Wisconsin Worker Sent Home For Wearing Union Shirt to Work

[Modern School]

An employee of the Lincoln Hills School in Irma, Wisconsin, was sent home without pay last week for wearing a union t-shirt on the job, according to the Waussau Daily Herald. The employee was Ron McAllister, a youth counselor, who was wearing a t-shirt and jacket with an American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) logo.

The state Department of Corrections, which oversees the school, opened an investigation into the incident this week and sent a memo to staff members saying that workers are permitted to wear union clothing, despite the fact that their administrators sent a worker home for doing so. Not surprisingly, AFSCME is mistrustful of the DOC and continued with a planned demonstration against the DOC and union-busting governor Scott Walker on Monday. More than 70 people attended the protest outside Lincoln Hills School. AFSCME believes that Lincoln Hills Superintendent Paul Westerhaus sent McAllister home on Walker's behalf. McAllister also happens to be president of AFSCME Council 24.

No Unions Allowed
It was not just McAllister’s shirt that was offensive to management. Last week, he found that someone had gone through his office and removed an AFSCME sign, and he said a supervisor told him that union signs and union clothing were not allowed. So he removed his union jacket and shirt and started to unbutton his pants to remove his “union” underwear, before being sent home.

McAllister may be rekindling an old protest tactic made popular by the Doukhobors, a Russian Christian pacifist sect, many of who migrated to Western Canada in the 19th century (with the help of Tolstoy, Quakers and Peter Kropotkin), who have protested in the nude since the early 20th century. Canada even passed anti-nudity laws in response to the Doukhobors and have arrested hundreds of them for violating this law.

Doukhobors marching nude in Langham, Saskatchewan, Canada, 1903 (from Wikipedia)
Do As The Doukhobors Do
There’s a new tactic to use, my dear
If you have a protest on one wants to hear,
Just attend a rally where the b ig shots meet
Strip to your hide and walk down the street.
Way up in Canada, Doukhobor lads
Were sent to public schools disapproved of by their dads, So the Doukhobor mamas said “That’s enough”
And they went to the meeting in the buff.

Chorus:
Do as the Doukhobors do, honey,
Do as the Doukhobors do.
If public policy gets on your nerves
And no one pays attention to you
Throw away your dresses and your lingerie too,
And do as the Doukhobors do.

Our women hold meetings to stop atom tests,
They’re not afraid of billy clubs, cops and arrests,
They sign those petitions ‘til they’re sad in the face
And still they seem to be getting no place.
The little boat EVERYMAN couldn’t leave port,
Bomb tests continue of every sort
We’ve got to do something that’s wild and new,
And do as the Doukhobors do.

(Chorus)

Of course, down in Cannes on the coast of France,
You’d get no attention minus bras and pants,
If you’d hit the beach in a grin or less,
They’d think you had on last year’s bathing dress.
But up there in Canada at twenty below
People keep covered from head to toe.
Kennedy would send a cup of coffee or two
If we did as the Doukhobors do.

(Malvina Reynolds, 1962).

Modern School
http://modeducation.blogspot.com/2012/01/wisconsin-worker-sent-home-for-wearing.html

[Nevernose]

1. Thank goodness for my school

We all got together last year and had matching pro-union,pro-education shirts printed up, and then wore them every Wednesday. All with our admin's blessing, because they know the cuts aren't good for anybody.

[femmocrat]

2. We were in contentious contract negotiations for most of last year....

and we wore tee-shirts supporting our local every Friday. We also had BIG buttons made up and signs for our car windows. Not a peep from the administration.

I love working in a pro-union district. They were all teachers, too!

[ObamaFTW2012]

3. The employee was wrong to wear the shirt

Schools are for educating children, not making political statements, whether for or against any group or issue. Any clothing that makes a statement that might be distracting is inappropriate in K-12 schools.

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. We wear our union shirts every Friday

And we STILL manage to educate our students. Imagine that!

Now please explain how a union shirt is distracting. I'm not seeing that.

[ObamaFTW2012]

6. OK then

ANY message - political, religious, or even a product advertisement - is distracting. Yay for you and your freedom to wear a union shirt, but if I were a parent of a child in your school, I would be pissed off about it and make it a problem, in the same way that I would be pissed if I saw you wearing an "abortion kills" or "legalize it" (marijuana) shirt. I don't agree with the "abortion kills" shirt, while I do agree with legalizing marijuana, but neither issue should be catching the attention of students through t-shirts.

Our schools are seriously fucked up. We are graduating progressively dumber waves of children into society, and wasting excessive amounts of money doing it. We need to stop pumping money into football stadiums and BS activities that don't address the basic educational needs of children, and remove all the distractions that contribute to our schools failure - shirts with messages included - and start putting all of our effort into teaching our kids the skills they need to be productive, happy, self-sufficient citizens.

Your union shirt does nothing to help kids, just like the other shirts with messages, so it has no place being in school.

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. So supporting a union is the same thing as taking a stance on abortion or merijuana laws?

That is insane.

The right of workers to organize is an American tradition going back over 100 years. Teachers are workers and are entitled to the same workplace rights as every other worker in America.

In this climate of teachers being blamed for problems that actually don't exist in our schools, it is even more important that teachers are allowed to organize and collectively bargain for decent working conditions, including the right to wear union t-shirts to work.

Better working conditions lead to better learning conditions. It's a win win.

Our schools are NOT seriously fucked up and we are NOT graduating dumber kids. We are actually graduating MORE kids with better test scores. Both graduation rates and ACT scores have gone up in the last 50 years.

Public education has been in 'crisis' mode since it began. 100 years ago our schools were 'failing' because they were inundated with immigrants who didn't speak English. In the 1930s, our schools were 'failing' because too many families withdrew their children before they finished high school so they could go to work to help support the family. During the 40s, the war caused the graduation rate among men to drop, resulting in a 'crisis' in education. But then an entire generation was offered a college education via the GI Bill so we moved on. In the 50s and 60s, the fear that the Russians were going to land on the moon before the US led to a 'crisis' in Science education. Our kids were 'lazy' and listened to that awful rock and roll music! In the 70s, integration surfaced as the reason our public schools were 'failing'. We needed to keep the races separate to properly educate them! Then along came No Child Left Behind in 2002, the single most destructive law impacting our kids, that has enabled us to prove with unattainable test score requirements that our schools are 'failing' at an alarming rate.

Here's a secret: by 2014, every public school in the country, even those located in 'excellent' school districts, will be labeled as 'inadequate' under NCLB. Hence, a hurry up reform of the law is now taking place behind the scenes in DC. Something tells me THIS will be the next 'crisis' in education. Just a hunch.

The truth is that teachers are more highly trained NOW than ever before. Just 40 years ago, many states still did not require teachers to have a college degree and teaching certificates that never expired were handed out to anyone who asked for one.

Shirts with words on them don't make kids fail to learn. That is absolute nonsense. Kids fail to learn when schools aren't funded appropriately. That's a much larger problem than teachers wearing union shirts to school.

[ObamaFTW2012]

10. In the context of a learning environment,

yes, your union shirt is no different than a pro/anti abortion shirt or "legalize marijuana" shirt. The history of unions and education in America are irrelevant. NCLB is irrelevant. Your pride in your union is irrelevant. There are only 2 things that matter - 1) an environment conducive to learning (as in "free of distractions&quot , and 2) the skill/ability of teachers to educate students.

I will agree with you on teachers being required to be well educated and highly trained. My wife went back to college and recently finished her student teaching for her elementary education degree. I have spent many hours working with her on school projects and homework. In my opinion, it's a shame that our schools don't just let the teachers teach.

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. NCLB has led to a testing environment

Of course it matters! Calling it irrelevant just shows how little you know about education today.

My shirt does not make one bit of difference. Having to spend nearly every day testing or prepping for a test - that is a distraction from real teaching and learning.

[ObamaFTW2012]

13. Now you've identified 2 distractions.

Congrats.

Hopefully NCLB gets repealed. That was a well-intentioned clusterfuck of unfunded federal mandates that needs to get flushed.

[knitter4democracy]

18. So, let me see if I understand you properly.

Teachers cannot do anything, wear anything, or say anything that could possibly be seen as disruptive, right? So, those men had better have short hair, those women had better wear long skirts, and we English teachers had better not teach any literature that could possibly make the kids think, right?

Seriously--your argument is from the 1800s. It's the same thinking that wouldn't allow a married woman to teach, that forced teachers to wear uniforms and act perfectly outside of school as well because they could get fired for going to a party and having a drink. For crying out loud, anything and everything I do as a teacher could be described as distracting, from wearing red on Tuesdays to wearing my hair down just because I didn't have time to put it up that morning.

[ObamaFTW2012]

19. You don't understand me correctly

I never said nor inferred anything regarding literature. As a teacher, it is your job to make kids think. What you make the kids think about is the issue. I want the kids to think about the curriculum, not the message on your shirt.

Your second paragraph is just nonsense. I won't bother responding to it in detail.

[proud2BlibKansan]

20. That second paragraph is precisely the point

What teachers wear has no impact on student learning. We fought that battle back in the 70s.

It also doesn't matter if the teacher is married or pregnant. Or a nun not wearing a habit. Or a male or female.

[knitter4democracy]

21. What we do is more than the curriculum, though.

Everything we do is educational. When I spend a few minutes with a student after school listening to her about her abusive dad or field a student's question about how to deal with a surprise pregnancy, that's part of my job, too. Getting kids to think because of something on my shirt or ask questions because they see a book I'm reading is part of my job.

Especially in English, everything is our curriculum in all reality. Getting kids to think is my job.

[MichiganVote]

5. So then according to your logic, George Bush never should have been in that Fl. school.

In fact, no politician should set foot in a school with the press following along. Nor should schools support the election process by having voting booths in their buildings as they would then be supporting a political process. Not to mention the Civic's teachers who have mock elections as a way to teach youth about the political process.

And why stop with union garb? Afterall, the GAP, PEPSI, COKE stuff has
gotta go too. Not to mention the sports garb from Addidas, Nike and Champion. Imagine that--no more Champion logo sock in the school because you just know those companies think that schools are only for educating kids. Certainly not for marketing their products.

Absolutely--as soon as Canteen is thrown out of the schools for their near monopoly of the economics of lousy lunch food, the world will be a better place.

[ObamaFTW2012]

7. the difference,

which you apparently fail to grasp, is that the examples you mention in your first paragraph are educational activities conducted in the controlled environment of the classroom. There is a specific educational purpose for those examples, and there is discussion taking place that is guided by the teacher (or teachers).

The t-shirt with the message conveys an idea without context or guidance. A child doesn't understand unions, or the marijuana debate, or the abortion debate, or gun control, or any other issue-related idea you can convey with a few words printed on a shirt. The shirt with a message creates questions in the mind of the child, consuming attention that would otherwise be given to more important matters, like classroom discussion.

Your second paragraph examples are not messages. They're name brands. Name brands (and logos) do nothing more than reinforce memorization of the brand in support of marketing. They convey no message nor do they oversimplify a position. They do not capture the attention of people in the same way that t-shirts with messages do.

Try again.

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. So George Bush wasn't a distraction in that Florida school?

Is that what you're saying?

A union shirt is a distraction but the president and his entourage of SS agents is not.

Gotcha.

[ObamaFTW2012]

11. I don't know enough about the particular event you're referring to,

but in general an arranged visit by a political leader (regardless of party or office) has some educational value. Again, a t-shirt with a message does not.

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. You don't know about 9/11/01?

The day George Bush sat in a 1st grade classroom in Florida listening to the teacher read My Pet Goat to the children (and to him) while America was experiencing the worst terrorist attack on its soil in its history?

You don't know about THAT???

Here's how it went - the president visited the school, preceded by days of visits by SS agents securing the site, conducting background checks on every adult in the building. The day of the visit at least 15 or 20 OTHER people accompany the president, followed by scores of reporters with video cameras and bright lights. This entourage of adults follows the president everywhere he goes in the school and is sitting in the classroom while My Pet Goat is being read.

Then the word of the attack on NYC is passed along to the president, who sits there for an eternity before getting up and taking over an adjacent room in that school, turning it into a command center for his presidential team to discuss the attack in New York. Meanwhile reporters mill through the hallways of the school waiting for updates on the terror attacks.

And you think a shirt a teacher wears is MORE DISTRACTING than THAT???

[ObamaFTW2012]

15. Ahhhh

OK. THAT Florida school.

He should have cut that classroom visit short, given that we were experiencing a Pearl Harbor type event. As for the rest of it, it was still a unique educational experience for the children - lights, cameras, Secret Service, and all - while a union t-shirt still has no educational value and is a classroom distraction.

[MichiganVote]

17. Actually I think it was educational. We were educated about what a complete moron GWB was and is.

How nice for the children to witness what a complete ass the President of the United States was on that day. But I digress.

In case you need to know it without looking it up, the wanna be, couldn't possibly be--President, his aides, the SS and the press as well as ALL of the school personnel--had logo identification.

Can't find any reference to anyone wearing a T shirt with a union logo tho'. Thank goodness for that or the children surely would have been traumatized by that.

Exactly what educational value could George Bush the half wit possibly provide to school children?

[MichiganVote]

16. Really. So George Bush went to that school to teach? And none of the children in school

have parents who belong to unions? Not to mention the fact that the "marijuana" debate is on TV, like, everyday. Or the kids smoke it themselves. I don't know, you tell me. You claim to know them all so well apparently.

If the name brands of products do nothing more than reinforce memorization of a brand--why should the logo of a union be any different? And why is that bad? The T shirts "convey no message", nor do they "oversimplify a position".

Isn't it true that what clothing with name brands do is encourage identification?