Part 1 of 7
SALT LAKE CITY – For researchers hoping to illustrate how teacher unions negatively impact public schools, Utah might seem like an unlikely source for material.
Compared to “progressive” states like New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania or California, Utah is definitely not union country.
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It’s a solidly red, conservative, right-to-work state, where it’s illegal for anyone to be forced into a union or compelled to pay union fees of any sort.
Utah school districts are not legally obligated to recognize employee unions or enter into any sort of collective bargaining agreements with them.
Unlike in many other states, Utah schools are not legally bound to honor the stipulations of expired collective bargaining agreements while new agreements are being negotiated.
Utah school boards are not legally allowed to delegate final policy decisions to arbitrators, a process stipulated in many collective bargaining agreements in other states.
State law also forbids Utah school boards from entering into any sort of labor agreements that would alter the right of future boards to determine policy.
Utah is such a non-union state that some school officials get downright testy at the suggestion that they even have teacher unions.
EAGnews recently sent a questionnaire to nine Utah school districts with teacher union collective bargaining agreements, seeking answers to several questions regarding union labor costs.
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The person at the Logan City school district who returned the questionnaire wrote the following phrase nine times, in response to nine different questions: “The Logan City school district does not have a teachers union contract.”
We found that confusing, since we had just finished reviewing a Logan City document that looked and read like a thousand teacher union contracts we’ve inspected. We emailed the district superintendent, asking him to explain the confusing response, but he failed to reply.
Only later did we learn that Utah school officials prefer to call their teachers unions “associations.” Evidently they’re kind of touchy about that distinction, even though the only difference seems to be in the name.
A lot like other states
The fact is that some Utah school districts – generally the larger ones – choose to recognize and negotiate with teacher unions.
That means, of course, that many of the negotiated provisions in those agreements are designed to benefit and protect most teachers, sometimes at the expense of students.
“Even in this right-to-work state, there is a fairly robust union presence, for sure,” said Kenneth Grover, director of secondary education in the Salt Lake City school district. “The question (for union officials) is, do you want to come to the table and work for the best interests of kids? When it becomes about protecting employees at all costs, it’s frustrating.”
“Almost all of the polices (in union contracts) are for the best interests of teachers,” said Blake Ostler, a veteran Salt Lake City attorney who has worked with many school districts on labor issues over the years. “Sometimes it becomes about providing employment for teachers rather than focusing on the needs of students.”
How strong are teacher unions in Utah? According to Ostler, there is almost a state of “co-governance” in some school districts, with power almost equally shared between school boards and teacher unions. He attributes that fact to the outcome of a very important court case – Alpine School District v. Ward – in 1999.
In that case, a court ruled that Utah school boards could no longer change polices in union collective bargaining agreements without union consent, Ostler said. That gave unions a great deal of power to maintain a lot of policies that had already been written into collective bargaining agreements.
“So in year one, they will negotiate policy A, and in year two they will negotiate policy B, and (the policies) can’t be changed unless the union agrees,” Ostler said. “Bit by bit they infringe further and further on the discretion of the board of education.”
Union political power also plays a role, because the state has a lot of teachers, and they tend to vote in large numbers in state and school board elections, according to Ostler.
“(Politicians and board members) have got to pay attention to what the teachers want,” Ostler said.
It all adds up to numerous districts dealing with strong teacher unions that have the power to impose their will, whether it’s good for students or not.
Absurd contract provisions
To measure the impact on Utah schools, EAGnews focused on nine districts that have current collective bargaining agreements with teacher unions – Salt Lake City, Granite, Davis, Rich, Carbon, Logan City, Murray, Nebo and Weber.
Unions in these districts interfere with the learning process by negotiating contract clauses that significantly increase labor costs; force districts to make personnel decisions based on teacher seniority rather than skill; and make it difficult and costly to fire bad teachers.
The evidence is abundant.
There’s the absurd contract provision in the Nebo district that gives teachers 120 paid sick days per year (a full school year is about 180 days), minus the number of sick days used over the previous two years.
There’s the provision in the Salt Lake City union contract that allows ineffective teachers to remain in their classrooms, instructing their underserved students, through two lengthy “remediation” periods before administrators can attempt to fire them.
There’s the provision in the Davis union contract that says the teachers with the least seniority within a grade level or academic discipline will be the first to be transferred, regardless of their skill or effectiveness.
On the surface, several of the nine districts we focused on take a hard stand when it comes to demanding proof of union legitimacy.
These districts have incorporated language into union contracts, claiming they will only recognize the unions as bargaining agents for teachers if they receive periodic evidence that the majority of teachers prefer union membership.
But when EAGnews asked those districts the last time they demanded and received such evidence, most hemmed and hawed and failed to offer solid answers.
The fact is that none of them push very hard to force the unions to demonstrate their legitimacy, or pressure the unions to allow teachers to vote on union representation through secret ballots. The state of Wisconsin made those type of “recertification” elections mandatory in 2011, and teachers in many districts in that state have dumped their unions.
“That’s interesting,” Rick Ainge, school board president in the Nebo district, told EAGnews regarding the idea of secret ballot union recertification votes. “We’ve never considered that before.”
‘All hell broke loose’
How much do these Utah school districts have in common with other unionized schools around the nation?
Everyone knows about the recent Vergara v. California lawsuit, in which a judge ruled that union-negotiated teacher job protections have the effect of denying students – particularly those in schools in lower-income neighborhoods – their right to a quality public education.
Union leaders across the nation screamed in anger over the verdict, and the fact that the judge would question the concept that all teachers are equal in skill and effectiveness.
Then there’s this story from Michael Clara, a member of the Salt Lake City school board.
Clara said he became upset early in his first term when he realized that many teachers with poor evaluations were clustered in schools on his side of town, which he says is comprised largely of low-income families.
That situation probably occurred because of union negotiated bumping rights that give senior teachers preference when it comes to choice jobs at the “better” schools. It probably also has something to do with union negotiated contract provisions that make it very difficult to fire bad teachers.
If they can’t get rid of them, do they just dump them on the poor side of town?
Clara said he filed a discrimination complaint with the state civil rights office, and the local teachers union came unglued at the suggestion that all teachers are not equal in skill and effectiveness.
“When I got elected, I noticed 60-70 percent of teachers in my neighborhood were rated as ineffective,” Clara said. “Then at my third board meeting – when I asked why they are all in my neighborhood – all hell broke loose.
“Hundreds of teachers, including the state union president, said I had to apologize to them because I said they’re ineffective. I refused. This is a problem with public education. We’re never going to improve if we can’t discuss data. Just because (union teachers) get offended, that’s not my problem.”
Unfortunately Clara is wrong about the last part. The presence of organized labor in public schools is a problem for all of us that must eventually be tackled, while there is still something worth saving.
Part 6: Lazy, apathetic school boards allowing teacher unions to ignore verification rules
Part 7: Bizarre Utah teacher contract provisions: Do they really have to put this stuff in writing?
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