Posted by Ed at AFT

Edwize today posts about a highly regarded charter school teacher who was fired for advocating for better pay for her colleagues.  According to the New York Times, the teacher, Nichole Byrne Lau “received an evaluation saying that her students at the Williamsburg Charter High School were ‘lucky to have you as their teacher.’”  The United Federation of Teachers has taken up Ms. Lau’s cause and is using it to explain why changes are needed in the state’s collective bargaining laws for charter schools.  Some of the coverage of this story included this quote from Peter Murphy of the New York State Charter School Association (NYCSA), which represents the interests of the management of New York state’s charter schools, about UFT President Randi Weingarten: "She's exploiting this issue to try and organize the easy way, by having it mandated."

I once testified to the Maryland Legislature that carving charter schools out of collective bargaining was tantamount to empowering managers to prevent unions. Saying that the teachers could choose to organize a separate union was the same as saying that at-will employees in any high turnover worksite are free to organize a union.  In other words, not really free (see here for the op-ed version). A legislator's conscience might be assuaged by the thought that employees in these situations can choose a union, but the real message is that workers are on their own.  If they want to have a union, they have to be prepared to fight and risk employer retaliation.

Some years ago staff at Riser Military Academy in Ohio tried to unionize. The headmaster, Col. Riser, demoted them all to Second Lieutenant. It's memorable because it's funny, but it's not a joke.  Riser then tried to fire a teacher for suggesting that he needed help managing the school. Employer retaliation is a fact of life in American union organizing today. This is the hard way. This is what Peter Murphy is talking about, pure and simple.  That NYCSA worked to give charter school managers training in how to fight efforts to form a union is a fact.  Here is a quote from the Atlantic Legal Foundation's 2004 Annual report about their New York work:

“The Foundation helped one charter school resist a union’s organization petition. It also sponsored workshops to explain how charter leaders can counter union organizing efforts in New York (for the New York Charter Schools Association) and in New Jersey (for the New Jersey Charter School Resource Center at Rutgers)."

For more on Atlantic Legal see an earlier Edwize post here (and yes I’m the Ed Muir referred to in it).

NYCSA is advocating for the continued power to deter and intimidate teachers who want to exercise their rights to join unions. It has been arming charter school administrators to do just that.  For those of you who don’t understand a lot about unions, this is what we mean when we talk about union busting.  And the case of Nichole Lau is not just an act of retaliation against someone who did the right thing. It’s a message to others to keep in line. It’s the hard way. Words cannot express my contempt.

UPDATE:  Blogging about yesterday's reporting on injustice in a New York charter school, the Quick and the Ed's Sarah Mead writes: "And the fact that some schools are or may be acting badly here is not a case for requiring all charter schools in the state to unionize, as Ed and Leo [Casey of Edwize] seem to think."

But this isn't the case I was making, and I doubt Leo was making it either.  I was writing about a New York Charter School Association official's criticism of my union's support for card check recognition for charter school teachers. Card check is an expedited process for workers to choose a union. According to the AFL-CIO more than half of private sector organizing is now done using this process.  Several states already use card check for their public employee collective bargaining laws. It is a key component of the Employee Free Choice Act, the labor movement's bill to reform private sector organizing in America. And it’s a feature of Canadian labor law as well.  This was "the easy way" that NYCSA was referring to. Conflating this with "requiring all charter schools in the state to unionize" seriously muddies the waters.  NYCSA is defending a set of rules that give its members maximum freedom to intimidate and make use of the counsel of union busting consultants. In short, freedom to make more cases like Nichole Byrne Lau's. Arguing for a set of rules that short  circuits these tactics is not the same as requiring unionization.