Jennifer Mangrum is an intrepid warrior for public schools. She ran for public office twice, first challenging the most powerful man in the General Asembly, then ran for state commissioner of education and nearly won. She’s now signed on with the AFT to organize a state teachers’ union. Jen Mangrum is fearless.
Long odds don’t discourage Jennifer Mangrum.
Mangrum, an associate professor of teacher education at UNC-Greensboro, ran unsuccessfully against the state’s most powerful Republican, state Senate leader Phil Berger in 2018.. She followed that long-shot effort with an unsuccessful run in 2020 for North Carolina superintendent of public instruction, where she drew 48 percent of the vote.
Now the Democratic go-getter is embarked on a new mission: She wants to unionize the state’s public school teachers.
“I couldn’t make politics work. After both losses, I felt discouraged,” Mangrum, a former teacher, told me this week. ”But I had teachers reaching out to me saying, ‘Can you help me with this?’ “
As one person, she can’t help them all, but maybe a union could.
After two years of pushing unionization as a volunteer, Mangrum has taken a part-time, paid consulting role with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation’s second largest teachers union with 1.7 million members. Her job is to explore the union’s potential to organize a significant share of the state’s 94,000 public school teachers.
“We have members across the state,” Magnum said. “Two years ago we didn’t have any.” Just how many, she wouldn’t say, but she allowed that it’s more than 100.
The North Carolina Association of Educators, an affiliate of the National Education Association, currently advocates for teachers and other school employees, but it is an association, not a union.
The need for united action is clear. North Carolina’s average teacher pay ranks 34th nationally and 46th for beginning teacher pay. In K-12 spending in 2022, North Carolina ranked 45th.
Along with low pay and lack of resources, teachers have endured disrespect by the Republican-controlled General Assembly. They’ve been accused of indoctrinating students with progressive values and told how to teach about the role of race in the nation’s past and present. Extra pay for teachers with master’s degrees and other higher degrees was eliminated a decade ago.
But there are obstacles to translating teachers’ frustration and anger into unionizing. The highest barriers are that North Carolina is a right-to-work state – workers can’t be compelled to join a union or pay dues in a unionized workplace – and state law bars collective bargaining by public employees.
In addition, the legislature’s beating down of teachers has weakened their will to fight back. Many are leaving teaching – the state had more than 4,400 teacher vacancies at the start of the last school year. Older teachers are counting down to retirement and don’t want to join an uphill struggle. Others are intimidated by school boards and administrators and fear losing their jobs if they join a union…
Once union chapters take root, Mangrum said, the next move would be to push for legislation allowing collective bargaining. Teachers in Virginia achieved that goal in 2020, ending the state’s prohibition on collective bargaining for local government workers.
Nationally, union organizing is growing. Given the abuse of North Carolina’s teachers, it’s time that that power came here. If Democrats regain control of the legislature, organized teachers may be able to turn North Carolina from a right-to-work state to one where teachers – and their students – regain the right to thrive.
Go, Jen, Go!!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Great, glad she’s doing it–but YES NEA and affiliates are unions. We could argue–and they do–that one union is better than the other. State by state and city by city one union is better than the other, but it’s not always AFT. In Ohio, under the collective bargaining law signed by Gov. Celeste in ’83, OEA and affiliates are legally recognized unions. (Just because
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The NEA is a union, but the NCAE is not, period. They are and have been an advocacy organization in order to get around the state laws about public employees and unions (and I say that as a member of the NCAE.) This isn’t about which union is better, but about the ability to form an actual teachers’ union at all. I admire Jen Mangrum and voted for her as superintendent of public instruction, but this is a hopeless quest as long as Republicans maintain control of the Legislature, since they will never pass a law to allow collective bargaining by teachers. It’s not until we can undo the extreme gerrymandering that has given the GOP control over state policy that we will be able to achieve so many other worthy goals, including this one.
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Bingo
That goes Nationally as well.
Start with the US Senate being an anti democratic relic of Slavery. A 3/2 yes vote on the Connecticut resolution. Of course at the time that advantage dig not go to the slave states. But without counting a slave population those states would not have had as many seats in the House . So it did !!!
Then those Gerrymandered State Legislatures go on to district not only State Legislatures but Federal Congressional Districts .
Not satisfied with these power grabs those same Republican/ Dixiecrat Legislatures (there has been a role reversal since Brown and Truman integrating the Armed Forces. ) try to disenfranchise as many voters as they can. Resulting in a Senate that has appointed a right wing Supreme Court since the seventies. Even though the popular vote has gone to a Democratic President in 7 of the last 8 Presidential Elections.
So Teachers and Public Worker Unions now have no right Nationally to collect dues or fair share fees, no public Union does. Whether they are in a Right to Work State or not. Before Janus the NLRA did not cover Public Workers and it was left to States to decide whether Public Worker Unions could exist or could collect dues and under what circumstances.
Right to Work passed in Taft ,Hartley in 1947 applied to Private sector Unions and 13 former Slave states in short order passed these anti worker laws.
But even before Janus the often sited Abood v. Detroit Board of Education in 1977 was a kick in the butt for Unions. Abood often sited as guaranteeing Public sector workers the right to collect dues. Limited those workers rights to have leadership spend that money on Politics .
Janus was right in its logic.
The sole purpose of a Union is the economic well being of its membership!
And the purpose of politics is is to determine “who gets what when and how”. How the fruits of the economy are divided.
Yet some how corporations are people entitled to spend as much dark money as they like so as not to limit their free speech rights, yet Unions consisting of voting members have no such free speech rights. Among other violations of their free speech like the prohibition of Secondary Boycotts.
And they say “The Squad is Radical”. Not radical enough for me !
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Public employees DO have union rights in some states. In 1983, Democratic Governor, Richard Celeste of Ohio, signed a collective bargaining law covering all types of public employees in Ohio–state, local, and school districts. But even before that, many public employees in various states had secured rights through confrontation, court cases, etc.
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Another approach is confrontation. Teachers in Ohio, in the ’60’s and ’70’s
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Jack Burgess
The point is the NLRA gave collective bargaining rights to Private Sector Workers . Public Sector Workers have no such Federal Rights. So their rights are at the whim of State Legislators. What we have seen in State after State is roll backs in the rights that previous state Governments had granted from prohibitions of strikes to large penalties attached to doing so, to the prohibition of bargaining rights altogether. Sure there are a few states that this is not the case.
The 60s and 70s are a different world for organized labor. And though on the surface it looks like organizing has picked up, few of these gains has resulted in a first contracts The number of strikes although higher than the last 40 years is a fraction of the strikes in the 60s. Organized Labor is a fraction of the workforce it was in the 70s
It took till the 70s for corporations to learn how to use Taft Hartley, the Courts and the NLRB to effectively hobble labor.
Without Federal Legislation it is hard to see how Labor truly rebounds. The question is what type of Black Swan event would it take to accomplish that. The Financial collapse should have been that moment it took a lot of skill on Obama’s part to ensure that it wasn’t. He was rewarded by having a prolonged slow recovery that helped turn the working class to Trump.
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Yes, the ’80’s probably saw the biggest swing at the NLRB as Reagan–elected to fight back against all forms of liberalism–appointed union buster-types to the NLRB. Democrats have yet to restore the Board to it’s previous strength, in part because labor power has declined overall.
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…pardon my slip of the hand…just because an organization is called an association doesn’t mean it’s not a union. The International Association of Machinists is one of the strongest unions in the world. So is the Columbus Education Association, which I was privileged to help lead for a decade. I and other have advocated for merger of the NEA and AFT, or more cooperation, but for the time being, there are in fact two major teachers unions–NEA and AFT.
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How does that break down, in terms of the wages benefits and protections each organization is able to obtain for it members. Certainly it is easier to negotiate in one state than the next ,in one district than the next. But is there a pattern?
If I were an employer I would want to negotiate with the Union that made the fewest demands on all three of those factors. If I had to negotiate at all .
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It’s complicated, but I served as Chief Negotiator for CEA in Columbus for 12 years and we had a number of achievements: Raised salaries significantly, reduced class sizes, established magnet schools, brought nurses and other groups into the union, secured maternity leave for all women teachers, got professionally staffed libraries in all elementary schools, helped with desegregation of students and staff, etc.
We got some of our ideas from AFL unions, some from progressive associations, and some from other groups. Our strength came from our size–5000 teachers–our location–capital city, center of the state, our creativity, the times (the ’70’s were awash with progressivism, etc.).
If you check, you will find that today’s Columbus Education Association is still very strong and still very militant for teachers, students, and good schools generally.
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Historically, the establishment of unions made Montesquieu look wise beyond his years. The notion of balancing one power in society off with an opposing power has been the only force in human history leading toward the balance between freedom and societal respondents. Still, unions, like other centers of power, have fallen victim to corruption. Vigilant response to human frailty is a hard thing to maintain, for people fear the loss of power.
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Sorry to break it to you, but the Michigan Education Association and the National Educational Association have been a Union since I first joined it in 1966! The NEA locals have negotiated hours, salaries, working conditions, and benefits since then. Southern and rural states need better and stronger leadership. The AFT specializes in large urban districts and has never done well in small rural districts. I wish Jen the best of luck, but to get a strong union you need strong state and local teacher leaders. One person cannot provide that leadership.
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Diane, I have been a longtime follower of yours but you have gotten one thing wrong in your article. “The North Carolina Association of Educators, an affiliate of the National Education Association, currently advocates for teachers and other school employees, but it is an association, not a union.” That is just a flat out lie. The NEA is the largest union in the ENTIRE US. You cannot separate the child from the parent. The NCAE did try for many years to play nice as an association because they were trying to move the needle, but you know darned well that current leadership has shed that play nice attitude and have fully embraced their union organizing roots that could honestly not be denied.
AFT is a federation. AFSCME is a federation . IATSE is an alliance. NEA is an association. We are all unions.
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I didn’t make that up about the NCAE. It was part of the news article. I am a strong supporter of unions in every kind of work.
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You are awesome. Thank you so much!
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The NEA functions as a union every bit as much as the AFT. The differences in their contracts, especially in anti-union states where teachers can only negotiate “meet and confer” agreements, have more to do with state laws and local practices than anything else.
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There is a reason that the NEA is more successful in anti Union States. Traditionally dating back over a century the NEA formed long before the AFT saw themselves as a professional organization. The AFT formed after WW1 saw itself more in the mold of a trade Union.
The NEA saw its role quite apart from wages , working conditions and benefits. In fact for its first 100 years (from 1857 ) the idea of a strike was an anathema to the NEA’s leadership. Seeing themselves as Professionals . As the AFT grew in membership that had to change. But without the power of Federal Law there was nothing to prevent a state from limiting Union rights. The NEA was already entrenched in many of these anti Union States because they had presented less of a threat. But few Unions can thrive in states determined to crush them .
Even in a State like NY with the highest Unionization rate on the mainland . The Taylor law has had a chilling effect on Public worker strikes. Public worker strikes are now as rare as comet strikes. The last AFT teachers strike in NYC was in 1975. I am certain many NYC teachers would say that wages and working conditions have deteriorated in the 50 years since. Even the healthcare of their retirees is under attack . Perhaps the difference is with a Unionization rate in the State of 21% (Even after losing many private sector Union members )politically many politicians are reluctant to crush Public Worker Unions.
That has not stopped them from pursuing death by a thousand cuts. Andrew Cuomo played the Construction Trades against Public Sector workers. Tossing Public Works projects to those Unions to placate them. Claiming to be “a common sense Democrat ” as he attacked Public Workers. He was siding with some of the most anti Union forces in the Nation with his attack on Teachers Unions , With support of Charters and even vouchers. He then turned on Transit workers to explain delays and derailments on the City’s Mass transit system. The truth was ,it was safety improvements designed by MTA leadership ,with unintended consequences that almost brought the system to a halt. As the NY Times detailed, tracing each change to an increase of delays . As they say in Construction “no body moves nobody gets hurt”. Then he sought to blame the workers at the NYC Housing authority for elevators, boilers, roofs and brick work that they could not repair given only a bucket of paint. .
That before turning on those construction trade Unions as he still gave them those 30 pieces of silver. Blaming them for the cost of Building the 2nd Avenue Subway and East Side Access. Comparing their costs to the toy subways built in other parts of the of the World . Forgetting to mention that it was politicians who approved the designs. Designs that created full mezzanines 30′ high above the station track level. With architectural designs to hang their names on. Built up to 15 stories under ground. With all excavation and materials brought in and out from across the river by temp under ground rail so as not to disturb residents in midtown.
Unfortunately Nixon was almost as clueless when she ran against him.
So what will it take for a paradigm change? Because it is Staten Island with the highest Union density in the City probably of any County in the Country. Mostly Public Sector Workers and Construction Union members that consistently votes for anti labor Republican candidates. A Pro Labor Max Rose in CD11 calling himself a moderate vs an AOC got his but handed to him in 2020. By Nicole Malliotakisan an anti Union Republican bigot who did it again in 2022 after not voting for the Pro Act. After initiating a war on Organized Labor Reagan wiped the floor with Mondale one of the most pro labor Senators in 1984. He did it with working class support. Then we question why many democrats only pay lip service to Organized Labor. The enemy is within .
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I thought that NEA and AFT had agreed to stop trying to raid members from each other.
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Public educator here. I am originally from Louisiana and have been living and teaching in the state of North Carolina for four years now. The dehumanization of public teachers has become absolutely unacceptable. Any progressive action to better the treatment of educators is fine by me. When I began my teaching career in Louisiana, we were required to join a Union. I understand that this has become a political debate, as it should be, but again…any progressive organization is greatly appreciated by public educators. It is not a lost cause. It is not a futile attempt. We have to start somewhere. We all need to be in this for the right reason. We just want a better work environment to be able to be the best educators that we should be allowed to be. Perhaps if we stop trying to compare apples to oranges…it will get better. Unless you have actually lived the experience of being a public educator, please, don’t throw so much shade on the people who are trying to help us.
Thank you.
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