Detroit Teachers Strike (1982)

Tue Sep 14, 1982

Image

On this day in 1982, 10,000 teachers in Detroit walked off the job over a Board of Education demand for pay cuts of 8%, leaving 201,000 schoolchildren with the prospect of several days off. The teachers did this despite a Michigan law prohibiting public employees from striking.

The Detroit teacher’s strike was the largest of a number of school labor disputes marring the back-to-school season around the country that year, when social spending cuts were hitting schools and teachers particularly hard.

Around the same time, more than 7,500 other teachers were on strike elsewhere in Michigan and in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio.

  • @[email protected]
    5•2 months ago

    So… what was the result of it? Glad they bucked the system and went on strike but the NY time article was from when they were striking, not did it work or anything?

    • redrumM
      4•2 months ago

      According to the Detroit Federation of Teachers history web page:

      STRIKE: In September, teachers strike for 16 days when union “asks for nothing and board says that’s too much” and instead demands rollbacks. Agreement seems at hand October 3 but in dramatic turn, board welshes and turns down settlement. Citizens Committee intercedes and helps hammer out new agreement. One year contract provides for wage freeze with all remaining issues to be resolved in binding fact-finding.

      Union wins key arbitration ruling that teachers must be paid monetarily for lost preparation periods not repaid in time within five months of date lost. DFT goes to court to enforce award on hiring all substitutes. Union wins four more arbitration victories.