Busing and Striking

When the four school buses pulled up in front of South Boston High School last week, no one got off. For half an hour, the 51 black students who have attended Southie every day since school began this fall under the city's court-ordered desegregation program stayed in their seats. Finally, headmaster William Reid ordered the bus drivers to take them back home. At other schools throughout the city, there were similar scenes. Reason: almost all of Boston's 4,950 public school teachers were out on strike. The walkout--in defiance of a state law prohibiting strikes by public employees--effectively paralyzed Boston's 162 schools and produced a result that protests and boycotts had failed to accomplish. It crippled the city's massive busing program (TIME, Sept. 22).

Job Clause. Before school started this fall, the teachers had voted to work until last week without a contract (their old one expired Aug. 31) so that the busing could begin unhampered by a strike. But as negotiations dragged on, many teachers suspected that the school committee, which is adamantly opposed to busing, was deliberately provoking them to strike in order to hamper desegregation.

In previous negotiations, the tough Boston Teachers Union has won better contracts for its 5,000 members than teachers in most other cities enjoy; indeed, Boston teachers' salaries range from $9,772 to $21,265 a year, and the school day averages a brief six hours, 30 minutes. This year negotiations broke down when the school committee offered teachers a 6% raise (the union held out for 9%) and demanded that they put in an extra 45 minutes a week tutoring pupils and meeting with parents. The union also asked for a job-protection clause, fearing layoffs because enrollment has fallen.

The teachers were in a fighting mood when the strike deadline approached. Finally, after a marathon negotiating session, the union broke off talks, and the strike was on. Suffolk Superior Court Judge Samuel Adams later found five union leaders in contempt of court for continuing the strike--and imposed a $25,000-a-day fine against the union for every day the schools remain closed.

Despite the penalty, clusters of teachers kept up the strike, often marching in picket lines inside the "buffer zones" set up for antibusing demonstrators near such trouble-prone schools as South Boston and Charlestown. Administrators and teacher aides tried to hold some classes, with indifferent success. "I've got seven kids," said one South End mother, "and there's no way I can keep them home. But they're not really learning very much in school this week."

Although the Boston walkout was the largest teachers' strike in the nation, last week at least 36 other strikes were in progress in ten states. Probably the most bitter was in Wilmington, Del, where 253 teachers were arrested last week on charges of disorderly conduct after police broke up a picket line outside the school administration building. All told, more than 400 of Wilmington's 800 teachers have been arrested or cited for contempt of court since the strike started Sept. 2. The mass arrests resulted from the aggressive policies of politically ambitious Mayor Thomas Maloney, 33, who charged the Wilmington Teachers Union with "city busting."

At issue was the demand by the union for a 12% salary increase for each of the next four years, plus a guarantee that the school board will not fire teachers engaged in the strike. The arrested teachers were released on $500 bail--but only after they had signed forms promising to remain in their homes from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day. That restriction, designed to prevent them from picketing, was overturned as unconstitutional later in the week. Still, many teachers were astounded by the city's tough tactics. For example, John Lennox, assistant football coach at Wilmington High, who was arrested for violating the curfew, says he was at the teachers' union office only to apply for a loan. "I am flat broke. Heck, I can't even buy a sandwich right now."

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