Whoppers

As readers of this blog will know, I had the opportunity this week to give testimony on behalf of NEOEA to the Ohio House Commerce and Labor Committee for public employee collective bargaining, and against Senate Bill 5. (That testimony appears here.)

Sometimes what appears to be a curse is actually a blessing. I don't wait particularly well, and before delivering my testimony I needed to wait while several others delivered theirs. Members of the committee questioned several of the witnesses: always respectfully, but sometimes clearly in sympathy with the witnesses' positions and sometimes not. I was struck by the number of items I heard delivered as fact that are simply incorrect. Some of these whoppers were told by witnesses, but some were passed on by members of the Committee, whom one would expect to be more knowledgeable.

These errors have clouded the debate concerning Senate Bill 5, and I took the opportunity last night to point them out in an email to the Committee.

Error 1: "Union dues are used to support candidates." To do so would be illegal. Unions do have access to member PAC contributions, but those PACs consist of voluntary contributions.

Error 2: Unions enjoy "forced membership." Forcing membership would be illegal; charging an agency fee is not. Those who refer to "forced membership" almost never refer to the union's legally-defined Duty of Fair Representation, which amounts to what might be termed "forced" representation and seems to make the relationship reciprocal. (Those who oppose agency fee arrangements don't usually address whether they think unions should be freed from DFR, leaving the impression that they think non-members will pay dues if they can get the service for free.)

Error 3: "I support union members but not union leaders." Union governance is democratic by law, since union elections are federally regulated. NEOEA surveys of union leaders and rank-and-file members do not indicate any significant differences in their attitudes and beliefs. Supporting one implies support for the other.

Error 4: "Teachers' unions influence school board elections and then make sweetheart deals with their hand-picked board members." Although a few of our locals make endorsements in school board elections, most do not. But if boards were indeed in union pockets, one assumes that OSBA would be joining with us against SB 5 instead of supporting it. When I repeated this whopper at a public meeting Wednesday evening, it drew laughter from the audience.

Error 5: "State law mandates automatic step increases." Automatic step increases are incorporated in most teacher contracts, but those provisions are not mandated by state law. (Observation: changes to existing salary schedules can be extremely difficult to work out, not only with Boards but with members. Sometimes the union's toughest negotiations are among its own members.)

As I told the Representatives in my email, "I have confined myself here to errors that I actually heard in the hearing room yesterday, and have resisted the temptation to address other errors that creep into the debate about this important issue. Simply correcting these will be enough for now."

Senate Bill 5 testimony

Testimony before the

Commerce and Labor Committee, Ohio House of Representatives,

in Opposition to Senate Bill 5

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Chairman Uecker, Ranking Minority Member Yuko, and members of the Committee, I want to thank you for this opportunity to meet with you on the topic of public employee collective bargaining.

I presently serve the 33,000 members of the North Eastern Ohio Education Association as their Executive Director, and I have had the opportunity to meet some of you in connection with my work there. Before my employment by NEOEA, I was a teacher and local union president in two school districts in northeastern Ohio, both before and after passage in 1983 of Ohio's present Collective Bargaining Law, and it is about those experiences that I would like to talk with you today.

What I observed over and over again as a local president is that students are best served by teachers who can be creative, courageous, and enterprising, and that strong unions, due process rights, and effective evaluation procedures are the best way to encourage those qualities.

In the school year 1976-77, I was president of a teachers union in southeastern Cuyahoga County. Presidents served for a year as president-elect before serving a year as president. Teachers and the Board had a Memorandum of Understanding which functioned as a Collective Bargaining Agreement, and we periodically negotiated amendments to its terms.

In the spring of 1977, the school district had a large renewal levy scheduled on the May ballot, and in April, 72 of my members were nonrenewed.

In those days, limited-contract teachers could be nonrenewed without the employer stating any reasons. It was widely assumed that the reason for the nonrenewals was financial uncertainty due to the pending levy and that the nonrenewed teachers would be rehired if the levy passed, but neither the school administration nor the Board would say that for the record. That refusal led to speculation that finances weren’t the only reason for the nonrenewals. The layoffs had nothing to do with seniority: more senior teachers were laid off while less senior, identically-licensed teachers were retained. Comparisons of administrative observations and evaluations established that teaching quality was not a factor.

What was clear was that while the school district had nonrenewed about one-third of the teaching staff, the superintendent had selected all of my officers and about three-quarters of my Executive Committee for nonrenewal. We believed then, and I believe now, that the nonrenewals were a reprisal for union activity.

Even though strikes in those days were illegal, our members set a strike date. The strike was averted when the president-elect and I met with the superintendent and hammered out an agreement in which the Board identified finances as the reason for most of the nonrenewals and provided a guarantee that they would be rehired if the levy passed. The levy did pass, and 70 of my teachers were rehired. The president-elect and I were not rehired, and each of us eventually found teaching positions elsewhere.

Ladies and gentlemen, I recount these events not to rehash an old war story, but to draw some lessons from it.

• First: Domination and intimidation of union leaders resonates throughout a staff. Our dismissal for union activities was standard operating procedure, not an isolated incident. Reprisals made that school system a fearful place, and teachers worked in an atmosphere of coercion and reprisal.
• Second: A system that puts unchecked authority in the hands of one party is ripe for abuse. I don’t say that all supervisors, principals, and superintendents are vindictive; but experience teaches us that all people make mistakes and many people can be vindictive, and unilateral authority invites abuse. I suspect that few of us have ever seen a party to any relationship who could be neutral about disputes in that relationship.
• Third: Clearly identified and mutually agreed-upon systems of due process, retention, transfer, and dispute resolution protect all the parties and make schools better places. While Senate Bill 5 does not completely eliminate collective bargaining for teachers, it would weaken unions as effective advocates for teachers.
• Fourth: The working conditions of teachers become the learning conditions of their students. Intimidated, nervous, fearful people may be easy to manage, but they aren’t likely to be courageous, innovative, creative teachers, and their students pay the price. My president-elect and I moved on in 1977, but we left behind a school system in which morale was poor for both teachers and students.

Ladies and gentlemen, I do not argue that collective bargaining practices in Ohio are perfect. What I do respectfully suggest is what I have always seen at the negotiating table: that the best remedy for the problems of collective bargaining is not less bargaining, but more.

Thank you for your kind attention.