Name: [name redacted]
email: [redacted]
Anonymous: Yes
Post: Yes
State: California
County: San Diego
District: San Diego City Schools
Story:

Post: Those that are union members... help me with this, PLEASE!

Posted on 10/01/00

How would your union go about ratifying a new contract with your district?

Our large local (9K members?) recently renegotiated our present contract, adding a 2 year extension. The flyer which announced the ratification procedure had no dates for doing so, though it did contain a phone # to call for further questions. The flyers were placed in teachers' boxes, though they apparently did not go to the relatively few members who were off-track or substitutes.

Since the previous contract did not expire until 6/30/01, at least some of us thought the voting window was open. Now we learn that it was but a 2 day window. I was told that about 95% voted in favor of the new agreement. However, later I was totally appalled to learn that only something like 200 members had voted!

Could something like this happen with your district and union? What legal recourse, if any, do we have to keep something like this from happening again?

BTW, as of this posting, our local's web site still declares a 6/30/01, rather than 6/30/03, expiration date for the contract.

Name: [name redacted]
email: [redacted]
Anonymous: No
Post: Yes
State: California
County: San Diego
District: San Diego Unified School District

Story:

The San Diego Education Association (SDEA) ratification election of the tentative contract proposal was a sham, for the following reasons:

1. Visiting (substitute) teachers, who are part of the bargaining unit, were not informed that there would be a vote, until after it occurred, and the few votes cast by contract teachers, were already counted.
2. Contract teachers received a flyer in their school mail boxes on or about September 18, 2000, stating:
   1. Only MEMBERS of SDEA are allowed to vote.
   2. You will receive a copy of the actual agreement and a page of highlights.
   3. Voting will take place at the SDEA office *10393
      San Diego Mission Road, Ste. 100 (see map below)
   4. In order to vote, you MUST have a picture ID.
   5. Please vote and encourage your colleagues to vote! If you have any questions, please call SDEA @ (619) 283-4411.
3. The flyer does not state what day or days are set for voting. As it turned out, teachers were only allowed to vote on September 19 and 20, 2000, the two days after the flyer was distributed to contract teachers. The vote was announced to me and to other SDEA Association Representatives attending a Fall Leadership Conference in Palm Springs, CA, on Septmber 23, 2000, as 94% in favor, out of 100-200 votes cast. The bargaining unit covers about 9,000 SDEA members, who are contract teachers, visiting teachers, resource teachers, peer coaches, itinerant teachers, counselors, nurses, and librarians. There are about 1,500 other teachers including visiting teachers (VTs) who have not joined SDEA, and thus could not vote, even had they been given notice of the vote.
4. As a visiting teacher who received no notice of the ratification election, and as the Association Representative (AR) for Visiting Teachers who didn't even receive any notice of the election in my role as AR, I feel disenfranchised from the election for myself and on behalf of all VTs.
5. We were told at the Fall Leadership Conference in Palm Springs on September 23, 2000, that one of the reasons for the "quick vote" was to help out the San Diego Unified School District's Superintendent of Schools, Alan Bersin, because he doesn't want any labor strife in this presidential election year, since he hopes to be named by a President Al Gore to be his new Secretary of Education for the United States (Gore and Bersin were college roommates at Harvard Law School, before Gore dropped out of school). No thanks! Mr. Bersin has repeatedly violated teacher rights according to the last two years of written news stories and editorials of SDEA union leaders in the Advocate, the official SDEA newsletter, and I wouldn't want to inflict Alan Bersin on all of the teachers and schoolchildren in the United States.