Talking For Their Generation

Joe Williams trots out a very old trope about newness and generations, which is replayed every ten years or so, to make his case for naming anti-union charter schools after great trade unionists like Cesar Chavez.

When The Who performed this little number more than forty years ago, they were “Talking About MY Generation.” Williams is “Talking For THEIR Generation.” He thinks he has a direct pipeline right into the thoughts of teachers decades younger than himself, such that he knows what they think before they even express those ideas themselves. Consider this opening line…

The recent back-and-forth over whether or not public charter schools where teachers choose not to become unionized should be named after pro-labor civil rights figures like Cesar Chavez exposed one obvious reality that is just hanging over today’s school reform scene…

The language here is interesting, because one wonders how it is that Williams knows that teachers at these schools choose not to become unionized. ‘Choose’ is a term of active volition — one freely and actively makes a decision. As of yet, however, there have been no union organizing drive at these schools, and so no opportunity for teachers to refuse to sign authorization cards or to vote against unionization. There have been no published interviews of the teachers in question which would provide insight into what they believed. In fact, all that is known is that the founders and directors of the schools have been outspoken and unequivocal in their animus toward unions, while appropriating the name of a revered trade unionist.

But in Williams’ laissez-faire market theory of action, one he shares with Wal-Mart, all that is needed is for the boss to decide what will be. If the boss decides that there will be no union, and the worker is employed by the boss, then Williams believes he can read the workers’ beliefs off of the boss’ beliefs. After all, it is a market and the worker can always go work for someone else. Ipso facto, the teachers chose to be non-union.

The point of this theory of action is to keep the power in the hands of the boss. He or she decides. The only choice of the worker is ‘exit,’ to leave for another boss.

But as American citizens, workers have the right to ‘voice,’ and it holds regardless of what the boss thinks or wants. The point of having workers democratically choose whether or not to unionize through signing union authorization cards or voting is that this is their right, as part of the freedom of association of the First Amendment.

They talk for themselves.