Teacher Bargaining Makes the Grade
MICHAELSON, CHARLES
NATIONAL REPORTS Teacher Bargaining Makes the Grade By Charles Michaelson EARLY LAST MONTH, in the largest U.S. collective bargaining election since the Ford River Rouge workers voted...
...We're a union," he concluded, "but of professionals...
...Although the Central Labor Council and local unions provided some help and the AFL-CIO made $25,000 and four staff members available to the UFT, most of the campaigning was done by hundreds of rank-and-file members...
...has 765,000 members, 85 per cent of whom are classroom teachers, but it has been less a professional association for them than a literate company union...
...Whatever the outcome of the bargaining, the UFT is optimistic —it hopes to increase its membership from 9,000 (6,000 on dues check-off) to 20,000 on check-off within a year...
...We've got a high degree of membership participation and our members are jealous of their rights and prerogatives...
...They came to the UFT's office in an East 23rd Street loft building after school and on Saturday to man 25 phones and address envelopes...
...It has failed to fight for certification standards for teachers and their professional status, and it does not protect them from the displeasure of their supervisors and the harassment of the public...
...considers the superintendent as the spokesman of the teachers," said Carl J. Megel, President of the UFT's parent body, the American Federation of Teachers...
...But even though the UFT won rights to exclusive bargaining, any of the 100 Board-recognized teacher organizations may continue to appear before the Board...
...As a labor union, the UFT is unique in New York...
...The New Yorkers selected the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) over the Teachers Bargaining Organization (TBO), a coalition of 10 old-line "professional" teacher associations...
...Since few of the members had ever marched on a picket line, they had to learn—and they learned by doing...
...It has an educated rank-and-file, a tradition of democracy and militancy that goes back to the founding of the parent Federation in 1916 by John Dewey, George Counts and other leaders of the progressive education movement, and a raucous vitality...
...While the UFT is fighting for a decent salary, we're fighting just as hard to give New York's one million students a competent teacher every day...
...The laborers are organized...
...which put together the TBO coalition and the cloak of "professionalism" that it wears...
...Its optimism appears well-founded, since the victory marks the first time in American education that a union of teachers has won majority status in a school system...
...The UFT's negotiations with the Board are unprecedented...
...Only in school systems with strong teacher organizations is there any assurance that teachers will be treated as free human beings,' UFT President Charles Cogen insists...
...The ???, in contrast, maintains separate associations for white and Negro teachers in several Southern states...
...A third group, the Teachers Union, which was thrown out of both the AFL and the CIO before the two merged because of alleged Communist domination, received 2,575 ballots...
...In negotiations with the Board, which opened late last month, the UFT asked for a scale starting at $5,300 and rising to $9,500 for teachers with 13 years of service, $850 above the current 14-year maximum...
...The vote probably means the beginning of the end for the National Education Association...
...Furthermore, in typical company-union fashion, these superintendents elect the officers and formulate the policy of the...
...Having finally admitted that as salaried professionals they need a union to deal effectively with their employer, teachers may even find their starting salary, now $4,800 a year, raised to the $4,920 minimum which the City's laborers receive...
...The next day the Mayor started turning the wheels that led to the collective bargaining election last month...
...This term there are 110 classes covered by day-to-day substitutes...
...Part of the ideology of the leadership is the desire to build a democratic organization of teachers...
...The UFT is also bargaining on 100 non-salary items, including class size, compensation for extracurricular activities, favoritism in teacher assignments, time allowances for administrative duties and classroom preparation, and the authoritarian atmosphere that hangs over many of the system's 850 schools...
...convention...
...they spoke at school meetings and they talked UFT to their colleagues...
...Prestige,' we can say to white-collar workers, 'what do you want for prestige...
...We've got the most democratic union in the city," the chairman of one UFT school chapter told me...
...At a number of schools, UFT members set up "honor" picket lines, marching for 15 or 20 minutes each morning for the two weeks before the strike...
...collective bargaining election since the Ford River Rouge workers voted 20 years ago, New York City's public school teachers overwhelmingly chose an AFL-CIO union of professionals as their bargaining agent...
...The election gives promise of longneeded improvements not only for the 40,000 teachers in New York but for the 1.5 million teachers throughout the country, and has provided a strong boost to labor's lagging drive to organize whitecollar and professional workers...
...The...
...On November 7, 1960, against the better judgment of the City's labor leaders, the UFT called a strike of its members to force Mayor Robert F. Wagner and Superintendent of Schools John J. Theobald into fulfilling their promise for collective bargaining...
...This is one of the reasons teachers haven't been able to get decent salaries: The superintendents sit on both sides of the table...
...In New York, the UFT has pressed for increased facilities for schools located in poor neighborhoods...
...We've got the teachers in the AFL-CIO.' "The election," he added, "makes the whole labor movement a hell of a lot more attractive...
...The teacher has his rights, as well as his duties, and he can insist on them...
...Despite a State law that calls for the dismissal of public employees who strike, the 5,000 UFT members struck and won the support of 4,000 other teachers who did not report for work that morning...
...There is no provision for teachers to bargain collectively either in the New York State or Federal labor law...
...It gave us a sense of solidarity and we got to know who would stay out," one picket captain said...
...Charles Michaelson, a new contributor, often writes on labor affairs...
...According to Eugene Blum, a junior high school mathematics teacher, "The greatest weakness of the American education system is the lack of teachers educated to fight for enough money for salaries, buildings, books and all the services needed...
...It endorsed the Board of Education's "open enrollment" policy, which permits students from de facto segregated schools to transfer to predominantly white schools...
...by designating the classroom teachers who shall be delegates to the...
...The AFL-CIO took an interest in the campaign shortly after the teachers voted 27,000-9,000 for collective bargaining last June...
...The...
...They are proud of their union...
...Endorsing the 1954 Supreme Court decision on school integration, the Federation set an example for the labor movement in 1957 by expelling 5,000 members, a tenth of its membership at the time, because their locals refused to integrate...
...The TBO, for instance, has announced that while it will support the UFT on wages and working conditions at present, it will conduct its own activities whenever it sees fit...
...The reason for the NEA's failure is simple: It freely admits supervisors, administrators and principals to membership...
...The 60,000-member American Federation of Teachers keeps supervisors out and militancy in...
...Eventually the union hopes to reach a $6,000-$12,000 scale for teachers with a bachelor's degree...
...For the teachers themselves, the UFT victory greatly increases their chances of winning better salaries and improved working conditions...
...As one AFL-CIO representative explained, with automation wiping out hundreds of thousands of production jobs—many held by union members—every year, the future growth of the Federation must come in large part through white-collar organizing...
...The election could mushroom into a big organizing drive for the American Federation of Teachers across the country," the official noted, "and the AFLCIO can then, in turn, use this in other places...
...The UFT received 20,045 votes, the TBO 9,770...
Vol. 45 • January 1962 • No. 1
