Closed-Door Bargaining and the Union Padlock
Last week, the editors of the Washington Post had this to say about the DC teachers’ contract negotiations:
Maybe it’s time for parents to get a look what’s going on in these closed-door talks. More than pay scales are at stake. Every aspect of classroom life — from the size of bulletin boards to teacher planning times to when principals can ask to look at lesson plans — is being decided. Given that secrecy hasn’t helped Ms. Rhee and Ms. Weingarten work out their differences, why not give the public more than a glimpse and some sound bites about the competing proposals? Each side claims to have a plan that will further the interests of students. Let them prove it.
To which Andrew Rotherham added:
And why not? This is a step that Jane Hannaway and I called for a few years ago as a general reform to today’s bargaining process and in general more transparency around policymaking is better. Yet while opening up negotiations more is perceived as not in interest of the teachers’ unions, I’m not sure that’s entirely true at all. Contrary to popular belief, everything they ask for, even around key sticking points, isn’t indefensible.
Fortunately, we received some of the answer from John Scrudato, president of the Traverse City Education Association in Michigan, who had this response when the district posted its – and the union’s – contract proposals on its web site:
“I thought it was deplorable. This was done to make the teachers look like greedy, foolish people.”
Unions prefer a closed-door negotiation for a very simple reason - it neutralizes the public. It clouds the perception of who represents whom. In this model, the public plays the role of interested observers. The union and district administration hash out the details, and the results are presented to the citizenry. Sort of like the way we would watch negotiations between the Teamsters and UPS, or maintenance workers and the airlines. The public has an indirect interest in the outcome, but has no stake in the bargaining process.
Teacher union negotiators may inform their constituency – the members – about every detail of bargaining. And who are district negotiators allowed to inform? The school board and the superintendent. This maintains the facade that bargaining is strictly between “management” and labor.
If you open up negotiations, you change the dynamic entirely. The public becomes party to the bargaining. District negotiators are reminded they ostensibly represent the public, not just the administration. Unions are faced with a question they would rather not contemplate: If we are bargaining for the teachers, who are we bargaining against?
June 15th, 2009 at 15:21
Sorry to bust your bubble with facts, but I have been the president of a local NEA affiliate, and we bargained in public during my tenure, as did several other locals in my state. Teacher unions often prefer public bargaining, because it allows their members to attend. When these members hear the inflammatory language and see the disrespectful body language of district negotiators they become more committed to the efforts of the union to secure a better agreement.
It is frequently the district, seeking to avoid such an outcome, that insists upon closed bargaining sessions. Sure there are unions that prefer closed sessions and districts that want to open it up, but it is not all one way or the other.
Frankly, it depends upon the dynamics of the specific round of bargaining. Sometimes neither the union nor the district wants to have the “nitty-gritty conversations” in open sessions. The reality is a lot more mixed than the WaPo’s apologists for the incompetent DC superintendent, Michelle Rhee, or you would like us to believe.
Apart from all of the above, I have never heard of any public sector union, other than teacher unions, bargaining in public. Surely the public has just as big a stake in the bargaining of police officer and firefighter unions. Why are the professional do-gooders like Andrew Rotterdam only concerned about teacher bargaining?
June 15th, 2009 at 15:42
If you bargained in public, Rich, you’re to be applauded, but the plural of anecdote is not “facts.” If you reread the blog post, you’ll see that I don’t let districts off the hook, saying open bargaining would remind them who they represent.
I stand by my characterization of the unions’ position on public bargaining, allowing – as always – there are exceptions. And in keeping with my point, you discuss what the district prefers and what the union prefers, but what the public might prefer doesn’t enter into it.
As for the police, firefighters or any other public sector unions, you are correct. Their negotiations are just as much a public issue and should also be transparent to the public.
June 16th, 2009 at 17:46
Mike, Things that happen and are verifiable are more than anecdotes. Apart from that, even anecdotal evidence makes a mockery of the title of your piece. It is not only the union that applies a “padlock.”
My experience is that the public simply finds teacher bargaining exhausting. It is one of the most feared regularly scheduled occurrences in many communities. I have no evidence that translates into public demand for open bargaining. When we did open bargaining, anyone could attend. The only non-bargainers who ever attended were members and an infrequent member of the press.
My sense is the public wants teacher negotiations settled as quickly as possible. If they felt that public bargaining was the way to do that, they’d be clamoring for it. Apart from folks like yourself who have axes to grind, how many people are really demanding open bargaining?
June 17th, 2009 at 11:05
I have to agree with Rich. I believe this topic is hyperfocused on large urban districts—which is nothing new for Eduwonk who can rarely get his head out of the beltway or NYC.
There are many districts where public negotiations take place. Ironically, in my experiences, the “public” rarely shows up for these public negotiations and it is the teachers who make up the majority of the observers. This is typically an advantage for the teachers.
This is another reason to shoot holes in the Eduwonk/Arne Duncan et al national standards movement. If you constantly view education through the lens of the Chicago, D.C., and LAs of the country you miss the boat on what is going on elsewhere. If you need an education battle in the urbans go for it, but don’t use it as an excuse to tread on the rest of us.
June 17th, 2009 at 14:37
If how many people show up is an argument for closed-door bargaining, then you could make the same argument for having union meetings that are closed to rank-and-file members. Or for abolishing universal suffrage, since the percentage of voters who turn out is so low.
It’s up to the press to cover public events for the public, otherwise we would spend all our time running from city council meetings to school board meetings to fire district meetings, ad infinitum. If the press isn’t doing the job, shame on them.
This isn’t about what the public does with the freedom it has. It’s about people taking the position that the public doesn’t have the right to know about negotiations until they’re over.
Only 11 states have open bargaining laws. Most of these are not strong union states and I would be interested to know what the position of the affected public employees’ unions were when those laws were making their way through the process.
I continue to stand by my original statements.