Fighting for teachers’ rights and organized labor

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

Cindy Hollenbeck isn’t a political animal. True, she has visited the State Capitol in Lansing many times during her 23 years as a fourth and fifth grade teacher at Glen Lake School, but those have been annual school fieldtrips for her pupils to learn about government. Hollenbeck’s favorite memories from those trips are of her students delivering books to poor schools in Lansing and becoming pen pals with their disadvantaged, urban counterparts.

So Hollenbeck surprised even herself this past winter when she took a personal day and drove to Lansing to join a demonstration against Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s Emergency Manager bill — which was signed into law on March 16 and gave the governor the right to dissolve economically troubled schools and public municipalities and appoint his own fiscal managers to run them.

“Some people asked what had gotten into me,” recalled Hollenbeck. “But this brought something out of me that had been dormant … my mom always thought I should have been a lawyer.” As Labor Day approaches (a holiday that was originally intended to celebrate workers), her passion for workers rights hasn’t subsided.

Nearly 10,000 Michiganders demonstrated at the state capitol on March 16 on behalf of public-sector workers. The protest was inspired in part by massive and sustained labor rights demonstrations across Lake Michigan at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison. The Madison revolt began on Feb. 11, when that state’s emboldened new Republican Governor Scott Walker introduced legislation to all but kill collective bargaining rights for public sector unions, ostensibly to solve Wisconsin’s budget deficit. Walker introduced his controversial bill on the same day that Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak fled Cairo, and the revolutionary fervor that blew across the sands of the Middle East during the “Arab Spring” suddenly arrived in the Midwest too.

For over a month, tens of thousands of teachers, students, seasoned progressive activists, and hardhats, cops and firemen, too, marched in Madison (for weeks, hundreds occupied the capitol, day and night). A tractor-led rally on March 12 around the perimeter of the capitol dome drew 200,000 as America’s biggest unions rented a nearby hotel to use as their “war room.” I documented the protests for a Minnesota-based video journalism nonprofit called TheUpTake.org, and got the sense that this was nothing less than organized labor’s existential fight for survival in the United States. Having successfully decimated private-sector unions in recent decades, public-sector unions are now targeted.

A picture began to emerge in February that the near simultaneous attacks on organized labor by new governors in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Indiana were not coincidental but may have been coordinated efforts financed by corporate tycoons intent on privatizing public services for their own profit. In particular, the Koch brothers, owners of the second largest company in America, have given over $100 million to conservative and libertarian organizations since the 1980s. David and Charles Koch, whose father Fred made billions in the oil industry, contributed $43,000 to Wisconsin Governor Walker’s campaign. More light was shed on the bond between Walker and the Kochs on Feb. 22 when a gonzo journalist-prank caller posing as David Koch dialed the governor’s office in Madison and, amazingly, got through to Walker. Ian Murphy of the Buffalo Beast recorded the ensuing phone conversation, which yielded that the governor felt indebted to “David Koch” and had considered planting agent provocateurs amidst the protestors in Madison.

Michigan’s pro-labor demonstrations never reached the fever pitch that they did in Madison (recall elections early in August in Wisconsin flipped two senatorial seats from Republican to Democrat), but they did embolden some, like Cindy Hollenbeck, to speak out for unionized worker rights.

Many of the demonstrators in Lansing arrived in busses and in groups, whereas Hollenbeck drove alone. Other than teachers, unionized employees are few here in northern Michigan, and she couldn’t find anyone else to join her at the rally.

“Teachers are generally nice people who have demanding jobs; many don’t have time to be political,” she said. “Plus, you often feel like you’re beating your head against the wall.”

In Lansing, Hollenbeck sought out her representatives. She visited the office of State Sen. Darwin Booher (Republican, 35th District) but was stymied in her attempt to speak to Rep. Ray Franz (Republican, 101st District).

Meanwhile, inside the State Capitol, folk musician and founder of the Earthwork Music Collective, Seth Bernard recorded a video of the raucous, party-like scene below him in the rotunda. He saw a diverse mix of students and senior citizens, teachers, firefighters and activists of all ethnic backgrounds. Bernard saw men dressed as the Koch Brothers, trailed by puppets that represented the governors whom they helped put into office.

There’s a fitting political joke that Bernard shared with me that he also used at shows last winter: “Ten cookies sitting in the middle of a table. Around the table sit a wealthy CEO, a Tea Party activist, and a unionized worker. The CEO leans in, grabs nine of the cookies for himself, then turns to the Tea Party activist and says, ‘Watch out, that union boy is gonna take the last cookie from you’!”

Cindy Hollenbeck echoed a similar sentiment. She said she worries that non-union workers are taught to resent the benefits that union workers have, “but don’t realize that many of the benefits they do have were first earned by the sacrifices of union labor.” The Glen Lake School teacher rattled off a list that includes weekends off, workplace safety, child labor laws, workers compensation and health benefits. Even today, workplace accidents and deaths are high, particularly among low-skilled, immigrant workers in the United States — the people who pick the oranges and slaughter the meat that most of us consume.

“Everyone needs to study the Industrial Revolution and see how workers had it before there were unions around,” she emphasized.

Hollenbeck is close to retirement age, but she worries what will happen to the teaching profession if politicians gut teachers’ benefits and job security. “What will kids in junior high think five years down the road?” Hollenbeck wonders. “Will they think being a teacher is a good choice?

“Whether you’re a snowplow driver or a teacher, you’re not about making a profit … you’re about doing things for the good of us all. We don’t have the same opportunities to make a million dollars. But you ought to at least pay us a living wage, and give us job security.”

This GlenArbor.com exclusive is sponsored by The Homestead resort, where you’ll find neighborhoods — lakefront, riverfront, river and lakefront, lake view and forest view — separated by nature.