At a time in our state when hand wringing over everything that's wrong and contemplating the flaws in our navel is all the rage, we should give pause and give thanks for one aspect of how we operate as a state. That is, how we peacefully negotiate teacher collective bargaining agreements.

Chicago recently ended its 11-day strike of some 25,000 educators affecting 300,000 public school students. It is hard to overstate the enormous burden the strike placed on children, their parents and, in no small measure, their grandparents in an overwhelmingly minority and economically disadvantaged school district.

Chicago is not alone in these struggles. Large and sustained teacher strikes in conservative states such as West Virginia, Oklahoma and Arizona and the liberal bastions of Los Angeles and Denver are very recent. Speaking in Chicago, Randi Weingarten, president of the largest teacher's union, said, "This is now a strategy."

An interesting component of the Chicago strike was that it presented a clear example of where the demands of the union went beyond the basic contractual elements of wages, health insurance, etc., and went far into the realm of social issues. Fundamental questions of equity between rich and poor, strategies to provide safety to immigrants and affordable housing were all considered fair game in the collective bargaining arena. Look for this trend to continue.

Historically, Connecticut suffered its own tipping point concerning the process during the Bridgeport teacher strike in September 1978, in which teachers were imprisoned for days after disobeying a judicial order to go back to work and end an illegal strike. It was ugly, and it prompted a 1979 law that, with some tweaking, is still in force today. The statute requires that, upon the expiration of a collective bargaining agreement, the parties are mandated to arrive at a negotiated agreement in a short period of time. Should they not, compulsory binding interest arbitration is imposed with its own mandated timeframes. The parties must present to a panel of arbitrators the issues and supporting evidence and an award is issued in relatively short order.

Connecticut's collective bargaining process provides for a neutral determination of the issues should the parties not agree, and in exchange we have not had a teacher strike in the past 40 years.

Now, there is a cost for making the trains run on time. The short timeframe does not allow for a great deal of discussion or investigation into the many complex issues in the world of education. One can imagine the scheduling nightmare of getting large negotiating teams on both labor and management and the small education labor bar together. And, rightfully, the numerous boards of education throughout the state can point to instances in which these neutral panels have sided with unions.

On balance, however, as we close 2019, we should celebrate the process we have had in place for 40 years. It keeps teachers in classrooms, students at desks and moms, dads and grandparents less disrupted, with predictable schedules in which to work and live their lives.