Juan Gonzalez says that Mayor Bloomberg wants to drive down the cost of bus drivers’ salaries, but they are not the reason that the city spends more than $1 billion on school buses. Bus drivers are paid about $40,000 a year.
Read his analysis here.
Archives for category: Unions
New York Commissioner of Education has warned New York City that if the union and the mayor don’t reach a deal on teacher evaluation, he will withhold over $1 billion, in addition to the $250 million already at stake in Race to the Top funding.
He is holding the children and their education hostage unless the parties submit to his will.
With his long (two year) history in a charter school, he knows all there is to know about how to evaluate teachers. His Uncommon Schools charter is known for incredible suspension rates. Does that affect evaluations? He doesn’t say.
How dare he cripple the education of 1.1 million students unless the teachers do as he tells them. Revolutions have happened for less.
Now that Michigan has become the 24th state to pass a “right to work” law, there is considerable confusion about the reasons for such legislation. Many corporations have long wanted such laws so they could be free of the demands of unions. Many rightwing politicians have wanted to decimate unions to remove their ability to fund liberal political campaigns.
This writer, Paul Cole, a labor activist, explains what the legislation means.
Representatives designated or selected for the purposes of collective bargaining by the majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for such purposes, shall be the exclusive representatives of all the employees in such unit for the purposes of collective bargaining in respect to rates of pay, wages, hours of employment, or other conditions of employment.
National Labor Relations Act (Sec. 9)
Under American labor law, unlike many other countries, when a majority of workers in a determined bargaining unit, vote to be represented by a union, that union becomes the exclusive representative of all workers in that unit. The purpose is to provide employees with a single, unified voice in determining their conditions of employment and the opportunity for employers to deal with one entity, instead of many competing ones, to establish the rights and responsibilities of both the employer and employees.
Federal law that governs private sector workers, as well as many state public employee laws, guarantees every worker who is represented by a union equal and nondiscriminatory representation – meaning unions must provide the same services, vigorous advocacy, and contractual rights and benefits. The guarantee applies regardless of whether the employee is a union member or not. All non-dues-paying employees are provided full union representation at no charge.
If you are not a member of the union, you are fully covered by the collective bargaining agreement that was negotiated between the union and your employer including wages, pensions, vacations, health insurance, seniority, and working hours.
The statutory right of exclusive representation mandates a “duty of fair representation” on the part of the union. It has the obligation to represent all employees fairly, in good faith, and without discrimination. The right to speak for all employees in the bargaining unit carries with it the corresponding duty to protect them as well.
Federal and state laws also guarantee that no one can be forced to be a member of a union, or to pay any amount of dues or fees to a political or social cause they do not support.
“Right-to-Work” laws make it illegal for employers and unions to mutually agree to require nonunion employees to pay fees to cover the benefits they legally receive under the collective bargaining agreement.
Fees have nothing to do with “forced unionism.”
Organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce, billionaire-funded conservative foundations and their Republican allies, want unions to be the only organizations in America that are required to provide benefits and services to individuals who pay nothing for them. This is the same as enabling some American citizens to opt out of paying taxes while making available all government services.
The real reason for the recent wave of “right-to-work” legislation, and other union weakening laws, has nothing to do with economic competitiveness but the weakening of the labor movement and its political influence. The only institution that stands in the way of the right wing’s domination of our nation’s political and economic system is the American labor movement.
This agenda was unmasked when Wisconsin State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald explained that “this battle” is about eliminating unions so that “the money is not there” for the labor movement.
Last year, the Michigan director of Americans for Prosperity, chaired nationally by David Koch, said, “We fight these battles on taxes and regulations but really what we would like to see is to take the unions out at the knees so they don’t have the resources to fight these battles.”
In virtually every case, the state legislation is taken straight out of the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) playbook.
It was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who said, “In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right-to-work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and working conditions for everyone… we demand this fraud be stopped.”
AFT Stands with Garfield High School Teachers
Washington—American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten issued this message of support to Seattle’s Garfield High School teachers standing up against the use of high-stakes testing.
Dear Garfield High School Teachers:
Thank you. Thank you for taking a courageous stand against the fixation on high-stakes testing and its harmful impact on our ability to give our students the high-quality public education they deserve.
Your actions have propelled the national conversation on the impact of high-stakes testing. Every educator understands that appropriate assessments are an integral part of a high-quality education system. But an accountability system obsessed with measuring, which punishes teachers and schools, comes at a huge cost to children. This fixation on testing has narrowed our curriculums and deprived our students of art, music, gym and other subjects that enrich their minds and make learning fun. Teachers have been forced to spend too much time on test preparation and data collection, at the expense of more engaging instruction. Ironically, this fixation on high-stakes testing actually does the opposite of what its proponents tell us it will do.
Learning is more than a test score, and teaching and learning—not testing—should drive classroom instruction. We need to be focused on growing and nurturing the minds of our students—to ensure that they can think creatively and analytically. It’s no longer enough to teach kids to memorize a bunch of numbers and terms; they must think critically and be able to absorb and interpret knowledge. We must ensure that our children are able to not only dream their dreams but also achieve them. At the same time, we must prepare students for civic engagement and to value that we all have a collective responsibility to one another.
The AFT and tens of thousands of educators, parents and students stand with you in this effort. The AFT passed a resolution at our national convention last summer focused on rebalancing our national education priorities and ensuring that teaching and learning drive our education policies. And we are focused on uniting communities across the country around this issue.
Thank you for leading this conversation.
Randi Weingarten
AFT President
Adam Urbanski, head of the Rochester (NY) Teachers Union, offers this advice:
“In his letter from the Birmingham jail, Martin Luther King wrote, ‘There are just laws and unjust laws. And we are obligated to disobey the unjust laws.’ A nationwide movement of creative insubordination may be the only way to put a stop to the injustice now imposed on America’s public schools, teachers and especially students.”
Spring is coming.
People are standing up and speaking up.
Teachers at Garfield High in Seattle say “no more.”
Teachers at Ballard High School support their colleagues at Garfield.
The Seattle Education Association supports the Garfield and Ballard teachers.
Randi Weingarten tweeted her support.
Superintendents, one after another, are saying the testing obsession is out of control.
The principals of New York State stand together to demand professional evaluation, not trial by testing.
Parents are defending their children by supporting their teachers and their community schools.
The PTA of Niagara County in New York say hands off our public schools.
Communities are opposing school closings and corporate takeovers.
Students are speaking out because they know what is happening to them is not right.
Journalists are starting to recognize that the “reformers” are not real reformers but privatizers.
It is starting to happen.
We will put education back into the hands of educators and parents and communities.
We will work to make our schools better than ever, not by competition, but by collaboration.
Last year, someone emailed and asked me to create and lead the movement to stop the corporate reformers, and I said I couldn’t do it, that all I can do is write and speak.
That truly is all I can do, but when I started this blog in late April, it turned into a platform for the movement, and leaders are emerging all over the country, and learning about each other. They are communicating.
I am not the leader, I am the facilitator. You are the leaders.
Michelle Rhee issued her report card for American education and now we know what she stands for: privatization of American public education.
States that endorse charter schools, for-profit schools, the parent trigger, school closings, vouchers and online for-profit charters get high marks from Rhee.
States that bust unions, take away teacher tenure, and use standardized tests to evaluate teachers get high marks from Rhee.
States that support public education and resist efforts to privatize their public schools get low marks, especially if they support teacher professionalism.
Her top two states are led by the nation’s most rightwing governors and legislatures: Louisiana and Florida.
Rhee has at last dropped the pretense of bipartisanship and shown that StudentsFirst is a branch of ALEC.
Mayor Bloomberg is frustrated that the New York City United Federation of Teachers does not agree with his plan to evaluate them by test scores. He has been berating the union, as have the city’s tabloids, for weeks.
But now he hit a new low.
He compared the teachers’ union to the National Rifle Association.
Coming only weeks after the Newtown massacre, this is especially gross.
This is reminiscent of the time many years ago when U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige referred to the NEA as “a terrorist organization.”
Paige had the good sense to apologize. So should Bloomberg.
Joy Resmovits at Huffington Post has a revealing story about how top staff at Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst have abandoned the ship.
No one went on the record to explain the exodus but it is hard to see how any Democrat could be part of a campaign to curtail collective bargaining rights and to diminish the rights and status of teachers. Unions and teachers are the base of the Democratic Party.
Think about how frequently Rhee has allied herself with rightwing governors like Mitch Daniels, John Kasich, Rick Scott, and Chris Christie. She has advocated for for-profit charter schools and for-profit universities. She supports vouchers. She was honored along with Governor Scott Walker by the far-right American Federation for Children, which is passionate for vouchers and privatization of public schools.
What part of her agenda is bipartisan?
Courts have repeatedly ruled that charter schools are not public schools. These rulings have been sought not by charter critics, but by the charters themselves, to enable them to avoid complying with state laws.
Julian Vasquez Heilig of the University of Texas warns African American students and their families that charters are not considered public schools by the courts when it comes to discipline policies. Student rights are protected in public schools, but with few exceptions, not in charter schools. On matters of student discipline, the courts have decided that charters are not public schools.
The same is true for state labor laws.
Just a few days ago, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that charter schools are “private entities,” not public schools, and are therefore subject to different requirements when dealing with employees. This means that teachers at charter schools “are now subject to private-sector labor laws, rather than state laws governing public workers.” Charters sought this ruling when two-thirds of the teachers at the Chicago Math and Science Academy voted to unionize. The board said that charters are akin to private contractors that win government contracts. The charter schools view this ruling as a victory because they prefer to be treated as private organizations, not public schools governed by state law. See Valerie Strauss’s report of this decision here.
When charter teachers say they have been treated unfairly and go to court, the courts typically rule that charters are not public schools. This is a link to an article I wrote for my “Bridging Differences” at Education Week. Follow the links in my article and you will see decisions by courts in several states that charter schools are not public schools. These were rulings sought b charter schools, which insisted that they are NOT public schools because they did not want to be covered by the state laws.
“In Chicago and in Philadelphia, charter schools fought efforts by their teachers to unionize on grounds that they were not public schools and thus were not subject to state labor laws. The charter school in Chicago argued in court that it was a private school, not a public school, and thus not subject to the same laws as public schools.
The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a charter school in Arizona was a private nonprofit corporation, not a state agency, when it was sued by an employee who had been discharged. In this case, a federal court agreed with the charter school that charters are not public schools when it comes to the rights of their employees.”
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Diane Ravitch's blog 