A Judge in a New Jersey suburban town has been doling out detention to teachers in a bitter industrial dispute that has left 230 striking teachers languishing in jail for contempt. As the three judges who ordered them back to work go through their ranks alphabetically the numbers could rise to 750. Meanwhile, school is out for 10,500 pupils.
The dispute is over an attempt by the Board of Education of the Middletown township to require teachers at 17 schools to contribute up to 7 per cent of their salary towards their health insurance costs. A New Jersey statute makes strikes by teachers and other public service employees illegal.
Superior Court Judge Clarkson Fisher Jr., at the request of the board, issued a back-to-work order last Thursday. When the teachers refused, he started his alphabetical jailings, but the work was so onerous that he had to rope in two more judges.
The board had wanted a tougher penalty - that the strikers be fired.
Amid tears and vows not to return to work until they received a new contract, teachers have told the court they would rather be behind bars than bow to school administrators they distrust.
"We are angry and scared about having to go to jail," Mr Jim Pincus, a high school maths teacher for 33 years, said "The Board of Education has been mistreating us for years and trying to destroy the union," he said.
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