First Contracts and Charter Schools
February 12, 2007 01:00 PM
A while back I raised the issue of first contracts. When the employees of a charter school vote to form a union, the management at the school is–-within the scope of the law--required to bargain a contract with the employees. Getting to that contract, rather than simply having an election, is often the main goal of workers when they form a union.
And when employees vote to form a union, many employers are now making their goal the denial of that first contract. In the private sector, this is sometimes called ”bargaining to boredom,” but behind the scenes it's anything but boring, since it includes the same anti-union techniques that managers use to deny worker rights in the first place.
About one third of newly formed unions don’t have a contract one year after the election creating the union. In those places where managers use union busters, the percent is higher. A provision of the Employee Free Choice Act addresses this problem by mandating that if, after 90 days, there is not sufficient progress in negotiating a contract, then either side can call in an arbitrator.
I raise this in the context of charter schools because we see the same union busting dynamics in play when workers want to form a union. For example, some people in the charter management side of the blogosphere made a big deal out of teachers at Philadelphia’s Performing Arts Charter School voting to decertify the union in 2005. Some noted that in the two years since the union was elected, there had been no first contract. What those stories didn’t note was that management at the school retained the services of Dilworth Paxson, a law firm with a “union avoidance” practice. “Union avoidance” of course, is a sorry euphemism. In this case, the union busters won. To see that breaking the union was the goal, all you have to do is read this part of the Dilworth Paxson site, taking credit for it:
On September 7, the Philadelphia Performing Arts Charter School passed a Union Decertification vote. Marjorie Obod, attorney for the school, notes the school's success is particularly significant both because union decertifications that result in ousting a union (as opposed to decertifying one union and replacing that union with a substitute union) are rare.
Breaking the union is management’s success. Majority recognition, sometimes known as card check, is just one of the reforms in the federal Employee Free Choice Act that are worth talking about for charter schools. Regulations to see that a first contract is fairly negotiated may be another.
AFL-CIO's blog has video from Nikkia Parrish, a dancer from the Washington Ballet who was fired not before, but after the union election. Its a sad but perfect example of the problem.
Update: Pace Alexander Russo, its just this sort of practice that makes me doubtful that a compromise on charter expansion and union rights is within our reach... at least for the moment.
