Big-time Salary Drives Work in Small Locals

A 35-member New Jersey affiliate mobilized members, the community, and state Association resources to win $40,000-plus starting teacher pay.

You'd never expect big salary news from the little Chesterfield Township (New Jersey) Education Association. As CTEA's 35 teacher members entered contract bargaining in 2005, the one-building school district enjoyed neither "extra" cash nor an exemption from tight state budget restrictions. Yet in 2007 members signed a contract offering a starting teacher salary of $44,809, which will progress to $48,011 in 2009-10.

And you'd never expect this bit of a local affiliate to resist school board demands for massive health benefit concessions. But CTEA members did just that and then some. In July 2007, they ratified a four-year agreement that preserves quality health benefits and provides salary increases of 5 percent in each of the first three years and 4.75 percent in the fourth year.

To add another layer to the cake, CTEA shortened its salary schedule from 16 to 13 steps (a smart way to maximize career earnings), gained a $350 stipend for members responsible for scheduling parent-teacher conferences, and won inclusion of paraprofessionals into the bargaining unit.

And to ice that cake, the New Jersey Education Association  bestowed its 2007 Jim George Collective Bargaining Award on CTEA for its creativity and tenacity. "CTEA's success," notes NJEA Vice President Barbara Keshishian, "results from its organized and strategic approach to bargaining."

Not to a mention a push from NJEA's strong statewide salary campaign, which will boost starting teacher pay to $40,000 or more in at least 521 of New Jersey's 593 school districts by 2008-09, and to $50,000 or more in 17 districts by 2009-10.

What's happening in the Garden State? Quite simply, "We set salary goals, educate the members, and bargain hard," explains NJEA researcher Bob Willoughby.

On the front lines in Chesterfield Township, "bargaining hard" translates into:

1. Member organizing and engagement. As it headed to the bargaining table in October 2005, CTEA ensured that its bargaining team had the support of all members, tenured and non-tenured. "As a small local," explains Keshishian, "it would be pretty obvious if even a small group of members chose not to support a job action or Association activity. So day after day, the local planned shows of solidarity."

Local president Gwendolyn McCreary, an elementary general music and band teacher, says that CTEA's bargaining success was "due to almost 100 percent participation" in workplace actions. Each morning, members met outside at the flagpole to enter the school building as a group. They also sported orange shirts and union buttons, wore black on Fridays, displayed lime-green signs in car windshields, and engaged in sign-making campaigns.

And they just kept at it, "working the clock," gathering for workshops and union meetings, and camping out during mediation sessions. Collective bargaining was a great membership organizing tool, McCreary says. "We now have new officers, future leaders. And younger, newer members are now more involved in the Association."

2. Parent/community outreach. CTEA members went beyond member mobilization to community organizing for a fair and equitable contract settlement.

They attended school board meetings and notified the community of their plight, while encouraging parents to attend board meetings, ask questions, and call for a contract settlement. And CTEA developed a Parent Action Team, which spoke to neighbors, printed and distributed flyers, and persuaded community residents to display pro-settlement lawn signs.

A big factor in CTEA's success at the table was parental support at board meetings, letter writing, and meetings outside of school.

"The parents of our students carried the torch for us," McCreary points out.  "They really went to bat, and made many points in the community. Parents stood up at board meetings and said, 'Pay these teachers want they want.'"

3. Coordinated bargaining. Chesterfield Township members derive much of their clout from the NJEA institution of coordinated bargaining. That's a collaborative process through which neighboring locals in a region set common goals, share "real-time" information (on local bargaining progress, salary/benefit settlement trends, statistical data, and legislative developments), study bargaining "best practices," and dissuade individual locals from signing substandard agreements.

Members of CTEA's bargaining team routinely attend meetings of NJEA's Region 5 (Burlington County) Coordinated Bargaining Council (CBC), which meets frequently -- with high attendance, a set routine, and a stimulating mix of local leaders and NJEA staff. At these meetings, "we receive statistical data and info from other districts in our county," notes McCreary. "That information is invaluable. We share it with our school board at the table; they try to negate the data or say they are 'not interested' in other districts, but they are!"

The CBC meetings encourage locals to stand firm on important bargaining issues, the CTEA president adds, "especially since we all know that if one Association gives in on something, all the other districts will be expected to give in as well."

NJEA affiliates in every county "coordinate bargaining to some degree," notes researcher Willoughby. "Through that process, our locals get good, strong agreements and leapfrog off one another."

Just look at Burlington County. "Despite budget caps, new legislation that limits increases in property tax revenues, and ever-increasing health insurance premiums," says UniServ rep Steve Swetsky, "our Region 5 local Associations continue to achieve annual salary increases of about 5 percent. All of our locals have achieved a $40,000-plus starting teacher salary and we have two locals that have achieved NJEA's statewide goal of a $50,000 starting salary (with more to come). Plus, our locals continue to bring in settlements in which the school boards pay 100 percent of health insurance premiums."

4. Support from the NEA state affiliate. Locals can't do it alone at the table, Swetsky says, which is why NJEA staffers work with them from the very beginning to the very end of the bargaining process. The NJEA regional office's assistance "gives us an opportunity to assist locals with member and community organizing early in the bargaining process," he adds, an upfront investment that later helps maintain a consistency in the Burlington County settlement pattern.

From day one, NJEA provides aid through a team approach involving full-time UniServ reps and part-time UniServ consultants, joined, as needed, by NJEA research and communications specialists.

"A side benefit to this kind of cross-divisional utilization," Swetsky concludes, "is that members get to see their dues dollars in action when they need assistance."

5. Hard, hard work. The final decisive factor in the CTEA and NJEA salary campaigns: a work ethic and a deep devotion to students. "We are always bargaining," says McCreary. "Even when we are working with a contract in place, we must put ourselves out there in the community, next to the parents and our students. We need to show the community that we are available and that we are advocates for our children."

This NEA local leader encourages her members to attend PTA meetings and activities, school board meetings, and other community events. "We cannot just show up when we want support for a new agreement/contract, asking for parental support; we need to show up all the time, for everything, in order to gain public support," McCreary concludes. "It isn't easy, and is time consuming, but that's what needs to be done."

-- Dave Winans, November 2007