Dust settles after strike; levy set for March
By Daniel Sands
The teacher strike on Jan.10 and 11 will long be remembered at Heights High by students and staff alike and may affect the outcome of the March 25 levy.
Negotiations for a new contract -the previous one expired Dec. 31 -had been going on since last February. By November, a strike seemed inevitable and was favored by more than 90 per cent of the Cleveland Heights-University Heights teachers, American Federation of Teachers local 785, AFLCIO, provided that an agreement was not reached by Jan. 10, 1980.
The atmosphere was tense. The Cleveland Heights-University Heights School Board and the Teachers Union spent hundreds of dollars explaining their sides of negotiations through full-page ads in the Sun Press. The Board had 148 substitutes, specially hired at a hefty $80 per day, ready to report for duty on Thursday, Jan. 10. The Union dubber these certificated teachers "strike-breakers," accused the Board of hiring armed guards to protect them and threatened violence as a result of the "scabs" presence. A letter from the superintendent was sent to parents explaining that school would be in session, strike or no.
Late Wednesday night, the media reported that "a tentative agreement has been reached," but that did not mention the details of agreement: that the Board would not bring in strike-breakers, if the Union would "engage in peaceful and informational picketing only", and would reduce the number of pickets at each school to two as quickly as possible. On Jan. 10 the CH-UH Teachers' Union engaged in "peaceful informational picketing," and the negotiating teams did reach a tentative agreement: the Board accepted the Union's latest counter-proposal. The next day, Jand. 11, the teachers voted overwhelmingly in favor of the proposal, and there were no pickets. The teachers returned to work on Monday, Jan. 13.