Teachers Are Singled Out in Attacks on Unions

Like other public employees, teachers find their collective bargaining rights under fire in the Republican-governed states. But the attack on teacher job security, and the drive to replace public schools with charters, are universal—and bipartisan.

For example, the Democratic governor of New York and Democratic mayors of Los Angeles and Providence, Rhode Island all support measures weakening teachers’ job security.

Another important trend is that some teachers are fighting back.

IDAHO

A bill called “Students Come First” has passed both houses and will be signed by Governor Butch Otter. The bill limits teachers’ collective bargaining rights to salary and benefits only, and a local union may bargain only if more than 50 percent of teachers have joined.

The law eliminates tenure for new teachers, instead offering them one-year or two-year contracts. And even teachers who have continuing contracts can be terminated without just cause. “A continuing contract won’t mean much under the new law,” warns Sherri Wood, president of the Idaho Education Association. “If the superintendent’s daughter-in-law needs a teaching job, a longtime teacher might discover herself out the door.”

Legislators also passed a pay-for-performance bill tying teachers’ raises to student test scores—even though education researchers widely regard standardized tests as poor measures of student learning and teacher performance.

The IEA has been organizing protests across the state, including a hands-around-the-Capitol action in Boise March 9 that drew 1,000 teachers and supporters. “We’re getting amazing support from parents, like never before,” Wood said.

NEW JERSEY

Governor Chris Christie unveiled a proposal in February to make it easier to strip teachers of job protection: a teacher who received a bad performance evaluation in any one year would lose tenure.

Evaluations would be based partly on student test scores.

Several thousand rallied in Trenton February 25, and heard a teachers union leader denounce the governor’s attempt to pit workers against each other in a “middle-class civil war.”

FLORIDA

The state’s Republican-majority legislators are moving quickly to pass a series of anti-teacher measures, with the support of Governor Rick Scott. Under the legislation, new hires would work under one-year contracts, with renewals based primarily on student test scores.

Tenured teachers’ job security would weaken: two bad evaluations in three years would subject them to firing. Layoffs would be based on evaluations, not seniority.

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Other proposals, aimed at all public employee unions, would require unions whose membership falls below 50 percent in a bargaining unit to hold recertification votes each year, and would outlaw dues check-off.

Capping the anti-union measures, the governor has proposed a slashing budget, explains Andy Ford, president of the Florida Education Association. Scott wants a 10 percent cut for schools, pension cuts for public employees, fewer weeks allowed for unemployment insurance, and new tax breaks for corporations.

The FEA brought members out for an “Awake the State” day March 8 that featured rallies in 22 cities—drawing up to 2,000 in Miami and Tallahassee and 500 to 1,000 in smaller cities.

“Things are very doomy here in Florida for public employees and students,” Ford said. On the other hand, “every time we’ve been attacked, we grow stronger.”

LOS ANGELES

Mass layoffs and new teacher seniority rules threaten to up-end Los Angeles schools, thanks in part to a controversial court case. The district is sending layoff notices to more than 5,000 of the city’s 40,000 unionized teachers, claiming a $400 million deficit.

The layoffs will test the impact of new seniority rules, based on the January settlement of an ACLU-led class-action lawsuit against the school district. The ACLU claimed that low-income students of color were suffering educational inequity because their schools, with predominantly new teachers, experienced exceptionally high turnover each year due to seniority-guided layoff rules.

Under the settlement, 45 schools will be protected from layoffs. The result: hundreds of teachers with one or two years’ experience will be favored over teachers with as much as 10 years.

United Teachers Los Angeles has appealed the settlement and launched a long-term plan to fight both the layoffs and the district’s privatization push. It began with a mass picket and packing of the L.A. school board meeting March 15, to be followed by escalating actions with students, parents, and community allies to culminate in a major contract fight and struggle for quality public schools in 2012.

NEVADA

Governor Brian Sandoval is pressing for a voucher program to facilitate privately run charter schools and seeks to eliminate teacher tenure and seniority in layoffs.

NEW YORK

In New York City, where 4,600 teacher layoffs are in the works, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is pressing to eliminate the district’s “first in, last out” seniority provision for layoffs, substituting evaluations driven by student test scores.

Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo prefers instead a proposal to weaken seniority through a mix of evaluations and seniority in deciding which teachers get the axe. The leadership of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers thought that was good enough to ask members to “call Governor Cuomo to tell him that we appreciate his leadership on workers’ rights and our schools.”