John L. Lewis, Jesus, and President Bush

By Bobby Ann Starnes

TWO PICTURES always hung side by side in my parents' house. One was the rather unsettling blue-eyed, blond-haired Jesus. Thorns pierced his forehead, and his outstretched arms revealed holes in his palms. Still, even with oozing blood, he looked like a kind and peaceful man. My father told me Jesus watched us all the time. I thought that was Santa's job, but I was young and unschooled in the ways of the world.

In sharp contrast to this serene figure was the rough-looking, cigar-chomping, wild-eyed man in the picture hanging next to him. My father had carefully cut the photograph out of a Look magazine, placed it in a dime-store frame, and hung it in this place of reverence. The man's name was John L. Lewis, and he saved my father's life.

My father was a lucky man. I knew his lucky story by heart long before I could read. Years before I was even a glint in his eye -- as he liked to say -- my father had been in a terrible accident. He was digging coal deep in the Number 5 mine when somewhere down the line a spark ignited methane gas. The resulting explosion brought the mountain down. When my father came to, he found himself wedged between a derailed coal car and the shaft's hard rock wall. It took the rescue crew more than 30 hours to dig through the tons of dirt, broken timbers, and loose rocks and pull the car off his chest. He had several broken bones and his ribs were crushed, but he was alive. The crew put him on a stretcher and made their way out of the mine. At the entrance, they handed him off to waiting miners, who rushed him to "the butcher shop," where the coal company's doctor patched him up. Once I told my father that he didn't seem lucky to me. "Well, Little Girl," he said, "some of the boys never came out."

For a long time I thought John L. Lewis himself had carried my father out of that mine and to safety. Later, my father explained that John L. Lewis saved thousands of miners, but not by digging them out of collapsing tunnels. He saved them by using the muscle of the United Mine Workers of America.

My father was a spellbinding storyteller. I loved his war stories about the union and begged him to tell them over and over. With each telling, his words added texture to already rich images. In time I could feel the coal companies' abuses, the gun thugs' brutality, and the miners' raw fear.

Being a union man was dangerous business in those days. I knew the danger so well that I could close my eyes and see the scenes my father painted. I could see him and the boys in a mule-drawn wagon moving slowly down the twisting, narrow roads on their way to another clandestine meeting. If they were found out, there would be consequences. Each boy held a rifle or shotgun; several rested their hands uneasily on pistols tucked in their overalls. My father's long legs dangled over the back of the wagon. His rifle butt was balanced upright against his thigh; his index finger rested on the trigger. He was prepared for the worst.

As they rode, the boys watched for signs of movement in the cornfields, overhanging branches, and thickets along the road. Often a sharp turn created a blind spot in the road where the company's gun thugs liked to wait for union men. Less cautious men than my father had paid the price for their lack of due diligence. Before entering the curve, the wagon slowed almost to a stop. The lookout jumped off the wagon and ran ahead. The rest of the boys waited anxiously for the all-clear whistle -- or the signal to get their guns ready.

"Which Side Are You On?" was more than an organizing song; it was a description of my father's adolescent and young adult life. He told me, "If you was on the wrong side, you might not come out of the mine in the mornin'." I was in college when I realized the full weight of those words.

My father and the boys had reasons to wage war against the mine owners and the "private detectives" they hired to keep the union down. The boys weren't violent by nature, but they were willing to act to protect themselves from the unbridled lust of the robber barons for money and power. Surely, my father was right. The grit and determination of John L. Lewis, Mother Jones, and other leaders and organizers saved many lives.

One thing I learned about unions from my father is that unions don't grow in unfertile ground. Had miners had safe working conditions, job security, and appropriate pay, they would have had no interest in union-organizing rhetoric. The unions would have died on the vine.

I remember the National Education Association's difficult transition from a professional organization to its current role as a labor union. There were reasons for that change, just as there were reasons for my father's union war. Sure, the abuses of power in Grafton Kennedy Elementary School were not life threatening, and forming teacher unions was not as dangerous. Still, the reasons -- or principles -- were the same.

Last week I listened to CNN as I worked at my computer. My concentration was broken by a sound bite from President Bush. "We must," he said, "end the teachers' unions' stranglehold if we are going to have successful schools. . . ." My fingers stopped hunting and pecking. My eyes stared at the computer screen, and my mind tried to make sense of his words. Had I really heard those words, and if I had, did he intentionally string them together in that order? I did and he had. When it comes to schools, Bush has ever-changing reasons du jour for poor schools. But he is predictable. His reasons always have two things in common: blaming and bashing teachers.

Now, I don't like teacher bashing. If, in fact, all of the hand wringing and going-to-hell-in-a-hand-basket language is anything more than a con, there is plenty of blame and bashing to go around. We might begin at the top, with the federal government's unrealistic and unfunded mandates.

No, teacher unions do not have strangleholds, even though saying they do makes for great sound bites and effective political misdirection. The truth is that most school unions are beyond weak; they are irrelevant. For example, last spring my principal announced that art would be dropped from the 2003-04 schedule and that class size would be significantly increased. These decisions substantially increased teachers' workload. And, as a result, this year several teachers have responsibilities that exceed the negotiated "contact time." If our union had even a foothold, it would intervene immediately each time our contract was violated. This and other examples that could be cited from around the country reveal the President's "stranglehold theory" for what it is -- meaningless.

If Bush were really serious about research-based reform, he might look into research on the connection between student achievement and strong unions. For example, a research review completed by the Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University reported the findings of 17 studies -- all with lots of statistics, just the way Bush and his education people like them. Twelve studies reported evidence of higher student achievement in strong union schools. The other five studies found either no connection or a negative relationship between unions and student achievement. However, each of these five studies was seriously flawed and deemed "unreliable" -- kind of like someone wanted to prove a certain point. The independent laboratory found that the 12 positive studies could be read with "more confidence that the findings are real" because they "were methodologically more sound . . . and . . . used more extensive controls." Intriguing, don't you think?

Then there is the issue of the "right-to-work" laws in 22 states. These deceptively named laws do not mean that people have a right to a job. Instead, they are designed to weaken unions and limit collective bargaining. Yet union states receive higher education rankings than right-to-work states, regardless of the "predictor" being ranked. Take, for example, Education Week's Quality Counts report. Of the top 10 states ranked for quality, only one was a right-to-work state. Seven of the bottom 10 are right-to-work states. A study of per-pupil expenditures reveals one right-to-work state in the top 10 and nine in the bottom 10. And, not surprisingly, teachers in states with stronger unions earn higher salaries. Only four right-to-work states rank in the top 25 for teacher pay, while 18 of the bottom 25 are right-to-work states. Class size, availability of materials, condition of school buildings, and other factors also illustrate clear differences between right-to-work schools and union schools.

Sure, there are times in some schools when unions prevent progress, but sometimes "progress" is backward motion. There may be times in some schools when firing a bad teacher is difficult. Shouldn't it be? Any teacher can be fired; it just requires due process. That seems fair -- even patriotic. Remember, too, those bad teachers were given tenure by management, not by unions.

There are reasons to think that unions are linked to student achievement. To ignore that link makes little sense. A better idea would be to consider how it can be better understood.

John L. Lewis may have done more than save my father's life. He may have had a role in school improvement. After all, his work paved the way for teacher unions. And it seems teacher unions pave the way for better schools.

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