, members of the community have brought us water or come to hold up a sign,' she said.
In the first two days of the strike, several union members have crossed the picket line to teach classes, Svendsen said. 'We had a couple of members who have said all along they would cross. Six full-timers have crossed, and four or five part-timers. But Monday will be the true test.'
The days that follow will likely test the goodwill between faculty who strike and those who choose not to.
'In our minds, a lot of people are benefiting from the hard work of a few, ' Svendsen said. 'That's a tough one for a lot of us to swallow, especially now. You're carrying their water if they're not on the picket line, because they will all get the benefits (of a new contract).'
The possibility of such tensions echoes the refrain from another folk song, written in the 1930s for striking Kentucky coal miners, which asks 'Which Side Are You On?'
For Svendsen, the line dividing the sides is clear.
'I say, if you know someone who scabbed, let them know you're not going to forget.'
Copyright © 2006 Monterey County Herald, All Rights Reserved.
