News
'Jail Terrorists, Not Teachers'

In Middletown, New Jersey, 228 teachers and secretaries are jailed for striking. The story behind this story: 'plain old union busting.'

Envision this bad dream: You've violated no state statute, yet you're sentenced for "contempt of court" by a state judge whom no one elected. You're handcuffed and driven to jail, where you're placed in a hot, windowless, 15-by-20-foot room with 36 other people.

Your dinner, delivered in milk crates, consists of hot milk and mushy bologna sandwiches, with crushed lemon cookies pushed into the bread.

This nightmare was reality for New Jersey Education Association/NEA member Lorraine Pron, one of 228 striking Middletown Township teachers and school secretaries who were jailed in December, from one to five days. The charge against them: violating a state judge's back-to-work order.

"You turn over all your rights in jail. When you're thirsty at home, you just go get a glass of water. But in jail you're not really sure what you're drinking," shudders Pron, a seventh grade language arts teacher at Bayshore Middle School. "I was completely shocked by this experience."

Shock. The Middletown school board carefully calculated the effect that incarceration would have on law-abiding, middle-class educators like Lorraine Pron. But it did not predict the shock wave this mass jailing would send around the world.

"During the strike, I received 690 E-mails from ordinary teachers everywhere, from Japan to Britain," reports Diane Swaim, president of the 1,006-member Middletown Township Education Association. "The basic message in each note was, 'What kind of country sends its teachers to jail?'"

It was clear from the start of the 2001 contract talks that the school board, which had unilaterally imposed an inferior contract on MTEA members in 1998, wasn't in the mood for genuine bargaining. Negotiations produced little or no progress on the issues.

"We expected the board would follow the 1998 process again," says Swaim, an eighth grade civics teacher at Bayshore Middle School. "They would take the talks all the way to the last required step, fact finding, and then impose a contract. Our membership said, 'We are never going there again.'"

MTEA members struck on November 29, almost five months after the previous contract expired.

New Jersey has no statute prohibiting public employee strikes, but that didn't stop the Middletown school board from requesting a public-safety injunction from the state Superior Court. The board specifically requested that the strikers be jailed, fined, fired, and barred from re-employment.

To head off the worst, the judge proposed two successive options to settle the dispute: first, binding arbitration of all issues; then, binding arbitration of the most contentious issue, employee health care payments, while talks continued on other issues.

The union, which had already softened its bargaining position, quickly agreed to both of the judge's proposals. The board rejected them and demanded that the judge jail the strikers.

Throughout the first week of December, striking MTEA members were called alphabetically in front of judges and asked if they would comply with the back-to-work order.

The answer of many: "Your honor, I will not go back to work until I have a negotiated and signed contract."

Among the strikers shipped to the Monmouth County Correctional Institution were people with disabilities and single parents without adequate child care support at home. Rallies were held to support the strikers, and protesters waved signs with messages like "Jail Terrorists, Not Teachers."

Board rejects settlement
After a week of this ugliness, two state-appointed mediators presented a recommended settlement. MTEA leaders recognized that this document did not give either side everything it wanted, but that it was a fair settlement.

MTEA accepted the settlement document's terms at 6:15 a.m. on Friday, December 7. But some three hours later, the board refused to sign it.

MTEA informed the court that it had met demands placed on the union and agreed to a settlement. Therefore, it argued, Association members should be freed from jail.

The judge agreed to release MTEA members and announced the appointment of a court-appointed mediator, charged with responsibility to report bad-faith bargaining to the judge.

Union members returned to work on Monday, December 10.

The Main Issue: Respect
The Middletown story isn't just about arrests of educators, and it won't end with a signed contract.

"This is not about money," stresses Swain. "It's about respect, about treating educators fairly and professionally. And it's about plain old union busting."

Behind this story is a school board that has denied Middletown's 17 schools, serving 10,500 students, both needed resources and moral support.

This district is an amalgam of 12 suburban townlets, lacking a real town center and a strong community identity. Its residents have a too-tenuous connection to the schools and have repeatedly voted down education budgets.

The school board could meet this challenge by getting to know its staff and campaigning for needed programs. Instead, it keeps a cool distance--while keeping a sharp eye on its $5 million budget surplus and boasting about its low per-pupil expenditure.

Spending constraints and board micromanagement have sent many good administrators packing. The district has had six superintendents since 1995.

MTEA members at Bayshore Middle School paint a grim picture of what this board has done to school programs and staff morale. They speak of:

• Callousness after September 11. Middletown lost 34 residents in the World Trade Center blast, yet school staffers were left to deal with students without any thanks or guidance--aside from a brief memo from central office.

  "Two students in my class lost their fathers on September 11," says Diane Swaim. "We were the ones who filled the gaps and made things right for these children. I downloaded stuff from the NEA Web site and faxed it to all the schools. Without the union there would have been no advice for staff."

• No real staff training. The Middletown district refuses to adequately fund either professional development or mentor training.

  "You have to scratch and claw to get a professional development day to do anything," laments English teacher Gail Ritter, who chairs the district's professional development committee.

  "With mentoring, you need common planning time and time to visit the rooms, so the mentee can come and see the way you do things, and vice versa," Ritter adds. "But the district won't make any concessions, because it'll mean hiring substitutes."

  Worse yet, Ritter charges, the district has "no intention of implementing" a state-mandated professional development plan that was drafted by her panel. "We intend to notify the state and county that we've resigned as a committee," she steams.

• Destruction of Middletown's vocational education program. Bayshore Middle School staffers report that the district has gutted its industrial arts and home economics programs.

  "All the hands-on kinds of programs are being eliminated," says Phil Couch, a former shop teacher who went back to get a master's in special education. "This means that the middle school philosophy of exploration and exposure to a wide variety of programs has been effectively abolished."

• Pay inequities. School secretaries point out they are slotted into pay grades that do not reflect the value of their jobs. "I'm charged with responsibility for every student in the school's records, yet I'm making less than one of the groundskeepers," says guidance secretary Tracy Laliberte.

Signs of Solidarity
MTEA members know they don't face this school board alone.

They're backed by other New Jersey Education Association locals--which rallied at candlelight vigils as they faced the judges--and NJEA leaders and staff, who have coordinated legal defense, strike organization, and press outreach.

They've also got the full backing of NEA. "Pick a fight with any of us and you've picked a fight with all of us. It's called solidarity," NEA President Bob Chase said at a support rally in front of the Monmouth County Courthouse on December 5.

"We will not stand for teachers and secretaries being thrown into prison," Chase stressed. "We are in this fight for however long it takes."

--Dave Winans