Tuesday, August 25, 2015

What will it be like next year?

I’m stickin’ with the union? Oh, for sure! 

When students arrive on the first day of school, it is a glaring reminder I get to do my job again. It’s not that I have to do my job again. It is a privilege to be a teacher. I’m thankful that I have a union that advocates for our members on issues that impact our students like class size. Teachers serve our nation in a similar way to the military. Teaching takes courage, few people can do it, and few people understand what we actually do and experience other than our colleagues. However, I am concerned about our profession this time next Fall because of an attempt  to expand the meaning of the word political.

By the time most people read this President Randi Weingarten will have hosted a town hall at Minneapolis Federation of Teachers local 59 by the time this is published. I’m excited she is out talking with educators because we need to reinforce the message unions are here to advance education, not slow it down. What we negotiate in contracts is inherently good for the students. If we don’t stand together, the families and students we honorably serve could be negatively impacted.

The Case

Our profession is under attack, again. Last year Vegara went after seniority in California. This year it’s a nationwide issue. By June 30, the Supreme Court will decide the case Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association (CTA). 

Rebecca Friedrichs and her co-petitioners, including the Christian Educators Association, represented by The Center for Individual Rights, argue collective bargaining is a political activity. 
These educators did not agree with their union’s activities related to supporting tenure and maintaining their current pension system, among other contentions. So they sued CTA because they did not agree with their union; they contend their First Amendment rights were violated.

This relates to how we fund our union’s work. In twenty six states, if you do not sign up to be a full dues paying member, you still pay “fair share” dues that contribute to collective bargaining, enforcement of contracts, and due process of union members. Since Friedrichs claims that collective bargaining is political, fair share dues should not be compulsory. 

Background

 In 1977, the Supreme Court decided in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education that agency fees (fair share dues) are constitutional as a condition for employment in public sector unions as long as those fees go towards collective bargaining activities that I mentioned above. 

Each union local typically has a Committee on Political Education (COPE). Members of the union choose to contribute to this committee to work on their behalf on political activities. For example, I testified in opposition to a proposed bill that would rank teachers from best to worst in each school using standardized tests and observations. Our legislators need to hear from teachers. That was a political expense. This is how unions comply with the Abood decision today. I’m thankful to my colleagues for allowing me that honor because few politicians, unless they were teachers, know the implications that would have. 

Furthermore, the last relevant test of whether or not the Supreme Court might uphold Abood was in 2014 with Harris v. Quinn. In short, healthcare workers who did not want to join the Service Employee’s International Union because they felt their First Amendment rights were infringed upon, won. In a 5-4 decision, Justice Kennedy, the swing vote on the court, sided with Justice Alito’s opinion where he writes, “‘…preventing nonmembers from free-riding on the union’s efforts’ is rationale ‘generally insufficient to overcome First Amendment objections.’” This decision was a private sector collective bargaining case, but the framework is incredibly similar. 

My Analysis

The question in the title of this post could be a very real question for an uncertain number of teachers June 2016—especially new educators. If the Supreme Court decides in favor Friedrichs, public unions nationwide will be deeply impacted. In my opinion, you must become a full dues paying member to counter act this likely possibility.

I’m a naturally optimistic and suspicious person. I’m optimistic we can inform our colleagues that without our union advocating for fair class sizes, reasonable due process, and reduced standardized testing quality learning is in deeper jeopardy than it is this today. We must be full dues paying members of our union. Don’t be fooled the money you save will outweigh the benefits of lower wages, larger class sizes, smaller pension, and a weaker position to stand up for your students in the future against a principal who doesn’t like you. I am suspicious of the motivation behind Friedrichs

It is suspicious that union advocacy is political for public employee unions, but not organizations that act like unions. The Christian Educators Association (CEA), one of the petitioners, pushes a political agenda. At least two of the plaintiffs in Friedrichs are members. The CEA collects fees, offers $2,000,000 in professional liability insurance, and advances a very conservative agenda to include Christian principles such as “Proclaiming God’s Word as the source for wisdom and knowledge” to be a part of public education. The CEA is not a union. They do not negotiate contracts, but push for political changes like merging more religion in public schools. It doesn’t take long to see the list of supporting briefs for Friedrichs come from organizations that are distinctly anti-union as well. No surprise there. 

Friedrichs is about the meaning of the word political and who gets to benefit by framing its implied meaning best. The common use of the word political stretches away from the definitions easily Googled. We use it so frequently it stands to argue nearly everything from office promotions to who won the neighborhood chili cook off could apply to it. What that means is that  if we don’t like a decision, we can call it political. To me, that is what is happening in the Friedrichs  case. They are attempting to enshrine the common misusage of political into the constitution because they do not like collective bargaining.

Fewer full dues paying members makes it more difficult to enforce and negotiate quality contracts. We achieve important changes—some like the word reform—by negotiating contracts such as hiring enough school nurses, social workers, librarians, ELL specialists, art and physical education teachers that provide education students need. Too often people equate contracts to teacher pay, nothing more. The press likes to ignore that and perpetuate the greedy teacher myth. With fewer dues the capacity to enforce those changes is diminished. Is it political to negotiate with a school district for reasonable case loads for special education teachers so students do in fact have the least restrict learning environments as mandated by federal law? 


Finally, Friedrichs is part of a larger narrative trying to convince Americans the people who educate their children are bad for society by invoking the principles we hold dear like free speech and civil rights. We saw the civil rights angle Vegara in California last year. In fact, it’s really about, you guessed it, politics. 

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