In April 1970, Minneapolis public school teachers went on strike to demand higher pay and smaller class sizes. The strike resulted in the passage of the Public Employment Labor Relations Act, granting public employees—including teachers—the right to bargain collectively.
Teachers’ unions were active in Minnesota from 1861, when the Minnesota Education Association formed in Rochester. In 1946, St. Paul Public School teachers went on strike—the first organized teachers’ strike in the nation. More than 1,100 teachers struck for over a month, demanding smaller class sizes, funding for textbooks, improvements to facilities, and higher pay. The strike succeeded and attracted national attention.
Five years later, the Minnesota legislature passed a law prohibiting all strikes by public employees. The law shifted in the next several years to include provisions that encouraged both sides of a labor dispute to negotiate and compromise, but the law did not require employers to recognize workers’ demands. If public employees––including teachers––were dissatisfied with pay or working conditions, they could not go on strike to insist their demands were heard.
In the late 1960s, Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) faced the same challenges that their counterparts across the river had protested twenty years earlier. Class sizes were growing significantly. Classroom supplies were scarce, and teachers were forced to purchase their own or beg families to contribute. Negotiations between the teachers’ unions and district administration to address these issues, as well as teacher pay, had been in process for several months of the 1969–1970 school year, without reaching an agreement. By spring 1970, the teachers’ bargaining units were preparing to take further action.
MPS teachers belonged to one of two separate unions: the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and the Minneapolis Education Association. On April 6, 1970, Local 59 of the federation voted to go on strike. The association did not vote to strike, instead asking the district for two days’ leave of absence for its members, which the district declined.
On the morning of April 9, 1970, 2,200 Minneapolis teachers picketed in front of district schools, an act that was illegal under Minnesota law. Teachers on strike risked losing not only their jobs, but also their benefits and pensions. For twenty days, teachers walked the picket line, often alongside their students and families. The Minneapolis School District closed all schools starting April 13; more than half of the district’s teachers were on strike, making instruction during regular school days impossible.
The strike ended on April 29, when teachers accepted a compromise from the district. MPS leadership offered a revised wage and a no-reprisal clause that prevented the school board from imposing penalties on teachers who were illegally on strike.
The long disruption of school schedules threw into sharp relief the impact of work stoppages and the impact of public employees’ limited bargaining power. In 1971, the Minnesota legislature passed the Public Employee Labor Relations Act (PELRA), granting public employees bargaining rights similar to those in the private sector. PELRA allows for public employees to strike legally if negotiations are deadlocked and certain requirements are met.
During the same state legislative session, the Minnesota legislature passed new tax laws that, alongside PELRA, contributed to an overhaul of the state’s public school systems. Schools were solely funded by local property taxes, which increased local residents’ tax bills, levied additional pressure on school districts to balance their budgets, and created disparities between low-income and high-income communities. The set of reformed laws known as the Minnesota Miracle determined school funding until 2002, when tax laws changed.
Minneapolis Public School teachers did not go on strike again until March 2022, and this time, they struck with the legal protection of PELRA. Their demands mirrored their 1970s peers’, and after two and a half weeks, Minneapolis teachers returned to school with an agreement that increased pay, addressed class sizes, and provided supports for teachers’ mental health.