One of Chicago’s most celebrated charter schools–Urban Prep–has been fighting its teachers’ effort to form a union. Mike Klonsky reports that UP even had professional development about the evils of unions.
It failed. UP fired 17 teachers–mostly African American–for their union activities. They complained to the NLRB, which ordered UP to rehire them and pay back wages.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Their PD is like Pédé in French
Great news. Hopefully the same will happen to charters here in NYC. It’s still incredible that for profit companies are in public school buildings taking resources, making huge profits, discriminating against high need students and treating their teachers like temporary fast food workers.
All charter schools in New York City are not-profit exempt organizations that are largely funded by taxpayers–like the New York Public Library, Citymeals-on-Wheels, Mount Sinai Hospital, and the Coalition for the Homeless, among many others.
Tim, charter schools are not public schools. They are neither accountable nor financially transparent. Nor so they have boards that are democratically chosen. They wrote their own rules. Their discipline policies would never be permitted in a public school.
The self-dealing of non-profits, avoids technical categorization as profit, but, it’s a distinction without a difference.
Ohio, 7th largest state, recipient of the biggest payoff, last quarter, for charter school expansion (gratis due to the Walton/Gates Dept. of Ed.), has both profit and self-dealing charter schools, combined with government-supporting corruption.
This kind of stuff amazes me. 17 teachers? It’s the middle of the school year! And that’s ridiculous anyway!
…smh
Great! Charters adopt the approach of their financial backer.
Does it look like Wal Mart’s anti-labor employee training video?
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/17973/walmarts_absurd_anti_union_training_video_just_got_leaked
I’m told by many experts that people don’t need labor protections anymore because of touchy-feely notions of “employee voice” and “empowerment”.
How did that work out for those fired teachers? I guess their “voices” were not heard so they needed an actual enforceable law and a contract. That’s very “traditionalist”, I must say- very “old economy”.
I love how they always say they will operate “in good faith” when it comes to unions. It’s in the slide show. The one and only reason they operate “in good faith” is because there are a set of laws that mandate they do so, or appear to do so.
They’re telling you that they’re graciously and generously “agreeing” to comply with labor laws. They won’t knowingly and deliberately violate the law. For this they want recognition and praise. Talk about low expectations.
They actually learned this the hard way. They violated the law first and only followed it because they were forced to. They can’t even claim voluntary compliance with applicable law, which is the rock- bottom minimum for any employer. Wal Mart doesn’t even do retaliatory firing.
“So Tim King and his board fired 17 teachers — most of them African-American — suspected of being involved in union activity. But after the NLRB ruled that the teachers were fired illegally, UP was forced to hire them back and pay out some $261,000 in back pay plus interest.”
Just so we’re clear, recognizing that labor laws exist isn’t dependent on the inherent goodness and fairness of the charter management board:
RIGHTS OF EMPLOYEES – FEDERAL LAW GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO:
Form, join, or assist a union
Choose representatives to bargain with your employer on your behalf
Act together with other employees for your benefit and protection
Choose not to engage in any of these protected activities
Do DC Democrats see any problems with telling voters they support labor unions, depending on labor union rank and file for votes and then their single-minded, lock-step support of the anti-labor “ed reform movement”, or is this just another delightful contradiction that shows they’re actually not committed to anything?
It’s kind of a one-two punch to abandon both public schools AND labor unions, but they are The Best and The Brightest so I guess the operatives have a plan.
When I worked for the infamous “Success Academy” HSA 3, at the summer PDs they mentioned several times that “Eva doesn’t believe in unions.”
The nice thing about unions is that their involvement doesn’t require Eva’s belief. Give it time, Success Academy will unionize.
Charter schools are publicly funded private entities with unelected boards of directors. If all the tax payers of a district are funding these privately run schools why don’t the tax payers or all the adult residents of a district get to vote on charter school boards of directors? The charter school parents have the opportunity to vote on the district school board members. Very undemocratic, very unfair.