Teamsters vs. teachers union

By Emily Richmond

Monday, July 2, 2007 | 7:06 a.m.

They used words like "crisis," "confront," and "throwing down the gauntlet." The enemy was described as ineffectual and weak.

And so the battle lines were drawn, and Teamsters Local 14 launched its offensive last week on the Clark County Education Association.

"The Teamsters have never walked away from a fight - we're about to get into a big one," said Gary Mauger, chief executive of Local 14, at a news conference announcing the union's plans.

At stake is the right to represent the 18,000 teachers working in the Clark County School District. Between now and November 2008, when Teamsters plan to file a formal challenge to the teachers union, the two organizations will engage in a struggle that promises to turn on substance as well as style.

Early story line: The Teamsters are a union with muscle that believes the teachers' representation has not been aggressive enough in challenging a state unwilling to appropriately fund public education. Any teacher not satisfied with the status quo should consider a change.

To put a face on that, you need only look at the scene last week as Teamsters representatives met with about 25 district teachers. The half-dozen Teamsters representatives standing at the front of the room looked a little burly, with calloused hands, bulging biceps and a collectively forceful manner.

Sally Magnusen, a special-education teacher at Eldorado High School, left the news conference already won over.

"The biggest raise I received was when I dropped my membership and got $600," said Magnusen, who has been teaching in Clark County for 28 years. "In the old days negotiations were a lot of give and take. The last few years everything has gone the district's way."

Ron Taylor, a district teacher who launched a grass-roots effort to decertify the union and works for Teamsters Local 14, said teachers union representatives lag in responding to members' complaints, until the time for filing a formal complaint expires .

"They're in bed with the district," Taylor said.

To be sure, the relationship between the district and the current union is more collegial than it was just a few years ago. In 2002 a prolonged dispute over salary and benefits was finally settled by an arbitrator.

To avoid similarly contentious negotiations, the union and the district agreed to try "interest-based bargaining," a technique promoted by a federal agency that provides mediators free of charge. Rather than presenting competing lists of demands, the two sides agree to a common set of goals and make decisions by consensus.

Thanks to the technique, the district has multiyear contracts with its three major employee groups - teachers, administrators and support staff. That contract stability has helped the union negotiate better working conditions for teachers and win district support for new campus programs and professional development opportunities, said John Jasonek, executive director of Clark County's current teachers union.

Terry Hickman, executive director of the Nevada State Education Association, of which the Clark County union is an affiliate, said the Teamsters' chances of getting the necessary votes to decertify are remote at best.

"It's disappointing that when we have so many important education issues, that the Teamsters seem bent on spending an awful lot of time and money on breaking a union that's already well-run," Hickman said.

But critics of the teachers union say its relationship with the district has crossed the line from collegial to cozy. Some teachers were angered last year when the union announced it would no longer release annual job performance evaluations of principals and instead teamed up with the district on a broader survey of working conditions and teacher job satisfaction.

One question skeptics of the Teamsters have is how much experience the union has with teachers. Nationwide, Teamsters represent some school employees, including office staff, bus drivers and administrators. Local Teamsters officials said they think K-12 teachers in New York were represented by the union, but those officials were unable to provide the Sun with the name of the school district.

Calls to the Teamsters' national office for information were not returned.

Jasonek said the Teamsters' lack of experience in the field is a blind spot. Teamsters do not know "about instructional issues, they have no idea about No Child Left Behind. They could get to the table and bargain away academic freedom."

Mauger, of Local 14, has a ready reply. You don't have to already represent teachers to recognize the Clark County teachers union is falling short, Mauger said. Local 14 has 17,000 members working in municipal blue - collar, clerical and supervisory jobs in Southern Nevada, and many of them are parents with children in Clark County schools, Mauger said.

"We are not going to stand by and watch our children's future be squandered ," he said.

With the announcement last week that the Teamsters has set its sights on the teachers, the union's leadership also vowed to press on with its fight to represent the support employees working for the school district. More than 10,000 office staff, custodians, bus drivers and food service workers are represented by the Education Support Employees Association.

In a five-year legal battle that reached the state's high court, the Teamsters lost an argument they think cost them the right to represent the school district's support staff. In the voting, more than half of those who filled out ballots chose the Teamsters. But in Nevada, the court ruled, the threshold was 50 percent, plus one, of all eligible employees - not just those who voted.

The Teamsters fell short . Fewer than half the employees had cast ballots.

If the Teamsters union is to win over Clark County teachers, it must mobilize and motivate a faculty that has been largely uninterested when it comes to union activities.

The union currently has about 13,300 members. Each year 250 to 400 teachers opt out, a figure that includes educators who retire or relocate.

The requirement for winning more than half the votes of all eligible teachers is difficult in a place where the membership is largely apathetic, said Richard Hurd, professor of labor studies at Cornell University. Given that 50 percent of Clark County's teachers typically leave within five years, Teamsters Local 14 faces a particularly steep uphill battle.

"The more transient the workforce, the more difficult it's going to be," Hurd said. "To persuade teachers that it's worth changing their union affiliation, when they don't have a long-term interest, is going to be tough. The average teacher who may be neutral or uninterested will just go with the status quo, especially if all they have to do to do that is not vote."