A Course in Defiance

The worst conflict in the history of the nation's largest school system raced toward a showdown last week. For more than two months, New York City's board of education had talked contract terms with the teachers' union. In 70 sessions--many of them shirt-sleeved, round-the-clock meetings--the two sides worked to open the city's 860 schools this week on schedule. Then, late in the week, negotiations collapsed, and the union was left contradictorily blustering that it would strike and welcoming mediation.

"Mean & Inevitable." Of New York's 43,000 teachers, nearly half--21,000--are members of the militant United Federation of Teachers. When the un ion's contract expired last June, U.F.T. President Charles Cogen, 59, demanded higher pay. The state's Condon-Wadlin law, passed in 1947 after a teachers' strike in Buffalo, forbids strikes by public employees and sets a high price for disobedience--loss of two days' pay for every day out, loss of tenure and normal salary increases. But Cogen's membership overwhelmingly voted to strike.

New York's teachers are well paid for big cities, with salaries ranging from $5,300 for a beginner to a maximum of $10,445 for a teacher with tenure, an M.A. and 30 graduate credits. Cogen originally asked for $56 million a year for the next three years, which would have resulted in average increases of $3,700 over the period. During the negotiations, he scaled down his demands, but remained insistent on "money now." School Superintendent Calvin E. Gross, the topflight educator brought in five months ago from Pittsburgh to reform the city's system, was sympathetic, but short of cash. He finally countered with an offer of at least $15 million contingent on a two-year contract, and with the increase coming next year. He warned teachers that a strike would invoke the Condon-Wadlin penalties, which were "mean and inevitable."

"Courage & Idealism." Cogen, a short (5 ft. 2 in.) and usually kindly Brooklyn social studies teacher, remained defiant. Though an injunction was brought against the union, Cogen and his teachers refused to obey it. Before a tumultuous meeting of the U.F.T. delegates' assembly, he promised to run the strike from jail, if necessary. "Give 'em hell, Charley," bellowed the delegates, rejecting Gross's offer by 1,500 to 17.

New York's teachers shook their fists in the face of overwhelming odds--moral, legal and economic. The U.F.T. has no strike fund, and State Commissioner of Education James E. Allen Jr. warned that he could annul the license of every striking teacher. Cogen rejected the idea that the sight of teachers striking against the law might be an unedifying lesson for students. "The prohibition of strikes is unfair, unjust and totalitarian," he argued. "We shall be setting a good example for our students. Civic courage and idealism should be practiced by those who teach it." Superintendent Gross prepared for the worst, authorized his principals as a last recourse to call in unlicensed substitutes.

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