Lawrence Teachers' Union

by Jennifer Berkshire, AFT MA

Visit the headquarters of the Lawrence Teachers Union and you'll find yourself in an historic mill in which 1,000 textile workers once labored, turning out 100,000 yards of cotton flannel a week. That educators here would choose such a location as their base is no coincidence, says LTU president and history teacher Frank McLaughlin. The Lawrence schools, he notes, have provided opportunities to generations of immigrants and their descendants who came to this city on the Merrimack River in search of better lives. "Lawrence has a rich labor history but its education history is just as rich," says McLaughlin. "Horace Mann himself came here to plan the public school system."

Teachers in Lawrence, who first voted to form a union in the 1940's, were also the very first teachers in Massachusetts to go out on strike. In 1967, the same year that teachers in the Commonwealth won the right to bargain over such issues as pay, class size and benefits, Lawrence teachers walked out of the schools, demanding better working condition and more respect for the city's educators. "Lawrence is famous for the Bread and Roses strike of 1912 but the teachers' strike was really significant too," says McLaughlin. "It served as a wake up call to public employees throughout the state that they deserved respe ct."

Frank Messer, the president of the LTU during the strike, explained the teachers' decision to the parents of the city's school children this way:

"[The teachers of Lawrence] want to find a better way. They are not forgetting your child—they have taught in this city at considerable personal sacrifice to themselves, and sometimes to their own children, to give your child the best that is in them. They have taught the doctors and lawyers, the plumbers and barbers, the CPA's, and many of the younger teachers in the system. They taught YOU. How did you turn out? Were you ever influenced by a great teacher in the Lawrence School System?"

Today nearly 900 teachers, school psychologists, counselors, social workers and librarians belong to the Lawrence Teachers Union. And while the city may have changed a great deal since its days as the cotton milling capital of the US, the mission of its educators remains the same in many ways: to provide opportunity to residents of this community, including the most recent arrivals. "Lawrence has always been a gateway city," says McLaughlin. "Our schools are the gate."

Nor has the LTU abandoned its tradition of militancy when it comes to fighting for the rights of teachers and students. In recent years the union has clashed repeatedly with the superintendent of the Lawrence public schools over such issues as school safety, how best to maintain the schools' deteriorating infrastructure and the question of whether new immigrants should be allowed to enroll in the city's brand new high school, as the union supports, or be diverted to the old high school in order to focus on English skills.