ACTION ALERT: Tell legislators you OPPOSE SB 302 pitting teacher against teacher; union member against non-union member
01/15/2015

 

ACTION:  ISTA asks that you contact your senator and the members of the Senate Pensions and Labor Committee to urge that this bill not move forward. 

 

Yesterday, the Senate Pensions and Labor Committee heard SB 302 (Sen. Pete Miller, R-Avon) which will allow non-union teachers to negotiate their own contracts with their employers separate from the collectively bargained contract--so long as the non-union teacher agrees to waive his or her due process rights becoming, in effect, an “at-will” employee.

 

According to Sen. Miller, his bill intends to enable school districts to pay some in-demand teachers more.

 

ISTA testified in opposition to this bill on the basis that it creates an array of questions and legal problems. Among the many are:

 

• Nobody has asked for this dramatic change. This is a solution in search of a problem.

• Since there is always a finite amount of money available for bargaining, who gets to bargain first? The exclusive representative or these individual teachers?

• This bill allows the employer to force different, individual contracts on non-union teachers.

• Student learning would suffer because administrators’ attention would be diverted by potentially hundreds of individual conversations and negotiations, in addition to engaging in collective bargaining with union teachers.

• The very notion that individual contracts will result in decisions being made that impact age and gender considerations will result in unequal pay for the same work, nepotism, and other discrimination problems.

• The bill says that these individual contracts can contain “terms that differ from the terms set forth in collective bargaining agreement” - would the scope of these individual contracts be broader than what is allowed under collective bargaining law?

 

Tell your story:

The current system of collective bargaining works—that your union is both your union and your professional association and that collective bargaining is a helpful tool and strategy that ultimately fosters a healthy balance among all interests. 

No compelling set of reasons were offered to justify this bill.