 Louis Malfaro, President of the Austin Federation of Teachers |
Sandy, Oregon, about 20 miles east of Portland, all but one of the 190 teachers employed by
the public school system made history last week by calling the first strike in
Oregon in seven years. Among the disputed issues: the scope of teachers’ duties
after school hours, the school district’s teacher transfer policy, a possible
reduction in insurance benefits, and of course, salary increases.
A representative of the Oregon Teachers’ Association maintains that school
administrators initially agreed to most of the teachers’ demands, but reneged
when the time came to actually sign a contract agreement with teachers. The
strike, he said, was a last resort after all other remedies, including
mediation, were thoroughly exhausted.
“A strike is one of the last things a teacher wants to go through,” said Steve
Snow, a fourth grade teacher in Sandy and a 12-year veteran of the profession,
who will be paid only $100 per week as long as he’s off the job. “But at the
same time, it’s frustrating to try to negotiate these things and make no
progress for over a year. You get to a point where you’re forced into a
corner.”
What would Snow do if he and his fellow teachers weren’t permitted to run this
final power play in their contract negotiations? “I’d just hope I’d never be
taken advantage of,” Snow said.
Teachers in Texas face the same battles over working conditions as Oregon
teachers do — but here, their conflicts could never be resolved by a strike,
or even the threat of a strike. Collective bargaining — and hence, the right
to strike — is illegal in Texas for public employees, including teachers.
Instead, teachers may “meet and confer” or consult annually with school boards
and administrators over salaries, benefits, and working conditions. But the
teachers’ requests are non-binding, and points of impasse between teachers and
administrators are usually resolved without the benefit of outside mediation or
arbitration.
 Gerry Brooks, President of the Austin Association of Texas Professional Educators |
teachers’ union or association, even though they aren’t permitted to strike —
which is the primary attribute most people associate with labor unions. Whether
that factor helps or hurts the organizations is beside the point. Even in
Texas, representatives of teachers’ organizations are viewed as “public”
figures who advocate the collective interests of teachers. But it’s clear that
teachers join those organizations for mostly personal — and not ideological —
reasons. And that can be either a source of pride or frustration for union —
or rather, teachers’ association — leaders.
The Big Four
Four major groups compete for membership among the state’s 240,000 publicschool teachers. Two are local chapters of national organizations: The Texas
State Teachers Association (TSTA) is an affiliate of the National Education
Association (NEA) and the first teachers’ association in Texas; and the Texas
Federation of Teachers (TFT) is affiliated with the American Federation of
Teachers (AFT), which is in turn affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Two other groups
have no national affiliation — the Texas Classroom Teachers Association
(TCTA), and the Association of Texas Professional Educators (ATPE). (For
membership figures, see box.) All four groups claim to advance the professional
interests and development of teachers, but some marked differences in
philosophy among them remain.
The unions — the TSTA/NEA and the TFT/AFT — are more political, and
perhaps more controversial than the other two organizations, and have slightly
differing priorities. Both unions would like to see the state move toward
collective bargaining, but realize that strong anti-collective bargaining
sentiment among Texas lawmakers (and to some degree, the public) won’t permit
that to happen for now. The TSTA, the state’s largest organization, has the
resources to reach out more to teachers in suburban and rural districts. The
TFT, the smallest of the four, operates more in cell-block fashion, and its
membership tends to be stronger in urban areas. The TSTA/NEA imposes term
limits on all its officers, while the TFT/AFT does not.
The NEA, especially, is a favorite punching bag for religious and political
conservatives because of the group’s pro-choice, pro-gun control stance. But
conservatives are often very harsh on the institution of American public
education in general; accordingly, the NEA has spent a great deal of its
resources defending the quality of public schools — and the integrity of the
teachers who work in them. “If you lose the confidence of the public, you lose
public schools,” said Richard Kouri, president of the TSTA. “So we have to
fight against the AM radio version of public education.” Kouri also blames the
group’s scapegoat status with Texas conservatives on TSTA’s vigorous opposition
to private school vouchers.
Little brother TFT/AFT, while no less supportive of teachers and public
education, is seen as more bullish on the need for reform. AFT’s national
president, the late Albert Shanker (who died February 22), was rather fearless
about leveling criticism wherever he thought it belonged. Writing weekly in
space purchased in the Sunday New York Times editorial section, Shanker
frequently railed at the low academic standards and tepid security practices in
U.S. schools, and he did not always count school trustees and administrators as
teachers’ allies. “We don’t feel it’s important that we be loved by school
boards and superintendents — only respected,” said TFT secretary/treasurer
John O’Sullivan.
Despite the fact that both national unions have designed volumes of support
materials for classroom instruction and professional development, neither has
completely shed their reputations among the general public for being mainly
interested in “pocket book” issues. “Where [the NEA and AFT] get beat up on
their agenda is that they’re seen as too focused on salaries and benefits, and
not on standards and student achievement,” said Mark Musick, president of the
Southern Regional Education Board, a coalition of 15 southern states that works
on education policy.
A merger of the NEA and AFT has lurked as a possibility for years, though most
observers say the AFT would have to weaken its ties to the AFL-CIO before the
marriage could take place, in order to placate teachers who prefer to think of
themselves as professionals, not laborers. “We’re definitely dancing with one
another,” joked TFT secretary O’Sullivan, “but nobody’s gone home with
anybody.”
But both groups envision a time when they’ve moved beyond negotiating
contracts and are able to control and police their own profession, much as
physicians and lawyers do, said Joe Newman, an education professor who heads up
a research group on teachers’ unions for the American Educational Research
Association. The NEA and AFT “are very sincere, but [self-policing] may be a
pipe dream,” Newman said, “because it could be seen as a violation of public
trust.” He believes the voting public isn’t yet prepared to let the inner
workings of the teaching profession fade from their scrutiny. Whereas
professionals such as doctors can set their own standards and practices through
an organization like the American Medical Association, the public has too much
interest — and too many tax dollars — invested in the classroom to leave
educators alone in a similar way.
In an attempt to distinguish themselves from the unions, the state’s two
independent organizations — the TCTA and the ATPE — label themselves as
professional associations, and espouse philosophies that are starkly
anti-union. Neither group advocates collective bargaining or the right to
strike, because they believe it’s too combative; for them, it’s far more
important — and more productive — to instead approach school boards and
administrators in a spirit of collegiality. “Our stance is less confrontational
— we prefer to organize within the system,” said Jeri Stone, executive
director of the TCTA, the state’s second oldest teachers’ association.
Whereas the other state organizations claim members who have moved from the
classroom into school management, TCTA limits its membership to practicing
teachers, teachers’ aides, librarians, and counselors only. The group has a
small following in Austin and tends to be more active in other areas of the
state.
The ATPE agrees that collaboration, not conflict, between instructional and
management personnel is key to getting things done. “What you gain from being a
squeaky wheel, you lose in [goodwill] later on,” said executive director Doug
Rogers. ATPE’s critics often point to the group’s emphasis on smooth relations
with school administrators as evidence that ATPE is “dominated” by school
administrators, but Rogers denied that is the case. Only about 7% of ATPE’s
members fall into that category, he said.
A Collective Bargaining Substitute
Although both ATPE and TCTA, the independent organizations, eschew the unionlabel, at times they behave remarkably like unions, aggressively lobbying state
legislators to get reforms into state law to enhance the dignity of their
profession (see accompanying story). Even so, their goal of collaboration
influences those legislative priorities. For example, in a recent position
statement on state education policy, ATPE advocated “local control of
consultation policies provided that exclusive representation of employees not
be granted to only one employee organization in a district.” In other words,
anyone with a constituency should be able to represent that constituency before
the school board and administrators in contract discussions. That’s not a
position “labor” unions would rally behind.
It’s this particular position on “meet and confer” — which necessarily must
substitute for collective bargaining in Texas — that could create some
friction among local chapters of the teacher organizations in the Austin
Independent School District (AISD). Since 1971, district policy has provided
for the Austin Association of Teachers (AAT, the TSTA/NEA affiliate) to
exclusively hold the right to meet and confer with members of AISD
administration and the Board of Trustees. That’s partly by default — for many
years, the AAT was the only teachers’ group in AISD, and this policy hasn’t
been reviewed since 1984.
Understandably, the two other organizations active in the district — the
Austin Federation of Teachers (AFT, the TFT/AFT affiliate) and the Austin ATPE
(AATPE) — would like to see this policy change. The AFT believes that one
group should continue representing all teachers, but that the matter should be
put to a vote among all teachers (whether they’re in a group or not) on
which group should represent them. “An election mechanism will ensure
that representation is fairly selected,” said Louis Malfaro, AFT’s president.
Teachers could even vote to continue to keep AAT as their representative, he
pointed out, but it’s more important to keep “one, strong voice” in the
consultation process.
In accordance with her state organization’s position, AATPE’s president, Gerry
Brooks, believes that every teachers’ group should be allowed at the bargaining
table — it’s only fair. “I feel all voices need to be heard,” she said.
 Ruben Valdez, Jr., President of the Austin Association of Teachers |
president Ruben Valdez, Jr., said he has no idea why AATPE wants an inclusive
consultation policy — “They’ve never demonstrated why it would benefit
teachers and students,” he said. And since his group surveys all teachers every
year about their professional concerns and priorities, he believes a vote for
representation is unnecessary.
As part of the AISD board’s ongoing project of revising all district policy,
the consultation policy will likely get some close scrutiny, said Liz Hartman,
secretary of the AISD Board of Trustees. “It’s time. The landscape has
changed,” she said. “In addition to our education mission, we are a major
employer, and we need to address employee issues.” Hartman said she is inclined
to keep one group at the table to represent all teachers — but the way in
which that one group is selected for sole representation is up for debate.
A Texas school district that has more or less successfully dealt with strife
over the consultation issue is the Corpus Christi ISD, where the matter was
first put to a vote in 1979; the Corpus Christi Federation of Teachers (CCFT)
won and has held the exclusive meet and confer rights since 1986. As for using
multiple representatives in consultation — “been there, done that,” says CCFT
president Linda Bridges. “It was a three-ring circus, because it allowed the
administration to pit the groups against each other.”
But the state’s fourth association, the TCTA (which has a small membership and
is not very visible in AISD), believes AISD is behind the times, fighting old
battles with old strategies. “The classic consultation model is a dead issue,”
said TCTA executive director Stone. Her members think it’s more effective to
work in site-based committees on contract issues, she said, instead of
approaching the school board or the superintendent for negotiations that really
amount to nothing more than “a formalized chat.”
The Search for Dues-Payers
One might think these various, strong differences of opinion among the groupsabout the best way to advance the professionalism of teaching would attract
followers. And yet, on the whole, teachers don’t seem to find these ideological
distinctions very important. Their chief reason for aligning with any group at
all is the liability insurance that comes with their membership. A harsh word
here or there, or a touch, have a way of escalating into major incidents, and
many teachers worry about being sued by a parent, said Luiz Lazaro, a
fifth-grade teacher at T.A. Brown Elementary School and an AFT co-ordinator.
“You may need a good representative” in that situation, he said. “It’s not
something you can carry off by yourself, I don’t think.”
His argument apparently hasn’t swayed Sally Reagan, who also teaches fifth
grade at the same school. Like many other teachers who have not joined any
group, the cost of the dues — a $29 monthly payroll deduction — has been the
primary deterrent to association membership for her. Confident in her own
ability to deal with conflict, she doesn’t feel the same need for legal
protection. “I guess it’s not a concern,” Reagan said. “Maybe I’m being
na�ve, but hopefully, I won’t need a lawyer, ever.” Travis High School
teacher Sharon Beynon isn’t in a group this year either, but only because she
didn’t get around to paying her membership dues. “I have no good reason for not
doing it,” Beynon admits. “I totally believe in them [teacher groups].”
Union converts agree, though, that it’s better to head off trouble before it
happens — especially if it involves your campus principal. “I tell them, it’s
for your protection,” said one teacher/membership recruiter (who asked not to
be identified), who described the relationship between teachers and some campus
principals as “love/hate.” Some principals work very well with teachers’
associations, this teacher said. But if you’re working with a vindictive
principal who knows you aren’t affiliated with a group, said another teacher
(who also requested anonymity), then you could be open to all kinds of
retaliation, including getting fired.
But if teachers are so vulnerable, what else, besides the cost of dues, might
account for the fact that some 25% of AISD’s 5,500 teachers haven’t joined any
group? One teacher had a surprising answer: Because of the absence of
collective bargaining and the right to strike in Texas, the unions and
associations “basically have no power,” said John Garcia, an unaffiliated
teacher at Austin High School.
It’s an argument AFT’s president Malfaro has heard from teachers before. His
response: “I tell them, `How are we going to get that [power] if you don’t
join?'”
This article appears in February 28 • 1997 and February 28 • 1997 (Cover).