Union Survey

Like many of the unions representing teachers around the country, mine is currently gearing up for a "fight". My school just returned from winter break and with our contract coming up this year, rumors are rampant. It is the first time I have been through a contract renewal with my current union. My impression coming into this school district was we had a pretty strong union. We have regular update meetings at my school and quite a few reps from my building. We have one of the best contracts I have seen in my 6 years of working in the schools. Our salary scale and benefits are great.

Right before our break, our union put out an online survey. I don't know why, but I was shocked and then I was angry. The questions were ridiculous. It asked us things like would you rather retain all teachers and not receive a as large a raise or have a raise and lose staff, would you rather keep the same insurance but pay more for the current coverage or change plans to keep current rates but lose some of our coverage. It went on and on in this vein with no real good options and no where to write any alternatives.

I was at a teachers house who was throwing a holiday get together when I asked the others there what they thought about the survey. Many of them were annoyed but also said that there is no real good options, they just want to know where we stand and in this economy we'll be lucky to just retain our current staff etc. I told them I did not agree. I thought that the questions stunk. They pitted the younger, non-tenured teachers vs. tenured, they totally left administration out of the equation and all the questions were aimed at a defensive struggle. They asked what I meant. I asked them how many of them would have picked the option of going for a raise, keeping all staff and cutting administrators' salaries in order to do this. Everyone raised their hands. That is going on the offensive. At this point a really good discussion ensued. It was great! Most of the teachers in the room were older and had been teaching for at least 15+ years.

It will be interesting to see what happens. We will have future meetings with our reps to hear about negotiations and to "prepare" ourselves. There is usually close to full staff attendance at these. I will look to see if any of the ideas the were raised and talked about over break come into play. I hope so.