Correspondents' Correspondence Philadelphia Lesson

...As conditions in our cities become more desperate, a crucial element will be the amount of support given striking public employes by their richer and poorer neighbors.—Lawrence Dugan Washington^USA...

...The new contract calls for classes to be reduced from 35 students to 33 by 1975, and for the elementary teachers to get their preparation time...

...The school board president through most of the strike, William Ross, who happened to be manager of the joint board of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, ultimately found the conflict of roles unbearable...

...In total, the teachers were out 10 weeks and 2 days, making it the second-longest school strike in U.S...

...In the next four years we will undoubtedly see increased attempts at further dismantling programs in the social sector...

...Therein, perhaps, lies both the irony and the lesson of the Philadelphia strike...

...history after Newark's in 1970...

...For in reality teachers, along with other municipal workers, are being victimized by the current urban budget crunch just as much as the inner city residents who depend most heavily on their services...

...Perhaps the most bizarre note of all was that Mayor Frank Rizzo, who called the PFT leaders "power-hungry blackmailers," found himself being defended by some blacks for attempting to keep the schools open and thereby, the argument went, helping ghetto children...

...These issues commonly play a larger role in their contract negotiations than salaries, as was the case in the Philadelphia teachers strike...

...Despite all the furor, the final settlement amounted to less than a 5 per cent annual raise over four years...

...Even among traditional liberals, who might have been expected to view the teachers' demands as reasonable and beneficial for the students, there was much talk of the "public good" and, in more sentimental moments, "the children...

...PFT president Frank Sullivan and his chief negotiator, John Ryan, spent 18 days in jail for defying a court order to send their members back to work...

...high school teachers will also have to spend 45 minutes a day longer in school...

...When no progress was evident by January 8, however, the walkout was renewed...

...Philadelphia Lesson Philadelphia—With 790 teachers arrested for mass picketing, a general strike threatened by more than 40 local unions, and over 5,000 "scabs" brought into the schools, the recently ended walkout of 13,000 teachers here often seemed like a scene out of the Depression...

...The temporary victims of public strikes must come to understand that they will be the permanent victims of a less obvious curtailment of services if the unions are defeated in their demands for larger urban budgets...

...The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) had initially asked for a 6.7 per cent increase over three years, plus 45 minutes a day "preparation time" for elementary teachers and smaller classes...

...Pleading a lack of funds, the school board consistently called the PFT demands "unfair" and "outrageous" (depending on the spokesman), and presented a counterproposal that high school teachers work an additional three-quarters of an hour a day without a pay hike...

...Indeed, more often than not it is the civil servants who represent the public interest by fighting for higher budgets, new equipment, better conditions, etc...

...Riz-zo's decision was a political charade, and those who now praised him had spent a good deal of his first months in office complaining about similar charades in other situations...

...The 73-year-old Ross was forced to resign both his school board position and his vice presidency of the city's AFL-CIO council before a settlement was reached...

...Although the strike actually began when the old contract ran out last September 5, the teachers agreed to return to their classrooms three weeks later while negotiations with the Board of Education continued...

...they were released daily to participate in the talks...