J TA — Just before classes started in September, the
teachers union at Barrack Hebrew Academy in Bryn Mawr, Pa., successfully
negotiated a new contract with the administration.
Five years earlier the pluralistic middle and high
school’s teachers had gone on strike, forming a picket line outside the school
after contract negotiations broke down. But since then, the school board and
faculty have been meeting monthly to smooth relations, and union leaders report
that the administration negotiated the current contract in good faith.
But with its strong union, Barrack is an outlier among
American Jewish day schools. Unions exist in only a handful of schools, all of
them Conservative movement-affiliated or pluralistic, and the number is
dropping.
Over the past year, three Conservative Jewish day schools
have effectively eliminated their teachers unions. Perelman Jewish Day School,
an elementary school just a few miles away from Barrack, and the Solomon
Schechter School of Greater Boston have both declined to negotiate with their
teachers unions. According to one source, a third East Coast Conservative day
school has done the same, but the source asked JTA not to name the school for
fear of disrupting efforts to reverse the policy.
In 2005, the Hillel Day School of Greater Detroit successfully
shut down its union. And several people involved in the matter said that
eliminating the union was one factor in the 2012 closing of the Reuben
Gittelman Hebrew Day School in New York’s Rockland County. A new and
non-unionized school, Rockland Jewish Academy, opened just months later with
many of the same board members and faculty.
Public school teachers unions are increasingly finding
themselves on the defensive, often portrayed by reformers as obstacles to
innovation and as putting the needs of teachers before students
The moves come as public school teachers unions are
increasingly finding themselves on the defensive, often portrayed by reformers
as obstacles to innovation and as putting the needs of teachers before
students. Jewish schools have many of the same concerns in dealing with their
unions, but their hand has has been strengthened by the reluctance of the
National Labor Relations Board, which enforces national labor laws, to
intervene.
In August, in a move that could have implications for all
parochial school teachers unions, the Philadelphia office of the NLRB dismissed
a complaint from Perelman’s teachers, saying it lacked jurisdiction because the
school is a religious institution. The union has appealed the decision to the
board’s Washington headquarters.
Dennis Walsh, the board’s Philadelphia regional director,
told JTA that while not all religious institutions are automatically exempt
from the National Labor Relations Act, many are, adding that there is a
complicated set of criteria that the national agency is “in the process of
reconsidering.”
Leaders of recently de-unionized schools declined JTA’s
requests for interviews about the labor issue. Pro-union teachers say the moves
have hurt morale and created a climate of fear.
Hurt morale and a climate of fear
“People are kind of worried,” said a longtime Boston
Schechter teacher who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. “The
new handbook says people can be let go at any time with no notice. It’s very
stark language. They’ve done a good job of making people look over their
shoulders.”
Anti-union efforts in the public school world are often
portrayed as initiatives to improve educational outcomes, allowing school
districts to eliminate ineffective teachers who under many union contracts are
difficult to fire.
‘The new handbook says people can be let go at any time
with no notice. It’s very stark language’
Flexibility in hiring and firing is also an issue at
Jewish day schools, but according to Harry Bloom, the strategy manager for
financial sustainability at the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education,
the current pressure on unions is driven by economics. Since 1998, the number
of Schechter schools in the United States has dropped from 63 to 39 and the number
of students has shrunk 45 percent, to 9,700 from 17,700, according to data from
the Avi Chai Foundation.
“Those schools are now half their previous size and
people are struggling to pay tuition after the recession,” Bloom said. “What
happened is that work rules and staffing and benefits that used to be
affordable when you had a school of 1,000 students is now hard to support when
you have a school half that size or less.”
That all the schools enmeshed in recent labor conflicts
are affiliated with the Conservative movement (Detroit’s Hillel was a Schechter
school in 2005, but later became a community school) has not escaped the notice
of Jill Jacobs, a Conservative rabbi who authored the Conservative Rabbinical
Assembly’s 2008 legal ruling supporting the right of workers to unionize. The
R.A.’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards approved the ruling by a vote of
13 to 1, with three abstentions.
“I think halachah is extremely clear on this point that
you’re not allowed to bust a union,” said Jacobs, the executive director of
T’ruah, formerly Rabbis for Human Rights of North America, adding that when it
comes to labor laws, Jewish institutions should “be doing more than the law
requires.”
Leaders of the Schechter Network, which represents
Conservative day schools, and RAVSAK, which represents community schools,
declined to comment on recent labor conflicts.
Jon Mitzmacher, executive director of the Schechter Day
School Network, referred JTA to an Aug. 29 blog post that takes no position on
unions while noting that “genuine debate has broken out within the Jewish
community (as in the larger American community) about the balance between
protecting the rights of teachers and serving the needs of students.”
Marc Kramer, RAVSAK’s executive director, said in an
email that the network has no position on teachers unions.
“We obviously want schools to be in the best position
possible to stay student focused and to retain the best educators possible,”
Kramer said. “Likewise, we believe that day school educators are professionals
who should be treated as such … and we do not think that these two commitments
need to be in opposition to one another.”
Civilized discourse at dinner party negotiations
Barrack Hebrew Academy is unusual among Jewish day
schools for having a teachers union – and a strong one at that.
The suburban Philadelphia school also stands out because
the teachers and board, which recently negotiated a new contract, have a unique
tradition: small monthly dinners that bring key leaders from each side together
to get to know one another.
The dinners are the brainchild of Michael Stein, a former
board member who in the midst of a teachers strike five years ago vowed never
to let matters deteriorate to that point again.
Stein, the CEO of a company that manufactures industrial
materials, and another board member started out by inviting one faculty member
and one board member to a kosher restaurant. The restaurants vary from month to
month, and sometimes people host in their homes. Stein declined to say who pays
the bill.
‘We got to know
each other as human beings, not simply the boogeyman union and boogeyman board’
“We got to know each other as human beings, not simply
the boogeyman union and boogeyman board,” Stein said, adding that “we were all
mission driven: Rather than sitting at opposite sides of the table with a tug
of war over money, we’re sitting on the same side saying what’s the best way to
ensure long term that this institution thrives.”
For Stein it meant overcoming what he described as his
own “knee jerk” anti-union sentiment.
“I will not sit here and tell you I’ve undergone a
religious conversion and want to introduce the Teamsters into my company,” he
said. “But for Barrack Hebrew Academy and the individuals who’ve become my
friends, they have as valid a point of view as my point of view.”
Barnett Kamen, a Bible teacher who is the co-president of
Barrack’s teachers union, said the informal gatherings made it easier for the
educators to demonstrate how the union benefits the school.
“We have very little turnover in faculty, and we have a
faculty that’s very devoted to the school,” he said. “Teachers who feel secure
do a better job.”
At the dinners “we sit and discuss how can a union and an
administration work together for the betterment of the school,” Kamen said. “We
don’t speak specifically about any contractual issues.”
“This should be the model for all negotiations,” he
added.
Source: The
Times of Israel
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