MTA President On What Ongoing Dispute Could Mean for MA
Anusha Sambangi
CO-EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Max Page, current president of the Massachusetts Teachers Union (MTA), attended the Andover Education Association’s (AEA) first day of the strike on Friday, November 10. As an educator himself and having served as the MTA’s president for almost over a year, Page shared his perspective on the events that have been unfolding over the past few days.
Strikeout attendee holds up an “ANDOVER EDUCATORS ON STRIKE!” sign.
Why are you here at the strike today?
Well, I’m the president of this state’s Teachers Association. This represents 117,000 public school and college educators in 400 local areas and Andover is one of those areas. We represent them, stand behind them, and support them in their fight for a fair contract.
What inspired you to come here and support Andover educators?
I mean, it’s so inspiring when you have a group of educators who want to demand what’s right for the schools, including the betterment of students and educators, especially the instructional assistants. It’s the educators who know best what students need. I love that they’re standing up and willing to do whatever is needed to get it right.
Have you seen similar movements across Massachusetts, for example, teachers fighting for different contracts?
Absolutely. You know, really, there’s been this growing momentum over the past decade of educators not willing to just accept whatever is being offered, and they’re demanding more–they’re raising their level of expectation for their students and for themselves as educators and that’s been going on for the past number of years. It’s been really exciting.
How do you feel about it being illegal here in Massachusetts to strike?
You know what Representative Erica Uyterhoeven from Somerville was saying in her speech–we’ve worked on [a bill] with her, which [would] remove the prohibition of striking [in Massachusetts.] There’s a great history and terrible history [to the bill] which goes back to the time when Boston Police officers went on strike in 1919. And I can tell you there’s a lot of stories around that. But that eventually became this tradition of “Oh, we don’t let public sector workers go on strike” and it was eventually enshrined in law. And it’s a bad law. It’s wrong. It’s frankly, immoral. So we’ve been working to change that law. But clearly educators after nine months decided that this is what they needed to do.
Do you see any of the demands here getting enshrined in state law in the near future?
You know, one of the things that we do believe is that paid parental leave should be universal. It is universal for private sector workers and many public sector workers, but not municipal workers. So it’s a huge problem. The MTA helped win this for most workers, but it excluded municipal workers. So educators who are two-thirds of women who are most likely to take the paid parental leave, do not have it by right. So while people are fighting for it here in Andover, we hope eventually to have that be state law.
