Twenty years have passed since Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana, devastating New Orleans and the surrounding parishes. But the legacy of the storm, and the decisions made in its wake, continue to structure the political economy and social fabric of the city and the state. In the realm of education, the mass firing of 7,500 New Orleans educators—the largest loss of Black teachers since the closure of historically Black schools following Brown v. Board of Education in 1954—haunts the school system, which, like much of the country, has been experiencing a years-long teacher shortage. My book, Building Power, Breaking Power: The United Teachers of New Orleans, 1965-2008, explores the impact of the mass dismissals and the remaking of the school system as the country’s first all-charter school district. But it also looks back at the history of that union and discusses what made the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO) such a potent threat to the school reformers that it had to be targeted and destroyed in the aftermath of the storm—before most residents had even returned to the city.
UTNO—then called Local 527—was chartered in 1937 as a segregated Black local of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The book picks up the story in 1965 when Local 527 launched its campaign for collective bargaining. The union was successful in this campaign because it borrowed strategies and tactics from the civil rights movement and combined its workplace demands with struggles for racial justice. The racial justice demands were especially effective amidst the desegregation of the school district and the city. Leading up to the school board’s vote to approve collective bargaining in 1974, Local 527 held two strikes, symbolizing the union’s commitment to protest and disruption. Veronica Hill, then the union’s president, recalls about the 1966 strike: “We were the first teachers in the South, white or Black, who ever walked off the job. We were the real saints because we didn’t know whether we were going to have a job or not.”
In 1972, Local 527 merged with a majority-white local to form the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO). This picture shows the integrated merger team. Nat LaCour (standing, center) would become UTNO's first president.
Local 527 rallied teachers across the color line, merging with a historically white local in 1972 to form the United Teachers of New Orleans. Yet the union’s members continued to elect Black leaders and connect their struggles to racism and equity. “Integration in the South had been a movement where Blacks integrated into white situations. Blacks went to white churches, Blacks moved into white neighborhoods, Blacks went into white restaurants. But it was never whites moving into a majority Black setting. I think UTNO was the first institution I know where that happened,” reflects Nat LaCour, longtime UTNO president.
UTNO organizers also fought for paraprofessionals and clerical workers to join the union. These constituencies consisted overwhelmingly of Black women. The two groups won collective bargaining agreements in 1975 and 1982 respectively. UTNO also built “me-too” contracts under which lower-paid janitors, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, and maintenance workers, who were organized with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the Teamsters, were granted raises whenever the teachers received them. UTNO galvanized the education sector, and it did so as one of the only teachers’ unions in the South with collective bargaining rights.
UTNO was also remarkable in its commitment to union democracy and building rank and file leadership. I argue that this, too, was inspired by the civil rights movement. Figures like Septima Clark and Ella Baker fostered organizing cultures that uplifted working class leadership, created buy-in for group decisions, and gave participants a feeling of political efficacy. Under the leadership of president Nat LaCour, the union prioritized member participation, ensuring that every member felt they had a crucial role to play in the success of the group. “UTNO is the most direct democratic thing I have ever been in in my life,” recalls long-time teacher Patti Reynolds. When UTNO negotiated a paraprofessional contract, for example, the negotiators were all paraprofessionals. This required an immense program of member education and training. The union also developed a variety of institutions intended to support educators, such as a teacher center, a health and wellness fund, and a credit union. All of these institutions were member-run. Members took special pride in the teacher center, which provided materials and training for educators and parents, and held an annual conference sharing best practices in the field. “It was like we were educating our own people and we were fine-tuning our own trade,” remembers former UTNO staffer Jo Anna Russo.
UTNO members attend a school board meeting in 1976, carrying balloons filled with "hot air." They released the balloons when UTNO president Nat LaCour asked the room what they thought about the board's position at the negotiating table. UTNO's commitment to protest and to encouraging participation in the processes of city government were two keys to its success.
In addition to internal democracy, UTNO promoted participation in larger political struggles, including by advocating for progressive candidates and causes. The union housed the local chapters of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and the Coalition of Labor Union Women, as well as the A. Philip Randolph Institute, which promoted get out the vote efforts and civil rights causes. The union interviewed and endorsed candidates. Its endorsements carried some weight, especially in local elections. “All the candidates wanted our endorsement,” says teacher Leoance Williams. “We gave them workers. We would even have someone in their campaign headquarters help coordinate their activities. And also, we gave them money.” Teachers recall with pride their participation in UTNO’s “Flying Squad,” which were charter buses the union sent throughout the city encouraging people to vote. This commitment to democratic participation, both within the union and externally, promoted a vision of the school district and the city that prioritized collaboration, open debate, and bringing everyone to the table. It is exactly what would be extinguished in fall 2005.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, as the city and the school system dealt with a fiscal crisis, funding cuts, and a poverty stricken populace, UTNO, in some ways, became more bureaucratic and conservative. Its early vitality, when nearly every member felt they had played a part in the union’s success, faded. Some members began to see the union as an outside entity that existed primarily to service their needs or assist them if they were treated unfairly by school administrators. Still, the union held a successful strike in 1990 seeking raises for paraprofessionals. The strike illustrated the union’s continued commitment to protest and uplifting the most vulnerable members of the school community. UTNO remained, despite declines in organized labor across the country, the largest union local in Louisiana.
UTNO’s continued power was on full display leading up to the storm when school reformers attempted to pass privatization reforms intended to limit union power and restructure the schools along a business model. For example, UTNO—and its state affiliate, the Louisiana Federation of Teachers—blocked repeated attempts to start a statewide private-school voucher program that would have directed hundreds of thousands of public dollars toward private and parochial schools. Following the mass dismissal of educators, a voucher program was established, with disappointing results. The union also limited the spread of charter schools in the city by fighting for legislation establishing that a school could only be converted into a charter if 75% of the school’s teachers and parents voted in favor of the change. Instead of taking public money away from the publicly elected school board, UTNO repeatedly suggested that increased school funding, and investing in teachers, would ease the district’s woes and demonstrate a real commitment to the city’s children.
The UTNO "Flying Squad" bus in 1995. UTNO members would ride this bus around the city, encouraging residents to vote and canvassing for UTNO-endorsed candidates.
When Hurricane Katrina flooded the city, in August 2005, reformers finally saw an opportunity to bypass UTNO, seize control of the school district, and remake it as the nation’s first all-charter school district. This project was explicitly elite-led and anti-democratic. The mass firing of the educators eviscerated the union and also significantly changed the city’s teacher workforce, which became dramatically whiter and less experienced. Though the union filed lawsuits and tried to organize returning teachers, their efforts were insufficient to stop the reforms from moving forward. “The union is made up of people, the union is not a building, the union is not a name, the union is people,” reflects teacher Gwendolyn Adams. “And at that point, when they fired all the teachers, people were displaced all over the country. So there really wasn’t a union, because people were not back home yet, and they took advantage of that.” In the end, the union’s commitment to democracy, and its reliance on member participation, led to its dismantling in the face of disaster.
Today the school district is characterized by a revolving door of operators and schools and few opportunities for teacher or parent voice. Though some researchers celebrate higher test scores and graduation rates, these successes have been accompanied by a significant increase in spending in the district, lending credence to UTNO’s argument that the issue with the schools was neither mismanagement nor uncaring educators, but divestment, crumbling infrastructure, and poverty. Though UTNO has won collective bargaining at a handful of stand-alone charter schools, the culture in many of the schools is virulently anti-union. The organizing climate is challenging—collective bargaining agreements must be reached with individual charter networks, rather than the district. Even when UTNO wins, the schools are often shut down. This landscape requires high investment from the union with little potential payoff.
Organizers and academics can learn some crucial lessons from the UTNO story:
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There is a need to further study the role of Black educators and their influence on education and labor policies in the South.
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The connection between civil rights unionism and “bargaining for the common good” – a strategy in which unions use the collective bargaining process to win benefits that extend beyond their members, such as racial justice reforms – should be further explored. This strategy was key to UTNO’s early success.
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The pro-charter education reform movement is explicitly anti-union and antidemocratic and has devastating and disproportionate impacts on Black workers and the Black community.
In the words of late education scholar Jean Anyon, “we need to reconsider what counts as education policy. The elimination of economic, housing, and other public policies responsible for urban poverty and segregation must become companion goals of urban educational reform.” UTNO demonstrated one way that a union could be active in those efforts.
Building Power, Breaking Power: The United Teachers of New Orleans, 1965-2008 is available through the University of North Carolina Press.
All photos courtesy of the United Teachers of New Orleans.
