Stearns
Stearns
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CAROLINE STEARNS
The 1930s were a time of bitter conflict between labor and management and workers, fearing layoff or worse began to press with greater success for industry-wide union organizations. The struggle was not an easy one as the history of Flint’s sit-down strike reveals. Yet by the end of the decade it was increasingly clear to the nation that unions were to be an integral part of American economic life – through the process might be long and difficult. In general the salaries at the junior college were similar to those of the city school system in Flint. However teaching loads were something else again. A 1946 report describing the financial condition of the college said, “There is no fixed policy describing teaching loads in Junior College. For the most part, fair and reasonable loads have the product of ‘gentlemen’s’ agreements between high-principled colleagues.” The report then goes on to describe how some of the colleagues were teaching dramatically more hours per week than others. The story of Caroline Stearns is a story of one instructor who took great risks for her beliefs and paid a very high price for them. In the mid-1930s teachers were denied the right to bargain collectively for working conditions, and even expressing sympathy for those who were organizing unions could be grounds for dismissal. In 1937 four Flint teachers – Morris Roumm, Shirley Olmstead, Edmund Alubowicz and Caroline Stearns – attempted to organize a teachers union, the Flint Federation of Teachers. Stearns was an English teacher at Flint Junior College. The others taught in the K-12 system. In response, at the May board meeting of that year all four were informed that they would not have their contracts renewed for the following year. Three of them – Alubowicz, Roumm and Stearns – were said to have “expressed most undesirable attitudes.” Olmstead was listed as “definitely unsatisfactory” and transferred to a lower position, and placed on probation. There was much support for the four in the community, as one might expect in a time of active labor organization in Flint. However, there was also strong anti-labor sentiment and only Alubowicz and Roumm regained their teaching positions. Carolyn Stearns never taught again in Flint. For nearly 10 years she suffered with increasing financial problems and declining health, before she obtained a teaching position at Ferris Institute (now Ferris State University). She taught there for only one year. In 1947, at age 60, she died of cancer in Big Rapids. Flint attorney Michael Evanoff, a former student of Stearns said, “It was a very sad ending to a brilliant teaching career and a cruelly unjust attack by the Flint Board of Education.” Stearns stood up for her beliefs when it was very risky for teachers to disagree with those in power in even the slightest way. Evanoff believes that her stand on principle cost Stearns her job, her health and ultimately her life. After her initial struggle, full recognition of a faculty union at the college wouldn’t come until the late 1960s. Marie Prahl recalled the conflict over newly organized unions and management in the 1930s as one of her most difficult times at the college. She was one of the first to join a teacher’s union and because of that, her father, a GM employee, received pressure from management at Buick. This article was extracted and transcribed by
Geraldine Waite from a work by Paul Rozycki, A Clearer Image The 75
Year History of Mott Community College, (Flint, MI:, January 1998) |
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