Stewards Corner: Running a Multi-Pronged Contract Campaign
Can strikes work for public employee unions in 2007, when public treasuries are stretched thin? The 1,300 faculty and staff at Community College of Philadelphia answered that question with a clear “Yes!” in a recent two-week strike. . . . Can strikes work for public employee unions in 2007, when public treasuries are stretched thin? The 1,300 faculty and staff at Community College of Philadelphia answered that question with a clear “Yes!” in a recent two-week strike. Bargaining started more than a year ago for 200 classified employees (clerks, housekeepers, and other non-teaching staff), 450 full-time faculty, and 650 part-time faculty who form the three separate bargaining units within American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Local 2026. The local has had numerous strikes in its 37-year history, but the most recent one was 10 years ago. The stalwarts who built our local are heading towards retirement, and nearly half of our current membership had been hired since the last strike. Furthermore, different groups of members have somewhat different interests, making it unclear whether we could establish unity, or whether management could exploit the differences to their advantage. Early on, the administration proposed that the two sides engage in “interest-based bargaining.” Sometimes called mutual gains bargaining or “win-win” bargaining, this approach has both union and management list their interests on particular issues and meet in committees that brainstorm possible solutions to the problems, without initially committing themselves to any particular solution. The leaders in our local were concerned that interest-based bargaining might lull some members into believing that all issues could be resolved simply through discussion. On the flip side, we thought that some of our members might think that we were needlessly combative if we rejected interest-based bargaining. As a result, we decided on a two-pronged approach: (1) Engage in interest-based bargaining on certain issues that might lend themselves to this approach; and (2) Mobilize our members in a contract campaign that would build up to a strike if necessary. Using a new approach, our local hired a leader of another AFT local who led several meetings to help us plan the campaign. This helped us identify goals for our campaign and themes that would help us communicate with our members, our students, and the public. Knowing that the administration would be asking us to cut our health care coverage, we decided to focus on the fact that the administration had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a new branding campaign and hired lots of new administrators, all while raising tuition rapidly, turning away students, and claiming there was no money to give faculty and staff health benefits and decent raises. We decided to pull one of our experienced rank-and-file members out of half of her classes to coordinate our mobilization campaign. We also hired an experienced union-side public relations consultant who helped us develop our message. Give $10 a month or more and get our "Fight the Boss, Build the Union" T-shirt. In December, after members of the administration refused to divulge their salary ranges or how much money they were paying health care consultants, we posted signs and leafleted the campus with the slogan, “Faculty and students open our books every day. Why won’t the administration open theirs?” Although some of the interest-based bargaining committees came up with proposals acceptable to both the union and management, it became increasingly clear that on other issues the administration was intent on dramatically reducing the power of the union. They wanted not only cutbacks in health care, but also to gut seniority protection for part-time faculty and tenure rights for full-time faculty. To prepare our members, our students, and the public for the possibility of a strike, we decided to call a “practice strike” in February. We carried our picket signs in front of the college entrances, with the “One Strike” line partially covered by stickers saying “just practicing,” attracting good media attention. All of this build-up meant that by the time we decided that negotiations had bogged down, our members were prepared and voted unanimously to strike. The picket line combination of the mostly blue-collar/pink collar classified employees with our white-collar faculty was exciting: the chants, songs, line dances, tambourines, and drums were captured on every TV station and area newspaper for two weeks. Only a tiny number of members crossed the picket line. Student quotes in the press mostly called on the administration to settle the strike in a fair way. Jobs with Justice and the Coalition of Labor Union Women helped out in rallies and on the picket line, connecting the strike to the broader labor movement. Interestingly, the crisis created by the strike was felt not only by the administration, but also by political leaders. Newspaper coverage focused on the important role that the college plays in building an educated workforce that improves the tax base in the city, and the failure of the city government to provide adequate funding. In the end, a labor-friendly congressman stepped in and arranged for an additional $800,000 to be made available, which was facilitated by our local’s connections with AFT-Pennsylvania and the AFL-CIO. The victory was only partial, as the administration insisted that the extra money be distributed in the form of bonuses, rather than added to our base pay. Nevertheless, our strike resulted in a settlement that was better than what we had been offered before the strike, a new group of rank-and file activists, and a new sense of unity for the struggles ahead. John Braxton and Karen Schermerhorn are co-presidents of AFT Local 2026 in Philadelphia.
John Braxton, Karen Schermerhorn
INTEREST-BASED BARGAINING
“OPEN THE BOOKS”
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PRACTICE STRIKE
Yes