Pennsylvania Supreme Court fails test on teacher strikes
The Pennsylvania State Constitution states: “The General Assembly shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the Commonwealth.” I had my strike-affected, 9-year-old daughter read these words to legislators at a public hearing this year. The Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) labor union also testified at this House Labor Relations committee hearing. They had a corporate attorney answer questions and speak to their belief in a “fundamental right” to strike. My 9-year-old “attorney,” by contrast, was not asked any questions. The committee appeared uneasy as they heard the simple words of the Constitution spoken by a child.
I wanted elected officials to explain how allowing a private labor union to shut down a public school district, forcing children out of their classrooms, qualified as a “thorough and efficient system of public education.” I wanted to know how teacher strikes served the needs of Pennsylvania’s taxpayers who pay for public education. I was, in effect, asking how teacher strikes could be Constitutional?
One has to go back more than three decades to get the answer. Act 195 of 1970 is responsible for giving school employee labor unions a so-called “right” to strike. Following a teacher strike in the mid-1970s, the Butler Area School District sued the local affiliate of the PSEA, alleging the strike was unconstitutional. Strikes were so prevalent and lengthy at the time, that many children did not receive the required number of days to get a basic education.
The Butler County Court of Common Pleas agreed with the school district, and ruled that the teacher strike provision of Act 195 of 1970 violated the Commonwealth’s Constitution. The union appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, while other labor unions quickly rallied together. Lawyers from the Pennsylvania Federation of Teachers (PFT) and the AFL-CIO filed “amicus curiae” briefs to join forces with the PSEA. There was no attorney to represent parents or their children. In a cruel decision in 1978, the Supreme Court overruled the Butler court.
If such a case were heard before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court today, one might expect parents, students and taxpayers lining up to provide testimony. One might expect testimony from education experts in the thirty-eight (38) other states that provide children with a strike-free public education. The case would probably last days, if not weeks. Yet in 1978, the Supreme Court heard arguments on September 21, 1978 and issued their ruling one day later.
It is with a sense of d?j? vu that teacher strikes and the Constitution are once again in the news. In the last legislative session, a bill that would use compulsory binding arbitration to settle teacher contract disputes was introduced, despite clear Constitutional language that only police and firefighter contract disputes may be resolved in this manner. The leading promoter, Sen. Robert Mellow, heard legal testimony that his proposal, SB 910, violated the Constitution; yet he continued to promote binding arbitration to an unsuspecting media and public. Gov. Ed Rendell even stated in writing that he supports Sen. Mellow’s attempt to violate the Constitution.
Perhaps it is the 1978 Butler decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that provides inspiration to modern-day, would-be violators, that the simple language in the Constitution is nothing more than meaningless words, to be manipulated by the legislature as it sees fit.
The tragedy is that Pennsylvania remains, to this day, the “teacher-strike capital” of the United States. Over 4.2 million students have been forced out of school since Act 195 was enacted. During the 21-day Pennsbury teacher union strike in Bucks County in 2005, a mother went to a public meeting to plead for the strike to stop, because of the devastating impact it was having on her special-needs son. She was unsuccessful. This mother’s pleas apparently could not compete with the $500,000 the PSEA’s political action committee gave to Gov. Rendell’s 2006 re-election campaign.
Nearly thirty years ago, a Butler County judge understood the simple words of the Constitution, and he stepped in to correct the wrongdoing of the legislature. How sad, that in a subsequent hearing which lasted barely 24 hours, with labor union power brokers packing the courtroom, seven Supreme Court justices instead chose to condemn generations of children, as they literally re-defined the English language.
Simon Campbell of Yardley is president of StopTeacherStrikes, Inc. ( www.stopteacherstrikes.org
), a grassroots organization dedicated to ending teacher strikes in Pennsylvania.