Union representation brings bargaining benefits

Written large in New York State United Teachers history is collective bargaining - thousands of contracts won by local unions supported in negotiations by NYSUT's front-line troops, its labor relations specialists.

The LRSs, also known as field reps, take a lead or a back seat at the table, depending on the wishes of leaders of local unions. Either way, they bring savvy and research to negotiations.

Need to compare the percentages of your step increases to other districts? The numbers are there. Need to check the legality of your district's Committee on Special Education? The LRS can nail that down.

The LRS' expertise was in great demand by NYSUT locals after the passage of the Taylor Law in 1967. The Taylor Law put New York's stamp of approval on collective bargaining with public employees. Before then, only a handful of teachers associations had worked out a contract with the administration - sessions that were commonly called "collective begging."

Groundwork had been laid by the United Federation of Teachers in New York City. In 1962, its contract became a model for other big city districts around the country.

In the years after the Taylor Law passed, a network of field reps working for the New York State Teachers Association and the United Teachers of New York (predecessor organizations of NYSUT) drove the back roads to get local teachers unions recognized by district superintendents. One of those reps, Bob Allen (now NYSUT's director of Field Services) worked out of his Rome house, covering 10 counties and 184 districts.

"It mushroomed so fast," recalled Allen. "We had the advantage because we were on the offense." NYSTA opened regional offices in places like Syracuse and Rochester to provide direct service to locals.

In many districts, the pattern was to get a bare-bones initial contract and then build - say, grievance procedures in the second contract, and binding arbitration clauses in the third. Elsewhere, initial contracts included solid items such as job-protection clauses and full payment of health insurance, "things that are causes celebre now," said Martin W. Leukhardt, a longtime rep for NYSTA and NYSUT, now retired.

Elbow room

Throughout the union's infancy, NYSUT pioneers were fighting to have school boards and administrators accept the union concept.

"Negotiations were held in board rooms - a mahogany table with water pitchers and ashtrays, and five or six metal chairs in the back of the room for the teachers association people," said Allen. "I told the people, 'You don't once sit in those metal chairs. You have to put your elbows on the same table that their elbows are on.' It was paternalism with a capital P."

Many powers-that-be did not accept teachers at the table. In some places, the result was a strike, illegal under the Taylor Law. Over the years, dozens of teacher union leaders spent days in jail as the rules of engagement clarified. Over the long haul, negotiations meant that districts' "unwritten rules" affecting employees were made fairer and spelled out in black and white.

Throughout the 1970s, NYSUT made a concerted effort to organize locals of School-Related Personnel, health care professionals, and higher education faculty and staff. These colleagues were welcomed as an integral part of the statewide union. With the help of state legislation in the early 1980s, NYSUT began organizing locals of substitute teachers.

While conditions for NYSUT locals generally improved, the last decade saw an increase in school boards determined to stonewall unions. "These people who are now getting on boards, they're there to cut taxes, to get the cheapest deal they can," said Leukhardt. "They just want to get change or to get the union out of there. That didn't happen in the old days - not the bitter animosity and recalcitrance you have today."

Another recent evolution: Unions increasingly negotiate professional concerns like shared decision-making and academic standards, a process that has improved education at hundreds of schools around the state.

Pictured above: UFT President Al Shanker leads 40,000 teachers and paraprofessionals across the Brooklyn Bridge in 1975, demonstrating solidarity in the fight for better classroom conditions. At right is Sandra Feldman, who succeeded Shanker as president of the UFT and the AFT. Also pictured: Nurses from Bellevue Hospital, New York City; picketing by United University Professions Members representing SUNY staff;

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