Over forty years ago, teachers in Bridgeport, Connecticut walked out of their schools and went on strike after repeated failed contract negotiations with the school board. Few of those teachers could have predicted just how long and bitter their strike would be — nineteen days, with over 274 teachers being arrested — and the long-lasting implications it would have for educators across the state, serving as the catalyst for Connecticut’s binding arbitration law passed just one year later in 1979 that diminished the power of rank-and-file teachers in the state.

Descriptions of working conditions leading up to the strike will sound familiar to many teachers today. Classrooms were overcrowded, schools lacked specialists for art, music, and physical education programs, and the city refused to meet the union’s demands for a pay raise. The teachers’ contract expired in 1978, and union officials made a pay increase their top priority. But the city of Bridgeport was only willing to offer a 5 percent raise — less than half of what teachers were asking for. When the city refused to budge after months of failed contract negotiations, teachers took to the picket line.

Though the strike in Bridgeport coincided with several other teachers’ strikes in states across the United States, only the strike in Bridgeport would attract worldwide attention. The bitterness of the Bridgeport strike persuaded legislators and the school board that change was needed in the district’s schools. The striking teachers and the school board would eventually agree to settle the matter through binding arbitration, setting the precedent for the law that would be passed in the year following the strike.