I'm in my first year teaching in Central Texas but probably my 20+ year in public education. From 2000-2008 I was a vice-president representing Educational Support Professionals (ESPs) in Austin, Texas. Before that, from 1994-2000 I was a Paraeducator (Teacher Assistant and In-School Suspension Monitor) in the Austin Independent School District. I poured my blood, sweat and tears into my union, Education Austin, the first merged local of the NEA and AFT in Texas. In 2008, I was essentially purged. More below the fold...
First, I guess that it's important to point out that I was raised in Odessa, Texas by an conservative republican ex-marine IBMer in a non-union, if not exactly anti-union, household. Great dad, but very right-wing. I attended Odessa Permian High School, the school immortalized in the book, movie and teevee show "Friday Night Lights." My first two presidential votes were for Ronald Reagan. To say I've come a long way, baby, is positively British understatement.
After leaving the Navy (which we used to say stood for "never again volunteer yourself") in 1985, I moved to Austin, Texas to attend the University of Texas. Austin was to be a heady mix of poison and panacea for me. It certainly aided me in what became a very painful, though ultimately illuminating, personal evolution. As I struggled to attend a university that our legislature, the "national laboratory for bad government" according to Molly Ivins, was begin to price out of reach of regular people, I had the opportunity to become exposed to a much more cosmopolitan milieu of fellow human beings. But I ultimately had to abandon the cherished conservative delusions that I had been raised and indoctrinated with in West Texas. I discovered that these beliefs were not only usually wrong, but actually pernicious in their effects. They made me unhappy and the people around me unhappy. So I looked for something better. That's when I stumbled upon Noam Chomsky.
My interests have always been science and mathematics, with a liberal dose of humanities, especially science fiction, most especially Star Trek. I think being a trekkie placed me on the liberal fringe of the conservative mainstream, what with its multiracial-ethnic-cultural tropes and themes. My interests also made me amenable to using reason, argument, logic, proof and evidence. And since I was now in the "People's Republic of Austin," I was exposed to a much wider spectrum of influences. But Chomsky rocked my world. (As an aside, I did have bit of a fling with Ayn Rand first, whom I still have a few appreciations for, though more criticism, and I rapidly outgrew her.) Chomsky's linguistics led me into cognitive psychology and critical philosophy, but his politics told me the truth. And as a good scientist, he always remarked that one shouldn't take his word for what he was writing, but go out and find out for one's self. Which is what I did. It was Noam Chomsky who first told me the truth about unions. Actually, he was the second. I believe it was Permian Basin Central Labor Council President D. L. "Dally" Willis who addressed my Fundamentals of Free Enterprise class (how's that for a title?) at Permian High School in 1980 and prophetically foretold of what the loss of unions and rise of the bosses would do to America, a prophecy that has been realized beyond my wildest nightmares in the intervening 31 years. I didn't believe him. But after Reagan, the Navy and U.T. I was ready to believe, and verify, Chomsky's insights into unions and unionism, as well as so much more.
U.T. wasn't very kind to me. I had many opportunities but more setbacks. In 1993, I began to rebuild my life and got a job as a substitute teacher, then TA, with Austin ISD. I joined the AFT local immediately because I wanted to belong to the AFL-CIO, but also because they got to me before the NEA local did. I was an activist volunteer, executive board member and officer soon after that. When the Austin Federation of Teacher-Allied Education Workers merged with the Austin Association of Teachers to become Education Austin, I stepped in to fill a co-president and then vice-president slot. I was in union heaven, learning so much all at once about NEA and AFT cultures, union culture, Texas's labor situation as compared to the rest of the US and more. And I started handling grievances and problem-solving for members. And I started winning. My first big victory was a $225,000 win establishing experience pay for Austin ISD ESPs, aka "Classified at-will" employees. I got better and better at what I did. And I began to make more and more enemies. Little did I know that some of them lurked within my union.
My union president, a close friend for nearly 15 years, turned out to be that enemy. I never really saw it until it was too late. After he had colluded with the district administration to get me banned from the district, twice, for just doing my job. I didn't realize how odious his conduct was until an AFT national representative came to work in my local and told me that when he had been banned in New Mexico twice, his union had SUED twice and won both times. What I discovered, again too late, was that my president was a man with a weak needy ego and my radical gung-ho unionism was making him look bad in contrast. This is a man who moved to run an opponent against me in our local elections, without telling me, while I was on bereavement leave tending my 69 year-old father who had fallen off the roof of his home in Birmingham, Alabama. This was just seven months after my mother had died and about a year after my daughter was identified as being on the autism spectrum. I was reeling from personal issues but still performing effectively, though against ever-mounting resistance both internal to the union and from the district.
When I stumbled into his plot accidentally, it was war. I began to move to defend myself and was immediately suspended and brought up on misconduct charges by the president and then was attacked from every direction by just about every facet of the AFT/Texas AFT and NEA/Texas State Teachers Association (TSTA). I was denied a lawyer for my case, though I had paid dues for 14 years. But, as I suspected, the local president had other reasons for wanting me out the picture. The dirty tricks he pulled, the people he betrayed (not just me), and the lies he told escalated. I ended up being tried before my own executive board. The hearing judge was an attorney hired by the president. He was prepped by one if not more union lawyers. I had no one. I defended myself and defeated the misconduct charges on a 9-8-1 vote, which demonstrated that the president had lost political control of the board to me. I remained suspended and emotionally exhausted but got to run for reelection, only to face a modern multi-thousand dollar campaign slate run against me. I was defeated for reelection, largely by teachers whom I didn't represent. And thus began a two-plus year trek/exile in the wilderness, which ended when I was hired to teach 6th-12th grade science in a Central Texas public school district disciplinary campus. That is almost precisely where I start 16 years before and I'm in a job I love.
As soon as I was hired, I joined the NEA/TSTA. I had discovered in my service to the a merged local that the NEA has a simply superior democratic culture compared to the AFT. The AFT is an ugly political machine that literally builds cults of personality around its presidents, a hangover of the Al Shanker days. I then immediately became active in establishing a brand-new local in my district, an act somewhat fraught with political consequences, and was elected vice-president. So now I'm working with a union that basically kicked me out three years ago. But I'm still a union man through and through. I didn't leave my union, my union LEADERSHIP abandoned and sacrificed me. And that's what I see as the real problem with all of the US labor movement today. The leadership has become "one of them" by and large, sold out for big pay, co-opted by the bosses when not actively colluding with them and blind to what unionism really is and means. And to me, unions are institutions of economic democracy. And economic democracy is the scariest, most dangerous possible idea to corporations and private wealth and power. Reading through many of the excellent diaries today around teacher unionism, I can't recall ever seeing this manifest fact of reality, but I haven't had time to search. But I owe this insight to the inspiration that Noam Chomsky gave me when he stated that,
In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival.