PrintA 'win-win' for the Norwalk union and the school district
Healthcare costs are a hot topic in contract settlement
Despite a tough fiscal climate and skyrocketing healthcare costs, the Norwalk (Conn.) Federation of Teachers has a new contract settlement that its leaders are calling a “win-win” for the union’s membership and the city’s board of education.
Negotiations between the two parties centered on two areas—salaries and healthcare benefits. And the final agreement responds both to members’ needs and to the board of education’s budgetary demands—a $4.9 million funding cut, to be exact. The union got a 2.9 percent across-the-board salary increase plus 1.6 percent added to salary steps. The board got savings through a combination of changes in employee healthcare coverage.
NFT members overwhelmingly ratified the agreement, which covers the 2005-06 school year.
Norwalk local president Bruce LeVine Mellion, who served as spokesman for the bargaining team, says the board recognized $1.3 million in savings for healthcare and prescription drug coverage by switching insurance carriers. Carol V. Seirup, the Norwalk local’s first vice president, says the wage increase will more than offset the additional out-of-pocket healthcare costs for many of the 830 teachers. “The [healthcare] coverage we have is very good. The way we are paying for it has changed.”
Mellion and Seirup both say the agreement is noteworthy for what did not change. For example, Norwalk mayor Alex Knopp wanted to switch healthcare coverage to a self-funded insurance scheme, Mellion says. Under a self-funded plan, city officials could do whatever they wanted to do, whenever they wanted, he adds. “We were opposed to a self-funded plan. We want the protections of a fully insured plan, including the ability to take disputes to the state insurance commissioner.”
Seirup points to unlimited accrual of sick days and the continuation of an early retirement incentive, including the provision that gives retirees an additional $3,000 a year for six years, as “good things for the membership.”
Revised constitution for Washington local
Important safeguards approved by WTU members
Members of the Washington (D.C.) Teachers Union overwhelmingly approved important amendments to the local’s constitution in October. The local, which has been under AFT administratorship since January 2003, revised its constitution to be in compliance with the national AFT constitution and to improve its operating and oversight functions. The vote of 1,483 to 423 (with 111 challenged ballots) easily exceeded the required two-thirds of those voting to win approval.
The constitutional changes institute important safeguards and protections following the discovery in 2002 that more than $5 million in union funds had been misappropriated by several officers and staff of the local. With the appointment of an administrator, the WTU constitution was set aside until a new one could be drafted and submitted to members for approval.
The constitutional changes delineate officer responsibilities, establish a representative assembly structure and incorporate new language to bring the WTU constitution into compliance with U.S. Department of Labor guidelines.
Approval of the amendments “sends the clear message that this union has changed, and changed for the better,” said WTU administrator George Springer following the vote count. “We have learned from our mistakes, installed protections [and] strengthened the involvement and participation of our members.”
With the constitution now amended and approved, the next step will be the end of the administratorship and the election of local officers.
Philadelphia local's pact wins landslide approval of members
New contract has raises, maintains school calendar
A hard-fought and widely scrutinized contract dispute in Philadelphia came to a close this fall when members of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers backed a new four-year agreement by a landslide margin.
The tentative agreement, which won a 93 percent approval vote at an October ratification meeting, was hammered out by the PFT bargaining team in a negotiating climate complicated not only by a tight school system budget but also by attacks on seniority and by a state school system takeover. The state placed the school district under the control of an education reform commission in 2001; lawmakers also included a no-strike provision for teachers in the law.
“Our members are pleased, and we are pleased that we were able to reach a satisfactory agreement,” PFT president and AFT vice president Ted Kirsch said at a news conference following the vote. The new agreement provides for a lump-sum bonus of 3 percent in October 2004. In the remaining years, salary increases will alternate between 3 percent increases and 1 percent bonuses. The new agreement also leaves the school day and school year unchanged, preserves prep time, allows seniority rules to govern reduction in staff and retains seniority-based transfer rights. Other features include a teacher’s consent requirement for any change in special education exceptionality, increases in classroom supply allotments, and double-digit increases in the system’s health and welfare fund.
Collaboration is key to improvements
Saturn/UAW Award spotlights labor-management partnerships
Each year, the American Federation of Teachers recognizes programs that demonstrate exceptional union and management collaboration through the Saturn/UAW Partnership Award. In 2004, three programs were honored with such recognition. The winners include a robotics program at Rocco Laurie Middle School I.S. 72 in the Staten Island School District, a new teacher mentor program established by the Commack (N.Y.) Teachers Association and Commack School District, and an initiative designed to contain healthcare costs set up by the Los Angeles College Faculty Guild and the Los Angeles Community College District.
“Winning this award gives a tremendous amount of validity to what we do. It didn’t come with money, but it came with recognition,” says Deric Borrero, project coordinator for the Science and Technology LEGO Robotics Leadership Program at Rocco Laurie. “We are extremely excited to know that people believe in what we’re doing.”
Borrero worked closely with his union, the United Federation of Teachers, the school administration and the Parent Teacher Association to get the Rocco Laurie after-school program off the ground. With strong backing from the union, Borrero was able to recruit staff to take part in the initiative, which is designed to encourage student interest in science and technology. The program works the way it does because all of the necessary components were in place, says Borrero. “If any one of them was missing, it would hamper the program,” he adds.
The popular program has piqued the academic curiosity of students by weaving together many subjects—science, math, technology and language arts—through cooperative learning, team-oriented activities. More than 600 students have taken part in the leadership program since it began in 2002, and several other middle schools in the district are considering implementing LEGO Robotics as a way to engage students.
The winners of the AFT-Saturn/UAW Partnership Award visited Spring Hill, Tenn., home of the Saturn car plant, in November. They were able to share information about their programs and get a firsthand look at the UAW and Saturn model of labor-management collaboration.
The AFT encourages locals in all of its divisions that have partnered with their school districts or management to create or implement programs to provide quality education, improved healthcare or effective public services to apply for the 2005 award. Winners will be honored at the 2005 AFT QuEST conference and will receive a free trip to Spring Hill in November 2005 to visit the Saturn plant. Applications deadline is April 1, 2005. For more information, visit www.saturnuaw.com or www.aft.org/presscenter/saturn-uaw.htm.
Charter schools: AFT report is focus on forum
The AFT’s recent analysis of federal data on the performance of students in charter schools—and more broadly, the poor state of useful information on charters—was the topic of a lively forum in October at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Almost immediately after the New York Times ran a front-page story on the AFT’s analysis in August, heated debates over the results and their impact on the charter school movement erupted among analysts and advocates from across the spectrum.
The analysis showed that charter schools typically underperformed regular public schools. The Bush administration buried those findings on its Web site.
Sponsored by the Century Foundation, the Washington forum featured Bella Rosenberg, assistant to the AFT president and one of the authors of the union’s study. In explaining why the AFT produced the report—an analysis of charter school students’ performance on NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress)—Rosenberg pointed out that the union was only doing what the federal government should have done when it released other results from the 2003 assessment. “We did the job the administration didn’t do—make the public information available to the public,” she said.
The study shows that compared to students in regular public schools, charter school students had significantly lower achievement in math and reading at grade 4 and math in grade 8. That remained true after controlling for students who were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, with the gap between regular public school students and their charter school counterparts reaching the equivalent of more than a half-year of schooling.
Another panelist, Amy Stuart Wells of Teachers College at Columbia University, discussed some of her findings from almost eight years of studying charter schools. Wells, like all the panelists, pointed out the huge variety among the thousands of charter schools that have opened during the past decade. But she also said that the original idea behind charters—a notion championed by the late AFT president Albert Shanker that charter schools should have more autonomy in return for accountability for student achievement—largely has been lost. Some schools have been closed for financial reasons, but there has been almost no accountability for schools whose students continue to perform poorly.
Wells said there are plenty of high-performing charters that grow out of local communities and are doing a good job of educating disadvantaged students.
Panelist Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution was the most critical of the AFT study, arguing that his own studies generally have shown more positive outcomes for students in charters. But even Loveless acknowledged that the notion of “amateurs” being able to go out and open a school and make it work is not realistic.
The full AFT report is available online at www.aft.org/pubs-reports/downloads/teachers/NAEPCharterSchoolReport.pdf.
Thomas Y. Hobart Jr., who has served as president of AFT’s largest state affiliate, the New York State United Teachers, has announced he will not seek re-election. Hobart has served as NYSUT president since the union’s inception in 1973. His term expires in April 2005.
Under Hobart’s leadership, NYSUT has grown from 100,000 members in 1973 to more than 500,000 today. The union represents 95 percent of the classroom teachers in New York state, along with tens of thousands of school-related professionals, faculty and staff at the State University of New York and City University of New York, and thousands of healthcare workers statewide.
Hobart also is a vice president and member of the executive committee of the New York State AFL-CIO and co-founder of the New York State Labor-Religion Coalition.
Hobart has played a significant role in the national union, serving on the AFT executive council and the union’s executive committee since 1974 and as the longtime chairman of the AFT’s advisory committee on state federations.
“Tom Hobart’s work in expanding NYSUT membership over the years has been pivotal to the growth and success of the entire AFT,” says AFT president Edward J. McElroy.
Hobart has represented the AFT within the labor movement and abroad, including as an AFT delegate to the AFL-CIO convention and the Education International World Congress. He has participated in numerous AFT and AFL-CIO missions overseas to promote union democracy and civic education. He serves on the AFT council’s democracy committee.
“I’m very proud of the role I’ve played in the union movement,” Hobart says. “The spread of unions to former communist countries and Third World nations is helping protect the rights of working men and women. Even though I won’t be president of NYSUT, I will continue to work for economic justice.”
Miami-Dade local set for runoff
The two top vote-getters in the United Teachers of Dade (Fla.) presidential election were scheduled to meet in a runoff in early December. Six UTD activists vied in October to head the local, and Shirley B. Johnson, former secretary-treasurer and later interim president of the local, received 46.9 percent of votes cast. That fell just short of the 50 percent-plus-one threshold needed to avoid a runoff.
Johnson will compete against second-place finisher Karen Aronowitz, a member of the Future of UTD Task Force, who received 28.6 percent of the vote. About half of the membership participated in the vote held Oct. 18-29. The election is a major step in restoring health and faithful governance to the local. After the theft or misappropriation of at least $3 million in union funds by former president Pat Tornillo, who is now serving a prison sentence, the AFT in 2003 placed UTD under an administratorship.
The national union is working with the local to restore faith and participation in the union. A new UTD constitution and bylaws were adopted in the wake of the scandal, and more than 3,000 new members have signed up. The runoff, scheduled to be held Nov. 29-Dec. 12, will decide a number of other UTD offices in contests where the candidates failed to win the required percentage of votes.
