Detroit Teachers Strike (1982)

Tue Sep 14, 1982

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On this day in 1982, 10,000 teachers in Detroit walked off the job over a Board of Education demand for pay cuts of 8%, leaving 201,000 schoolchildren with the prospect of several days off. The teachers did this despite a Michigan law prohibiting public employees from striking.

The Detroit teacher’s strike was the largest of a number of school labor disputes marring the back-to-school season around the country that year, when social spending cuts were hitting schools and teachers particularly hard.

Around the same time, more than 7,500 other teachers were on strike elsewhere in Michigan and in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio.