Sin, Sing, and Snog: On the legality of the Chicago strike:
“Under Illinois’ Educational Labor Act, teachers may strike only for certain matters subject to negotiations; wages, hours, other terms and conditions of employment; specifically the law states that teacher performance is not to be the…
I’d wouldn’t make claims about libel until you can show damages, a little bit of butthurt on the internet isn’t libel it’s the internet. Now if you want to go around claiming to be a liberal libertarian I must say traditional libertarians support your positions. They claim to be against pretty much all government intervention and I don’t see you disagreeing with that. This also allows you to receive Tea Party comparisons, as the Tea Party does include libertarians. You may not like it but you’re with those guys on all economic issues to the best I can tell. I would also point out that in the issue of gun control you sound incredibly similar to the Tea Party. In fact the only issues you seem to disagree with the Tea Party on are LGBT rights and abortion, not a lot considering it’s the “taxed enough already” party by its own name (indicating their economic priority). Now Dagseoul may not of been polite but I understand tumblr gave you some respectability through the “education” tag and so therefore those of us who use tumblr have right to criticize you in that role. If you’re going to talk about the teachers strike in Chicago while being in the “education” tag as an editor you invite upon yourself criticism. Here’s some criticism:
You claimed a strike was illegal showing a law through the quote of an ABC article (for the local station). Now I am not a lawyer but reading what ABC claims are the terms for strike include “other terms and conditions of employment”. Air conditioning in schools I have been told is one of the demands and this is a “term and condition of employment”. If performance can’t at all be an issue, that would change things but I don’t see that being said. Furthermore, a strike cannot be “partially legal”. A strike may be legal with illegal acts committed during it but the legality of a strike is a black or white issue decided by the labor relations board.
My final criticism shall have its own paragraph because it’s rather important. THIS STRIKE COULD BENEFIT STUDENTS. I do not have the time nor the care to do a proper research paper on this but I can tell you right now that a teacher strike is not magically bad because kids stay out of school. You make it sound as simple as “striking is bad for kids because the teachers aren’t working” as if the world ends on Independence day 2013. This strike could benefit future students, and current students who aren’t graduating June 2013. The most I can find from you and your sources on this strike do not provide any analysis whatsoever of the future impact of the strike financially/for education scores either nationally or globally. I see no proof whatsoever students won’t benefit enough from the teacher-proposed contract conditions to make up for the strike.
Maybe I expect more out of Tumblr then is reasonable but if this is the content of an “education” tag editor, they really need to put disclaimers up about areas of expertise.
I retract my statements about the legality because I was going on little research. But that wasn’t a big point I was trying to make anyway. It was a passing thought while I was ranting. Sorry about that.
I’m not saying that the strike won’t benefit the students either. I just believe that striking and protesting during school time is not okay. Protesting before and after class is effective, too. And it doesn’t pull the students out of the classroom. I think the union shouldn’t have decided to strike, as there were better options available to them. If the students weren’t a factor, then I wouldn’t have said anything in the first place. Does that help clarify things?
