Seventeen top PSEA officials and staff produced the report, because, they wrote, "PSEA’s lack of a long-term strategy and clear standards for evaluating charter operations has left staff and governance without clear or consistent direction." The task force noted that while 68 charter schools were approved for operation in Pennsylvania this year, only one has a unionized staff -- and that one is represented by the Pennsylvania Federation of Teachers.

NEA and its affiliates have traditionally opposed the establishment of charter schools, but PSEA understands the limitations of that approach. "Attempts to prevent the granting of charters can have negative public relations consequences. Moreover, opposition is unlikely to succeed under the current laws," the report’s authors state, adding that "even if charters never produce the educational innovations promised by their early proponents, they will continue to extend their reach because they provide an expanded range of consumer choices and also provide options for students who are not fitting well into their regular public schools."

To PSEA, this development requires a simple response: "Recognizing that small charter schools represent a form of outsourcing that has led to a decline in union membership in other previously highly organized industries, PSEA should establish the objective of organizing all charter school employees and eventually bringing them under the umbrella of collective bargaining."

This is not a surprising goal for an education employees’ union, but the task force’s rationale for setting this goal could have come directly from an EIA analysis: "Act 195 granted PSEA and the Federation a legal monopoly to represent public education employees for the purpose of collective bargaining. ‘All’ we have to do is to convince teachers and support personnel to join. Once we obtain majority representative status, PSEA becomes the exclusive bargaining agent. IN NO OTHER ENDEAVOR PSEA UNDERTAKES CAN IT ENJOY THIS EXCLUSIVE POSITION. The timeworn debate whether we are primarily a professional association or a union obscures a critical point. The main source of PSEA’s influence is that almost all Pennsylvania teachers are unionized. If we want to maintain our influence, our ability to do ANYTHING, we must make sure that education remains a unionized industry. Representing all educational employees is at least as important to PSEA’s health as is electing pro-public education government officials. Without a strong base, PSEA will wither. As the proportion of educational employees PSEA represents declines, so will PSEA’s ability to influence elections and public policy as it relates to public education. There are numerous examples from recent labor history, of unions that suffered dramatic declines in the face of increasing nonunion competition." (emphasis in original)

PSEA’s fear is that an increasingly nonunion educational system will make teachers’ unions go the way of the automobile, telecommunications, steel and paperworkers’ unions. In a statement remarkable for the vocabulary used, the task force wrote: "If we lose our grip on the labor supply to the education industry, we will bargain from a position of weakness."

Having set the table, the task force then chose the utensils. "Traditionally, in the private sector, smaller workplaces have proven more difficult to organize. Moreover, very small units are not cost-effective to represent," the authors noted. The average charter school employs only 16 teachers. This is where Edison Schools, Inc. comes in. PSEA spent much of 2000 researching and investigating Edison, and came away with a mostly favorable impression. "[We] verified the potential viability of Edison’s business plan, which focuses on making profit by the reduction of administrative expense they achieve through economies of scale."

Why would PSEA have an interest in Edison’s economies of scale business plan? Because Edison can do something PSEA cannot -- consolidate charter school employees into one bargaining unit. "Many charter schools may currently contain the potential for creating small bargaining units…. However, it should be noted that with the corporate entry into the charter school movement, there may be an opportunity, in the long run, to create single company statewide units and to merge small locals into statewide locals with a single contract. PSEA should explore this opportunity and position itself to maximize its organizing and bargaining potential."

In short, PSEA hopes the future will bring us a "local" NEA affiliate -- an Edison Schools Education Association -- that would represent the employees who work for Edison statewide… perhaps even nationwide.

The task force then proposed a strategy for the union to employ: "In organizing we must set priorities - we should try to organize the for-profit managed charters and the larger non-profits first. But it is essential that we start applying pressure to all non-union employers, because even if we win representation elections slowly, the resources expended will force non-union charter operators to pay more to their employees, if for no other reason than to forestall unionization. Pushing up the wages of charter school employees will reduce their employer’s ability to undercut our members’ wages and use those savings as a source of competitive advantage against the regular public schools."

The PSEA Board of Directors approved the task force’s recommendations, which included the creation of an assessment to evaluate the relative competitive strengths of local union affiliates and charter operators in order to determine what approach to take in a specific situation. PSEA will also explore the creation of a special category of membership for charter school employees. They would receive liability insurance, legal services, publications and a number of other benefits for 70 percent of regular dues. In addition, PSEA will lobby the legislature to require all charter school employees to hold state licensure.