Los Angeles Teacher Union Doesn't Hide Bargaining Under Dome of Silence

What a great idea ---keeping the membership and the public fully informed on the status of bargaining.

This UTLA site is interesting, considering the logic put out by our own leadership that you don't share your bargaining positions in public and therefore must but the committee of 300 under a dome of silence.

It's pretty interesting reading, a month by month of detailed chronicling. Check it out. I'm including the March 1 update. A strategy of openess can build support among union members and the public and also hold the DOE accountable.

So why doesn't the UFT do the same? Well, to hide what they are really doing from the members and then sell whatever they manage to do minimally to the members as take it or leave it.

Our old pal and teacher union critic Mike Antonucci has an interesting piece on the UTLA and Alex Caputo-Pearl where Mike seems to think they are very hungry for a strike, which you can't whisper here in NYC -- shhhhh about West Virginia and Oklahoma.

It Will Be a Busy Spring at UTLA

Posted: 07 Mar 2018 07:02 AM PST

United Teachers Los Angeles spent the early months of 2018 promoting and then celebrating the ratification of their healthcare agreement with the Los Angeles Unified School District. But if school board members think this bought them some time and good will when it comes to contract negotiations, they should think again. Read the rest of the story at LA School Report.

I'm guessing our leadership, which will cheer publicly, are gnashing their teeth that militant unionism can seem to win something and I bet they are just hoping for these teachers to be taught a lesson so we can have Unity slugs can tell us "we told you so." The latest Ravitch post ought to cheer our union leaders up:

West Virginia: Republicans Pull a Fast One, Introduce Bill to Lower Standards for Teachers, Eliminate State Education Department by dianeravitch

Bargaining Updates

Bargaining Alerts

https://www.utla.net/members/bargaining

×Beginning Feb. 1, 2018, the district and UTLA will be in full contract bargaining every other week until further notice.

 March 1, 2018 - UTLA was back at the bargaining table again with proposals in Special Education, Hours, Duties & Workday, Shared Decision-Making and Professional Development. The district countered with proposals to create an Ethnic Studies Task Force. or Early Education, LAUSD refused to guarantee an early shift for chapter chairs, diminishing their ability to be effectively represented at UTLA meetings, and refused proposals to put Early Education on the T salary schedule and give them an equitable workday, with a lunch break. LAUSD presented some proposals that made progress in enhancing workplace rights and working conditions for substitute educators but fell well short of UTLA demands.

**See all proposals and counterproposals by clicking on the date or scrolling below.

The Top Labor Battles in West Virginia History

I've been so busy with the closing schools issues I haven't written much about the enormous teacher strike in West Virginia. (James has done a bunch of stuff on the ICE blog.)


Note how the so-called union leaders from the AF and NEA "settled" but rank and file were outraged and haven't gone back yet.
Mike Antonucci had an interesting piece on the different unions in West Virginia -- I can't find the link but will update later when I try to unravel some of the internal union yin-yang between leadership and rank and file.

Michael Fiorillo has been posting a batch of articles which I will post a few at a time.

Here is one today with Michael's comment about Maddow and the MSNBC neo-liberal crowd which ignores unions while focusing on Russia.

Fiorillo:

Some more info you won’t see on Rachel Maddow, and from the business press…
Well, at least Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have come out strongly for the West Virginia teachers

Oh, wait...

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/03/west-virginia-labor-history-teachers-strike

 The Top Labor Battles in West Virginia History

By

Branko Marcetic

West Virginia has been the site of mass labor militancy many times before. Here are some of the highlights.

West Virginia has been rocked over the past nine days by a massive teachers’ strike that has closed all 680 public schools in the state’s fifty-five counties. And it’s been contagious: energized by the West Virginian example, Oklahoma teachers are now planning a statewide strike of their own.

The ongoing strike is neither the first time the state has been a site of mass labor militancy, nor the first time a labor battle has spilled from the state’s borders and spread across the country. West Virginia’s history is littered with pitched labor battles, from unionization efforts put down by violence to agitation for better work conditions. The following are just a few of the most significant examples.

[Putting this one ahead of the others--]

The 1990 Teachers’ Strike

Almost exactly twenty-eight years before the current strike, thousands of West Virginia teachers and librarians began their first statewide strike, involving teachers from forty-seven of its fifty-five counties. Frustrated with the second-lowest teacher salaries in the country (only Mississippi was worse) — and rejecting the state’s offer of a 5 percent raise — teachers flouted the state law against collective bargaining for twelve days before reaching a settlement with the government. 

Teachers got a pay increase, as well as training and support programs and the establishment of faculty senates. But by 2016, the average salary for a West Virginia teacher was still the forty-eighth lowest in the country.

1

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877