Fighting for Rights: Union lawyers carve out case law for educational justice
Union lawyers carve out case law for educational justice
When people and institutions are tested, they become stronger. That adage is evident through NYSUT's history of protecting rights and jobs for workers. The need for protection has been there from districts, hospitals and colleges that bend and break laws to suit their own whims.
Some cases are well known and easy to understand: First Amendment rights of teachers in curriculum matters; the reversal of a school district's right to dismiss an employee because of a disability; and a district's duty to defend and protect teachers from claims of negligence or accidental injury.
From day to day, any worker covered by a collective bargaining agreement is shielded by the rights of grievance procedures and arbitration. That shield was forged in case after case by NYSUT legal staff, guiding workers who were wronged by their employers, essentially crafting how the Taylor Law would be interpreted.
It started with going against the grain, recalled Jim Sandner, general counsel of NYSUT.
"I remember the first time we filed a case on behalf of a local union. People were surprised and interested. It was controversial and just wasn't done," he said. In the mid-1960s, the union was limited to filing legal briefs as a "friend of court" for members.
Common denominator
From Westmoreland teacher Francis C. Plano, fired over topics he assigned in English class in 1973, to the East Islip and Middle Country teachers and teaching assistants, forced to waive due process rights this year and last, the common denominator has been the union's fight for justice.
"Justice through contracts, grievances and arbitrations has been most effective," said Walter Tice, a former president of the Yonkers Federation of Teachers. "It is the core of what the union means to teachers and staff." The YFT learned just how effective in a 1975 struggle over a job security clause that no teacher could be terminated for budgetary reasons.
To save money, the Yonkers school board cut art, music and guidance teachers, and increased class size by cutting hundreds of teachers.
"It was just horrible what the kids went through that year. They started out with one program and it would be cut. Then classes were switched around and then switched around again," Tice said.
Through hard work and two trips to the state Court of Appeals, the union emerged victorious. The court ordered the district to pay $9 million in damages and back pay.
For the past three years, Elaine Gangloff has been following the plight of her Long Island colleagues in the Patchogue-Medford, Middle Country and East Islip districts, where members have been denied due process rights. She empathizes with their fight because in the early 1970s the Amityville district forced her to take an unpaid maternity leave for most of her pregnancy.
What union backing means
She, two other teachers and the Amityville Teachers Association filed a complaint against the district with the state's Human Rights Division. "It was a terrible thing to go through, having to go to court to defend yourself," said Gangloff, who has taught elementary school children in Amityville for 29 years. "But it was absolutely the right thing to do. I knew what it would mean for all the women who came after me."
They won their case, and a major victory for females in all jobs where employers imposed a pregnancy clause.
"It was easier to do this with the union's backing. I'm not sure if I would have done it on my own," Gangloff said.
Across the state and through the years, NYSUT locals and legal staff have won major victories upholding the rights of due process for teachers and teaching assistants, protecting academic freedom and other employee rights.
Most recently the union is on the offensive. NYSUT legal staff represented the East Islip TA asking state Supreme Court Justice Gabriel S. Kohn to find the East Islip school board and superintendent in contempt for violating Kohn's March decision that renewable contracts are against the law. The union is asking the court to impose fines for each instance the board required new hires to sign renewable contracts, and reimbursement for court costs.
"While it's unusual for us to have to go this far, this union is committed to protecting its members' rights," Sandner said. "We'll do what it takes."