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1) Michigan
Education Association Proposes 24.5% Dues Hike.
Back on February 3, EIA reported on the financial woes of the Michigan
Education Association (MEA). The union faces a $10.7 million deficit and is
threatening to lay off 47 staffers (23 from headquarters and 24 from various
regions). The latest news indicates that layoffs are less than half the
solution.
MEA is planning to
raise dues an unprecedented $111.90 annually, an increase of 24.5 percent
from current levels. The revenue generated, plus the layoffs, plus a staff
and executive wage freeze, plus deferred staff pay hikes for three years,
plus program cuts, are expected to create a balanced budget. MEA may also
offer staff an early retirement incentive, which is ironic because the union
blames its deficit on its inability to meet its pension commitments.
MEA’s problems have
ramifications for other NEA state affiliates, but MEA’s proposed dues hike
has a lot of eyes on it for a number of reasons. First is its shock effect.
Once you put members on notice that a $111.90 increase is in the offing, it
doesn’t seem so bad if you finally settle on, say, a $70 increase. Second,
the proposal itself might have an effect on officials of the Illinois
Education Association, faced with a similar budget deficit for similar
reasons. Finally, no doubt union officials all over the country will want to
know if MEA can get away with it. If the union can pull off such a large
dues hike without open revolt, other affiliates will wonder why they are
agonizing over hikes of $7 to $10 per year. A successful increase of 24.5
percent in Michigan will prompt similar efforts elsewhere.
2) Palace Coup at
AFL-CIO? Advisory committee or
palace coup? That’s the question after Business Week broke the story
of the formation of a 17-member executive committee by the AFL-CIO. The
magazine called this action a sharp rebuke to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
for his failure to increase membership, and claimed “a group of five union
chiefs concerned that [Sweeney] hasn’t made enough progress have pulled off
something of a palace coup.” One of the five union chiefs alluded to is
American Federation of Teachers President Sandra Feldman.
Business Week
says the goal of the new committee is “to reinvigorate the AFL-CIO and
refocus its agenda on recruitment and politics – and ditch almost everything
else.” The new committee, which consists of the presidents of the AFL-CIO’s
ten largest member unions plus seven others appointed by Sweeney, will meet
monthly. Business Week called the committee “an obvious challenge” to
Sweeney’s leadership.
The formation of the
committee was not publicized by the AFL-CIO, but the Business Week
story apparently prompted a quick response to head off the magazine’s
interpretation of events. It is probably no coincidence that a story
appeared two days later in the New York Times, headlined “Union
Presidents Form Advisory Committee.” The Times’ spin was that the
committee was the AFL-CIO’s effort “to borrow a page from corporate
America.” The committee would act like “a kitchen cabinet” that would “help
line up support among unions for initiatives pushed by the federation.”
Whether it is an
advisory committee or a junta will be discovered soon enough. What isn’t in
dispute is that AFT President Feldman boosted her involvement in the
workings of the AFL-CIO and the wider organized labor movement by several
orders of magnitude. Will there be any ripple effects for teacher unionism?
3) District Size
Suddenly a Hot Issue. For years,
you could not find anyone interested in the issue of district size. Now you
can’t keep up with the news about it. Views on consolidation versus breakup
confound the usual political battle lines. Here’s the latest from across the
nation:
* Nevada. The
editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal seem to have come out in
support of the latest effort to break up the huge Clark County school
district. “Do we really want to follow the models of massive districts in
Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia, with their
pathologies, entrenched bureaucracies and dismal test scores?” they ask.
* Michigan.
Several districts in Michigan are considering merging in order to take
advantage of state financial incentives to do so. Districts that merge
receive a per-pupil spending bonus of $50. But an education adviser to Gov.
Jennifer Granholm told the Detroit News he expects lawmakers to end
the incentive this session.
* Nebraska.
Nebraska State Education Association Executive Director Jim Griess offered
his two cents on the push for further district consolidation. In the March
issue of NSEA Voice, Griess says “it is time to kill the 800-lb.
school consolidation gorilla by examining the facts.” Griess supports
legislation that would study current school organization patterns, saying it
“would be far superior to forcing consolidation indirectly through financial
disincentives and allowing the process to occur willy-nilly.”
* Arkansas. The
consolidation debate is getting especially interesting here. Gov. Mike
Huckabee got both the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce and the
Arkansas Education Association (AEA) to endorse his plan to reduce the
number of districts by two-thirds. AEA signed on after the governor added a
provision guaranteeing no teacher layoffs due to consolidation for at least
the first year. But the union paid an immediate price for its decision.
Almost all of AEA’s members in the rural district of Valley Springs withdrew
their membership in protest, and others are expected to follow suit.
“AEA is being
disingenuous in claiming that reducing the number of districts will improve
education,” wrote teacher Lavina Grandon in a letter to AEA President Sid
Johnson. “We refuse to be a part of this deception.” Twenty-seven of the 31
AEA members in Valley Springs dropped their membership. Grandon told EIA
that she has heard from AEA members in several other districts around the
state who plan similar actions. Grandon says that her group notified AEA of
their concerns earlier, but they were “met with evasion and equivocation.”
EIA will continue to monitor this story.
4) Hawaii Teachers
Union Says Board Is Pa `Akiki.
The Hawaii State Teachers Association (HSTA) declared an impasse in contract
negotiations with the state, setting the stage for another showdown and
possible strike. The union went on strike for three weeks in April 2001 and
narrowly averted a strike in February 1997.
The union’s opening bid
was for a 15 percent pay raise, which was later dropped to 6 percent, over
the life of a two-year contract. The state is calling for a two-year pay
freeze. The declaration of an impasse will bring in a federal mediator later
this month. The current contract expires on June 30. The union would be free
to strike anytime after that.
One solution being
offered is a half-percent increase in the state excise tax, which currently
adds four percent to the cost of virtually every economic transaction in
Hawaii, including sales, rent, interest, haircuts, and on and on.
Meanwhile, there is an
advanced effort to organize substitute teachers in the state. The Laborers’
International Union of North America (LIUNA) Local 368 is the most prominent
in this campaign, sending a request to the governor to be recognized as the
representative of the state’s estimated 5,000 substitute teachers. This
request rankled a sizeable number of the state’s subs, who haven’t been
asked to vote on the idea. One source tells EIA that LIUNA is also asking
subs for 3 percent of their wages as dues – well beyond the 1 percent that
is the norm for education unions that accept subs.
5) A
Miscalculation. There was
something poetic about the problem Hillsborough County schools had last week
while administering the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. As many as
20,000 of the state-issued calculators students are supposed to use on the
middle and high school mathematics tests were found to produce wrong answers
when students used them too quickly on three-step problems.
If ever there were a
“teaching moment,” that was it. Calculators are mathematical Cliffs Notes.
Whether students could overcome (or even detect) a bad calculator would be a
better test of their math skills than any question on the test itself.
6) Another Free
Thinker. EIA continues to support
teacher union members and officials whose published opinions on union
matters do not come from a set of talking points issued by higher
headquarters – no matter what those opinions might be. This week’s EIA free
thinker is Dan Weikle, who writes a regular column for the Jefferson County
Education Association’s organ, Insight. Weikle’s column for the March
5 issue was a highly unorthodox description of the February 23 rally for
public education held in downtown Denver.
After calling the rally
turnout “pretty pathetic,” Weikle told the educators who stayed home that
they “missed some vanilla speeches” on school funding. “Two students spoke,
one making no sense whatsoever,” wrote Weikle. “But they sure were cute –
she in her snow-bunny stocking cap, flashing a dazzling Chiclet smile, and
he in his red letter jacket and slicked back hair.”
The rally included
whistles for the participants to blow upon storming the capitol (February
23, I should mention, was a Sunday). Weikle described the scene: “And then,
in an act of emasculated defiance typical of goody-goody teachers who don’t
really want to start any trouble, we blew the whistle on state legislators.
But the joke was on us. If you blow a whistle but nobody is there to hear
it, does the whistle really make a noise?”
Weikle said he liked
his whistle but “as far as the rally was concerned, now that really blew.”
7) Good News, Bad
News. Unions received a boost in
New Mexico as new Gov. Bill Richardson signed a statewide collective
bargaining bill into law. New Mexico had collective bargaining through much
of the 1990s, but the law had a sunset provision and expired in 1999. The
new law has no sunset provision.
Teachers’ organizations
in Texas, however, find themselves faced with a new competitor. The Rio
Grande Valley Teachers Association (RGVTA) claims to have organized more
than 1,000 members in the southernmost tip of Texas. Along with the state
NEA and AFT affiliates, Texas is home to two independent statewide teacher
groups and a number of independent regional and local organizations.
“The big four
organizations have done nothing more than shack up in Austin, attend the
legislative sessions and write a report about it,” RGVTA Chief Executive
Officer Adrian Fernandez told EIA, adding that those organizations “have
become nothing more than an insurance company with a mere 4 or 5 cases a
year.”
Fernandez says that his
association “is and will continue to be a local advocacy organization
incorporated to assist local educators with local needs.”
8)
Quote of the Week.
“I’m here to tell you that I am not going back to the plantation, and I
refuse to allow you to force teachers back to the plantation as well.” –
Hawaii State Teachers Association President Karen Ginoza, testifying before
the Hawaii Board of Education last Thursday night. Ginoza said she grew up
on a Maui plantation and that the state’s current stance on contract
negotiations reminds her of those days. (March 7 Honolulu Advertiser) |
