Last week, I received a rather disturbing email from my daughter’s teacher. The normally lovely and professional educator had forwarded a letter from the Canton and Republic of Geneva informing me that the “Cartel intersyndical du personnel de l’État et du secteur subventionné” had made its move.
Naturally, I panicked What does the Cartel want with my children? And a Cartel of syndicalists? That sounds even worse.
With the strength of the Franc and the general cost of living in Geneva, just how high is the ransom going to be?
Then I entered “Cartel intersyndical du personnel de l’État et du secteur subventionné” into google translate.
It returned “Inter-union staff cartel of the State and the subsidized sector”—still terrifying.
Then I tired not to focus on the word “cartel” and suddenly the terrifying blur resolved into soothing crispness—this is the teachers union.
Apparently, Geneva’s teachers are holding a two and a half hour strike this Tuesday. The little check boxes on what was decidedly not a ransom letter were to inquire whether I would keep my child home during the strike or whether I would send her to school where she would be used as a human shield… or shown a movie.
As a pro-labor person, my instinct was to hold her out, but I thought I’d check with some other parents who had more experience. The first, an English woman who’d grown up in Geneva, told me that she’d keep her kids home, and I was welcome to bring mine to her house for a play date. Point strike.
The second, an American, said she kept hers home, but that her Swiss husband tended to want to send keep them in school because the teachers make a lot. I have no idea how much Swiss teachers make, but I assume it’s about $500,000 per week, in which case I support the strike, because that’s basically a poverty wage here.
I told my French teacher back in the U.S. about the strike during our weekly zoom session. She is French born, but lived in Geneva for 20 years and has Swiss and U.S. citizenship as well. She was appalled.
“I would, of course, expect this in France,” she lamented. “But a strike in Switzerland? No, it is not correct.”
Nonetheless, I have decided to keep my daughter home Tuesday afternoon. As Mother Jones said “My friends, it is solidarity of labor we want. We do not want to find fault with each other, but to solidify our forces and say to each other: We must be together; our masters are joined together and we must do the same thing.”
Besides, I owe teachers something. I owe them something not just in the generic, general “Thanks to all the great teachers who made me who I am” sense. I owe them more specific. I owe them an apology.
Around Christmas 1994, though it might have been right after New Year’s 1995, the teachers in my home town of Belmont, Massachusetts went on strike. I remember thinking the teachers’ demands were excessive, if not absurd. The School Committee apparently agreed, and when the teachers walked out, the town decided to break the strike. They kept the schools open with local people going in to teach. I was a first semester college kid on winter break, and, motivated by some mix of boredom, self-righteousness and being a bratty punk kid, I crossed the picket line.
For one day, one regrettable day, I was a scab.
I barely remember the day, but I volunteered to go to one of the four local elementary schools and serve as a teaching assistant in a kindergarten class for a day. I remember having fun with the kids. I remember the young blond woman leading the class doing a survey and asking the kids how many eggs they could eat and then trying to explain the concept of a bell curve. I have nothing against normal distributions, but I wonder if it was appropriate for five-year-olds. And given that it came as the hideous racist manifesto The Bell Curve had just come out around then, it seems downright sinister.
And I remember the shame. I remember the shame because I still feel it.
I was a dumb kid, but I made an arrogant, unnecessary and obnoxious choice for basically no reason. I’m not even sure I got paid. (Note: Does that make it better or worse?) There were some bad teachers in Belmont, and I don’t know that I was wrong to resent them getting raises while I’d seen some very good teachers get laid off due to lack of seniority. But that doesn’t justify what I did. What I did was to disrespect all of the people who had just finished educating me and, for the most part, educating me well.
As a teenager, probably unsurprisingly, I tended to accentuate the negative, and more often than not, I did so in the most arrogant possible way. I wrote a scholarship essay for a full ride at Boston University about how I would fix the English Department at my high school. I reread it a few years ago, and all I could think was “What a punk. Who the hell did this arrogant little sh—- think he was?” I’d had two lousy English teachers and two spectacular ones in my four years of high school, and the good had far, far outweighed the bad, though the bad really had not only slowed, but reversed mat development— a friend and I wrote a ska song about it. The good ones, especially my junior year teacher, had really opened my eyes to what I could do with words, and had clearly educated me enough to write a well-argued, cogent essay about why I didn’t respect her profession. I got a 50% ride at least partly on the basis of the essay. As I submitted it to celebrated union buster John Silber’s Boston University, I’m surprised they didn’t give me a full ride and throw in room and board.
Once in a while, in my twenties, I’d lay up at night and wonder what my greatest most shameful secret was and I’d settle on my day as a scab. It clearly isn’t, at least not now, as I’m writing about it here, but it was a big one.
Later that year, I would be a union member as part of an SEIU local while working at Fenway Park. Years later, I would work for a consortium including the Massachusetts AFL-CIO to get more money for workforce development in Massachusetts. But the stain never quite washes off.
Occasionally, I’d imagine running for office and wonder whether my youthful transgression would sink me. Maybe, but probably not more than two dozen things I blogged about the Red Sox. (Note: Not really. When blogging, I always had a strict rule that before I wrote anything, I would ask myself “Would I be okay with Granny Melendez reading this?” Mostly because she was going to read it. That kept me on the straight and narrow.) But the impact on me isn’t really what’s important. Heck, the impact on teacher salaries in Belmont or the labor movement in general isn’t that important. I was one guy in one town on one day. My impact was nothing.
The problem is like future Red Sox Brian Daubach and Ron Mahay who crossed the picket line in that same 1994, I did something that was just wrong. And while unlike Mahay and Daubach, whose transgression meant they could never be in players union licensed MLB video games, I am unlikely to be excluded from the EA sports “Belmont High School: The Show!” I have my own debts to pay.
To the teachers who educated me and to the movement that brought us the weekend, worker safety, and decent pay, I’m sorry. It was a really, really crappy thing to do.
So yeah, I’m keeping my daughter out of school Tuesday afternoon, and I hope the teachers here get everything they want… unless it’s a reduction from a. four day school week to a three day school week. That would cross a line.
Dan, I’m really enjoying your writing! Fun here to read your references to BU, where I was a union leader, and to our work w WSG! Love knowing that you’re enjoying your family’s time in Geneva. And, look forward to the next installments. Wishing you all warm, wonderful holidays!