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Caught in the Cookie Jar

Birmingham NEA members cheer announcement that the school board has rescinded a big pay raise for the district's superintendent and agreed to a no-reprisal clause for protesting employees.

In Birmingham, Alabama, teachers and ESP walk off the job, force school board to rescind superintendent's $30,000 raise.

Alabama, a state without a public sector bargaining law, has only seen five school employee strikes since 1979. So when Alabama NEA members hit the bricks, you know somebody in some central office has really reached too far.

Somebody like Birmingham City Superintendent Johnny Brown, who grasped in November for a $30,000 pay increase and a contract extension mandating a unanimous school board vote before he could be dismissed.

During a snap mid-day meeting, Birmingham school board members voted by 3-2 to accede to Brown’s demands—while their schools were deteriorating, essential supplies and computers were lacking, and staffers were making do with meager raises of 1 to 1.5 percent.

At the bottom of the cookie jar, however, Dr. Brown’s fingers got stuck in the jaws of the Birmingham Education Association (BEA) and the Birmingham ESP Organization (BESPO).

Teachers and ESP engaged in an unofficial one-day sickout, followed by a two-day general work stoppage led by Dr. Paul Hubbert, executive secretary of the Alabama Education Association.

By Day Two of the shutdown, not one school bus rolled and 32,000 students stayed home.

By the end of that second day, November 10, the school board hurriedly rescinded Brown’s contract addendum. The board also agreed to a no-reprisal clause covering employees who took part in the work stoppage—plus arbitration for non-tenured teachers who claim to be non-renewed because of participation in the walkout.

What brought Birmingham to this showdown?

“Our members had no voice,” says Gwendolyn Sykes, president of the Birmingham Education Association. “We’d set up a procedure with the administration to deal with problems, think we resolved things, and then open up the newspaper and find a whole different situation—they just didn’t respect our organization.”

The superintendent set the stage for the work stoppage by ignoring state and district salary rules and getting the school board to approve raises of up to $20,000 for seven top administrators.

By November, employees’ blood was boiling. To cool things down, the Association negotiated bonuses of $575 and “principles of understanding” through which administrators would work and communicate with BEA and BESPO on member concerns.

Then, as the ink was drying on that document, the superintendent got his fat raise. The job actions, which began almost immediately, succeeded because:

• Members were fed up. Besides the salary grabs, Birmingham teachers and ESP had witnessed an ever-expanding district bureaucracy, with no fewer than four “area executive directors.” And worse, charges BEA President Sykes, top managers fostered an atmosphere of “intimidation and threats.”
• The community backed school employees. BEA members helped parents and other local residents see the real problems of Birmingham schools, from tattered textbooks to falling ceiling tiles. Angered by the superintendent’s raise, many parents joined the BEA/BESPO picket lines, served picketers food, and kept their kids away from the schools.
• Bus drivers didn’t drive. The solidarity of Birmingham’s 125 drivers, who guarded garage gates like Fort Knox, was instrumental in bringing the work stoppage to a quick conclusion.

“We are the first and last to see children each day, so we felt we had a major role in settling this,” stresses Beulah Brown, the BESPO vice president. “A lot of times you can’t get drivers to cooperate in the office, but they were 100 percent on the picket line!”

For more information, contact Alabama Education Association staffer David Stout at DavidS@alaedu.org.

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Walking in ESP Shoes

• On November 17, members of three ESP locals in the Escambia (Florida) NEA UniServ council observed National ESP Day by inviting district and community leaders to “walk in our shoes” for a day. Nine visitors “walked” ESP jobs that day, and left highly impressed—and tired.

  “It’s good to have someone here to see what we do,” says Escambia County bus driver Bonnie Brewton. “Then, when school board members and others start talking about privatizing our jobs, people will be able to compare what we do with what a private company says it will do.”

• The Northeast Kingdom (Vermont) Elementary Teachers Association has reached a settlement without a strike. The local published a newsletter for members scattered across 10 towns, opened a crisis headquarters, met privately with influential citizens, and urged subs and parents to honor any picket line. The payoff: raises of 3.19 percent this year, 5.6 percent in 2000-2001, and 4 percent in 2001-2002. And the pact boosts board-paid health care premiums from a capped dollar amount to a guaranteed percentage.

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