Part 6 of 7
SALT LAKE CITY – In their more honest moments, many public school board members admit they would love to get rid of their local teacher unions.
That’s because the unions frequently drive up labor costs, create an atmosphere of antagonism between administrators and employees, disrupt the learning environment, make it difficult to fire incompetent or dangerous teachers, and complicate efforts to put the best teachers in front of children.
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Some Utah school boards place conditions on union recognition, at least in writing. They have contract provisions demanding periodic evidence that their local unions represent at least 50 percent of their teaching staffs.
Such policies make sense, because state law says school boards can only recognize and negotiate with employee unions that represent at least half of a given employee group.
But when asked for evidence that they have followed through and pressed the unions to demonstrate their legitimacy, several schools failed to provide convincing answers.
For instance, the Nebo teacher union contract has a provision that states the following:
The board agrees to recognize the association (Nebo Education Association) as the exclusive representative of all members of said instructional staff for the purpose of collective bargaining upon being furnished with satisfactory evidence that a majority of said members have designated or selected the association as their representative.
That sounds like the board means business: Prove to us that a majority of teachers really want your services, or get lost.
But that’s not exactly how it’s worked out.
When asked by EAGnews the last time the district was provided with such “satisfactory evidence,” Nebo school officials responded with the following statement:
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“We do not have data as to how members voted as to whom they want to represent them.”
If there’s no data, that means the board has no “satisfactory evidence,” and should therefore revoke recognition of the union, right?
Was there actually an election to determine if the majority wanted to keep the union? When was that? Were secret ballots used? Who conducted the election and counted the votes? If it was the union, was there an unbiased party on hand to verify the results?
When will the next such election take place, since people do change their minds?
The only thing that seems certain is that the contract language appears to be a meaningless joke, and we’re guessing that the union leaders know it.
If you show them a safe way out …
Since Utah is a right-to-work state, no employee can be compelled to join a union or pay any type of union dues as a condition of employment.
That suggests the existence of a free and open environment for employees to join or leave unions, as they choose.
But that’s not how it works, even in right-to-work states.
New — oftentimes young — employees in any workplace obviously feel a great deal of pressure to conform and fit in, so many will understandably join the union when invited. Once in, most stay in, for a variety of reasons.
One is apathy. Many teachers simply don’t care enough about the union or its issues to bother to resign and draw unwelcome attention to themselves. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they prefer membership. They simply go with the flow and allow their dues money to be taken from their checks, a situation that works to the union’s advantage.
Another reason is ignorance. Some teachers don’t even know they can drop out of unions.
Many teacher unions have very short windows of opportunity every year for members to resign, and that time is usually in the summer, when school is not on teachers’ minds.
A good example comes from Clark County, Nevada (Las Vegas). In the summer of 2012, the Nevada Policy Research Institute launched a campaign to inform local teachers that they are allowed to resign from their union by submitting written notice between July1-15 of any year.
More than 800 teachers used the information and resigned.
In some circumstances, those teachers who have the courage to resign from their unions are treated very badly, even in right-to-work states.
Michigan became a right-to-work state in the summer of 2013, which prompted many teachers to resign from their unions. One local union responded by publishing the names of 16 teachers who resigned in its newsletter, clearly to embarrass them, and perhaps to provoke loyal members into harassing or harming them.
Tactics like that are enough to scare a lot of teachers into retaining their union memberships, whether they want to or not.
The real question is how Utah teachers would vote on continued union representation if they could cast private, anonymous ballots every year or two.
We can make an educated guess based on recent results in Wisconsin, where a new state law requires public sector unions to have private ballot recertification votes for members every year.
In December 2013, 408 Wisconsin school districts had union certification elections. Twenty-two voted to decertify. Altogether more than 70 school employee unions decertified.
The evidence is clear – a percentage of union members will head for the door if they believe they can do so without recrimination.
But they’re not getting much help or encouragement from their employers.
‘Satisfactory evidence’
Check out the language in the teacher union collective bargaining agreement in the Salt Lake City district:
If within 90 days prior to Dec. 31 of any year good cause exists to believe that a majority of teachers have not designated or selected the association as their representative, the board may request and shall be furnished by the association with satisfactory evidence of such designation or selection by such majority, failing which the association shall not be recognized as the representative.
When EAGnews asked the district to name the last time it received “satisfactory evidence,” Salt Lake school officials offered the following response: “Insofar as 60 percent of the district’s teachers belong to one particular union, that union is the representative/bargaining agent.”
Officials in the Weber school district offered the same type of response: “Weber district has not taken a poll. We rely on the number of teachers that pay dues through payroll deduction to the association. For 2012-13, a slim majority of teachers were dues paying members to the association.”
Is it fair to assume, every single year, that a majority of teachers actually prefer union representation, particularly when slim majorities are members? Is there a chance that at least 10 to 15 percent of members might vote against membership if there was a secret ballot election?
“That’s interesting,” said Nebo school board President Rick Ainge, when asked if his district had ever considered pushing for a private ballot certification election. “That’s not something we’ve ever looked at or considered before.”
The Davis school district contract says:
The board shall continue to recognize the association as the exclusive representative for the term of this agreement or any renewal thereof as long as there is verification of representation.
When asked about the latest example of that “verification,” the Davis district offered the following response: “The Davis Education Association has not provided the district any data related to this topic.”
That means the contract provision has been violated. So why does the district continue to recognize the union?
The Logan City teacher union contract says:
The board agrees to recognize the association as the exclusive representative of all members of the professional staff upon being furnished with satisfactory evidence that a majority of said persons have designated or selected the association as their representative.
When asked about the “satisfactory evidence,” the district replied, “The Logan City school district received verbal confirmation from the Logan Education Association at the beginning of the 2013-14 school year that a majority of educators are members of the Logan Education Association.”
In other words, because the union said so.
If that’s all the “satisfactory evidence” the district requires, it’s going to be stuck with its parasitic teachers union for a very long time.
Part 7: Bizarre Utah teacher contract provisions: Do they really have to put this stuff in writing?
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