BALTIMORE – When the Baltimore Teachers Union ratified its latest contract with the school district last month, one particular clause dealing with “union communications” caught the attention of the local newspaper.

The eyebrow-raising contract clause establishes the union as the “exclusive representative” of Baltimore City Public Schools’ educators, and it prohibits “individuals and organizations other than the union” from using the district’s “mail and email facilities.”

What all that legal-speak means is that only the Baltimore Teacher Union (BTU) can negotiate with district officials over how much teachers earn, and what their benefits and working conditions are.

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What about those teachers who consider themselves professionals and would like to negotiate their own terms of employment? Tough luck.

It also means the BTU now serves as the gatekeeper for all non-district communication that’s sent to educators. The effect is that outside groups – such as alternative professional organizations and K-12 vendors – can’t reach teachers in an orderly way without getting approval from BTU headquarters.

Baltimore administrators could presumably still use the email system to communicate with individual teachers, though that’s not explicit in the contract language. District officials would not respond to EAGnews’ requests for clarification.

The takeaway is that BTU leaders are controlling who can speak for – and to – the teachers in the 85,000-student school district. If that sounds like the behavior of insecure bullies, that’s because it is.

Officials with the Association of American Educators (AAE) – a nonunion national teachers group – are very familiar with the bullying ways of teacher unions, and say it’s common in schools all across the country.

AAE representatives are routinely bullied by their union counterparts because they’re the labor group’s biggest competitor for teachers’ business. The AAE offers educators virtually all the same benefits (except collective bargaining) at a much lower cost, and without the union’s left-wing political agenda.

Many teachers would flock to the AAE if given the choice. Officials with the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers know this, which is why they do everything in their power to keep AAE reps – and their e-mail – out of schools and away from teachers.

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Union bullies, weak-kneed administrators

That process actually begins in schools of education – before individuals are officially teachers. During their years of training, wannabe teachers are filled with pro-union ideas and sentiments by their pro-labor professors. Likewise, they’re taught to distrust and dislike any group that favors charter schools, school choice or any other K-12 reform measure.

And to reinforce that propaganda, union representatives are routinely invited into class to deliver presentations to university students that explain why unionization is in their professional interests, and why “reform” is not, reports Joy Pullmann of the Heartland Institute.

But Big Labor isn’t content with planting pro-union seeds in the minds of college students and hoping they eventually develop into active, dues-paying union members. Union representatives often force the issue by attending new teacher orientation and back-to-school sessions and getting the fledgling educators enrolled in the union – often before they even receive their first paycheck.

That’s not such a big accomplishment in forced unionization states, where union membership – or at least paying a union “agency fee” – is a prerequisite to employment. But it’s tricky in the growing number of “right to work” states where union membership is optional.

The unionists counter this in several ways.

Their first trick is to simply keep AAE and other competitors out of the room when the fresh meat hits the market. In many instances, that only requires having the union rep ask the union-friendly superintendent to deny AAE reps’ requests to set up an information table at the meetings.

Barring alternative groups is typically not legal in “right to work” states, but it still happens quite frequently, according to Cindy Omlin, executive director for the AAE-affiliated Northwest Professional Educators.

“Administrators are busy, they have important jobs, so a lot of them say, ‘This isn’t my cause, I’m not going to deal with it,’” Omlin tells EAGnews.

In other words, the weak-kneed school leaders are more interested in keeping the peace with their labor groups than in doing the right and lawful thing for individual teachers.

AAE officials could take legal action against such districts, but Omlin notes that would not only be expensive, but it would “dry up communication” with the very officials they want to work with.

The unions, however, aren’t afraid to get “sue happy” in those rare instances when a fair-minded school administrator refuses to kowtow to their demands. Union bullies try to intimidate the superintendent by threatening to file a labor grievance (or a lawsuit) – triggering legal expenses most districts can’t afford.

Sometimes, union officials threaten to stall contract negotiations or hold a “no confidence” vote against the superintendent – anything to make his or her life “miserable,” Omlin says.

Problems and solutions

Things can get just as ugly for teachers who refuse to bend the knee.

Omlin’s group – Northwest Professional Educators – has documented several instances in which Big Labor bullies went after a teacher who posed a threat to a union’s “monopoly.”

In one such incident, a unionized teacher who publicly showed support for nonunion teachers discovered that labor leaders had gone to his district administrators to block him from becoming a principal, according to Omlin.

And in Utah, teacher Cole Kelly was removed from his Athletic Director position – with no explanation – just days after he testified in support of giving nonunion organizations equal access to school facilities, Omlin says.

Likewise, school board members who refuse to add union-empowering clauses in their teachers’ contract often find themselves the target of a hardball political campaign when they run for re-election.

Omlin notes that “right to work” laws – while enormously valuable – don’t ensure that teacher union bullies won’t be powerful forces in those states.

“‘Right to work’ statutes give a framework, but we need additional policies to ensure they are implemented in practice,” she says.

Omlin and her AAE colleagues would like to see state laws that explicitly give alternative professional organizations equal access to school employees.

Other potential solutions to the problem of union bullies: Requiring districts to actively inform teachers of their professional options, discontinuing the practice of having district employees deduct union dues from paychecks, and giving educators more than just a couple of weeks each summer to cancel their union membership.

It all comes down to giving teachers information and options, which is what the union bullies try to prevent.

As Omlin puts it, “To exercise freedom, you have to know you have options.”