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Texas Teachers Union Leader Arrested—for Talking to Teachers |
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Want to know why the battle for the Employee Free Choice Act is still going strong? Because of what happens to workers like Carmen Mayorga.
On Aug. 14, Mayorga, president of AFT Local 6345 in Aldine, Texas, was arrested and led away in handcuffs after she tried to hand out union literature to teachers on school property, according to AFT. Mayorga was charged with “failure to identify.” Her car was impounded, and she was held 14 hours before being released, the union says.
“I’ll go to jail any time to be able to talk to teachers,” Mayorga said in a statement after her release.
I don’t understand why the Aldine school district is so intent on squelching the rights of teachers to join an organization with a mission to improve the quality of education in Aldine.
The only thing I’m guilty of is trying to talk to teachers.
All of the more than 800 members of Local 6345 work for the Aldine Independent School District near Houston. Both the international AFT and the Texas AFT are considering legal action against the school district over the incident. Texas AFT President Linda Bridges says:
Surely, the Aldine school district’s police force has better things to do. The superintendent is using [the local police department] to intimidate and coerce employees and their representatives and impede their exercise of constitutional rights of free speech and freedom of association. What is [Aldine School] Superintendent Wanda Bamberg so afraid of that she feels the need to handcuff and rough up a 115-pound mother of three just for coming near a school?
This sounds like something out of the old union-busting days in the 1920s, or even worse, past attempts to stifle free speech on public school campuses.
In a press release, the Texas AFT describes what happened when Mayorga was arrested:
The trouble began Monday (Aug. 13) when school district officials informed Aldine AFT staff that they could not hand out membership information on school property at Aldine High School, where the district held its new teacher orientation.
The next day, the Aldine superintendent circled the high school with police officers. Aldine AFT staff and member volunteers patiently waited for teachers to finish the event, and when they emerged, one teacher directly asked for some literature. When an Aldine AFT staff member stepped onto school property to hand her a brochure, district officers swarmed around her and threatened her with a citation. Mayorga drove up to the scene on public property and asked an officer what was happening. The officer asked for her identification, and when she questioned why he needed it, he manhandled her, cuffed her and arrested her.
Although Aldine school officials went to extremes to try to silence workers’ voices, their actions vary little from those of other employers who deny workers the freedom to decide for themselves whether to form unions to bargain for a better life. They routinely intimidate, harass, coerce and even fire workers who try to form unions and bargain for their economic well-being.
Working families have vowed to make passage of the Employee Free Choice Act a key issue in the 2008 elections. The legislation would level the playing field for workers seeking to join a union and increase penalties for violating federal labor laws. The House passed the legislation in March. Although most senators supported the bill, in June a handful of obstructionists blocked its passage in a procedural move.
2 Comments
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Sounds about right for Texas. I was once threatened with arrest while doing similar union activity and I worked at the job site!
Folks, labor must get the Employee Free Choice Act passed and this protection must be extended to public workers including teachers and other school personnel!
Sister, you are a modern day Mother Jones!!
The real answer to this problem is mass action. The union leaders, not just AFT, btw, should mobilize as many members as possible to pay a mass visit, hundreds, thousands, of union members and make sure every teacher at that school gets some union literature. The cops can’t arrest so many people. A lesson from the 30’s upsurge in labor in the U.S. as well as the civil rights struggle in the 50’s and 60’s. There are no excuses for not trying to initiate this type of action. To be clear, I’m NOT advocating voluntary arrest but instead having enough union members there that if the cops try to arrest any of us, we have enough members there to stop them from arresting anyone. Time to take the gloves off, brothers and sisters.