Strike Ambivalence

I was chatting with my mother yesterday (a nice holiday diversion, try it if you have a mother around). We were bouncing quickly from personal affairs to those of the world. I was discussing my ambivalence about being in a union, and all the challenges and benefits it provides. I said that I had a hard time feeling that a teachers' strike would have the impact that would be most socially beneficial. I appreciate that my union is working hard to maintain my job security and financial well-being, but I wonder if the goal of my job - teaching kids - doesn't sometimes get obscured by the machinations of the teacher's union. I do not want caps on my health care, and I would very much like to make a consistent living (if not comfortably living) wage. Here's the rub for me: I know that the families of the kids that I am teaching would like the same thing, but have little or no recourse in this matter. The hope is that a quality education will give these students the opportunity to change the world they live in, or give them choices about what part of the world they will grow into. The number of kids I deal with on a daily basis who have serious abandonment issues would be another reason to think long and hard before I were to walk out on my job for a day, or a week, or more.
Earlier this week, New York City's mayor (and billionaire) Michael Bloomberg admonished those transit workers who took part in the city's three day strike. The mayor complained that union leaders had "thuggishly turned their backs on New York City and disgraced the noble concept of public service." Bloomberg continued to assert that businesses in New York lost $1 billion in revenue during last week's three-day transit strike. Well, heck, isn't that the idea of a strike? To make apparent the connection between all forms of service and industry, disrupting it strategically to make the importance of every link in that chain? Still, the impact won't be felt in the boardrooms for some time. The people who had to get to work on time the week before Christmas to make sure they could make rent and put groceries on the table - they felt it. The gulf between them that gots and them that don't has widened to a frightening degree.
Back here in Oakland, I enjoy my two weeks of Winter Break, and I await the fact-finders' report with my fingers crossed and my hopes alive for the new year.