What we want: Job security

NEA Today, Sep 1994

Four Weddings...

Support workers won major job security victories in state legislatures this year-achieving due process rights in Florida, Kentucky, and New Mexico, and repealing a law in Indiana that threatened bus drivers' jobs.

In Florida, the Orange County ESP Association (OESPA) took the lead in drafting and lobbying for a new due process law.

"If the employees in the state roads department can have due process," OESPA President Ruby Strickland asked, "why can't public school employees?"

Support employees asked the same question in Kentucky and New Mexico and got the same answer. In all three states, employees can now be terminated only for just cause, with the requirement of notice and the right to appeal.

With due process comes the expectation--if not the guarantee--of continuing employment from year to year.

"I've had my last letter from the district saying, 'You have been reappointed for one year, but you have no expectation of employment beyond that,'" laughs Strickland, an 18-year veteran parapro with Orange County.

The Indiana repealer law (H.B. 1033) undid last-minute language inserted in the 1993 budget bill requiring school districts to get annual bids from private school bus contractors.

The language went down in a sea of postcards distributed by members of the Indiana State Teachers Association to allies across the state--90,000 cards came back to ISTA headquarters.

That pattern--of intensive ESP lobbying--was repeated in the due process victories as well.

"We burned up the phone wires," says Kentucky ESP Association President Helen Cottongim.

But the four victories may have also benefited from a small shift in official thinking about school employees.

In both Kentucky and Florida, for example, the legislatures received testimony or survey results revealing a jumble of guidelines for dealing with support staff personnel matters, plus evidence of unfair staff terminations.

"The policy-makers were shocked at the amateurishness of it all," says KESPA's Cottongim.

"We also told the legislators that you can't have education reform if you leave out 43 percent--the ESP portion--of school employees," she adds. "And they began to understand that."

To the Source

For a copy of the Florida, Kentucky, or New Mexico ESP due process bill, send a 29-cent SASE to the appropriate staffer: Marshall Ogletree, FTP-NEA, 213 S. Adams St., Tallahassee, FL 32301; Roderick Brown, Kentucky EA, 401 Capitol Ave., Frankfort, KY 40601; Jay Miller, NEA-New Mexico, 130 S. Capitol, Santa Fe, NM 87504.

...and a Funeral

The biggest legislative defeat of the year for NEA members took place in Michigan. Michigan Education Association Secretary Treasurer Steve Cook, a paraprofessional from Lansing, explains its impact.

How does the anti-union bill that was signed into law in May affect support employees?

The law, which goes into effect in April 1995, hurts support workers in the same way it hurts all members of Michigan public employee unions: it redefines what a strike is.

Employees who don't "fully, faithfully, and properly perform their duties" will be considered to be on strike. What if an employee objects to a board policy and goes public about it? Is that being unfaithful? And therefore on strike?

Are there penalties for strikes?

Are there! An employee found to be on strike is fined a day's pay; the Association, $5,000 a day--even if the member is acting on his or her own.

And there's no appeal.

Worse, although we'll be fined an amount equal to a day's pay, we'll still be required to work all the days as scheduled by the employer. In other words, if we're deemed to be on strike three days but still work 180 days, we'll have to forfeit three days' pay even though we will have actually worked those days.

There are serious First Amendment and unfair labor practice issues here.

What does the law say about privatization?

Districts have the right to privatize, but we'll no longer have the right to discuss or bargain with them over the impact on employees.

What's the motivation here?

It's clearly ideological. The law has nothing in it--as past privatization bills have had--about lowest bidder, performance review, oversight. They're not trying to save money, they're fulfilling a vision.

Why did this happen in such a strong union state?

There's a parallel to the situation in New Jersey: a Democratic governor falls out of favor with Association members, who decide to take a look at the Republican. What happens is that liberals hold back and hard-right, anti-government Republicans take power.

What are you going to do?

Seek resolution at the polls. First, on election day in November, the governor, all state Senate and House members--they're all up for reelection. We'll work really hard to elect friends of education to both houses of the state legislature. Then we'll try to get this blatantly unfair law repealed.