A Pay Cut? No,Thank You

Through planned, escalating actions, a Massachusetts local affiliate mobilizes members and the community for a contract that protects teacher pay.

By the time the Quincy Education Association was forced to hit the street in June 2007, waging the first Massachusetts teachers' strike in more than a decade, it had done everything humanly possible to keep the walkout brief — just four days.

This strike was just a small part of a much bigger story. The walkout was preceded by 18 months of QEA preparation, patience, perseverance, and member education and mobilization, the stuff needed for today's high-stakes collective bargaining.

And the Quincy showdown had high stakes indeed: QEA faced school committee (board) demands for a hike in the employee share of the health insurance premium, without a raise that would prevent a pay cut.

The Quincy local fought back hard, gaining a five-year contract that slowed the phase-in of a higher employee premium share and provided extra salary money to mitigate the change and keep teachers apace with inflation. The local also bargained language returning the employee share to its former level should Quincy teachers join the state employee health insurance pool — newly permitted by state law.

Nothing came easy for the 900-member QEA, which faced an intransigent school committee and a hostile mayor. But this NEA local affiliate prevailed through strategic planning and member engagement. Among other things, QEA:

• Built 100 percent membership, with the exception of one sole agency fee/fair share payer.
  
  
• Developed an action plan, drafted by the QEA Crisis Committee with input from local bargainers and Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) staff.
  
  
• Balanced the bargaining team with a mix of 11 men and women, veterans and new teachers.
  
  
• Started bargaining early, giving the district more than a year, from the first day of bargaining, to reach a new agreement. But QEA set a drop-dead settlement
  deadline of June 8, 2007.
  
  
• Educated the members. At an early general membership meeting, QEA educated its members on every aspect of the bargaining process, from the design and content of the union proposal to who sat at the bargaining table and what could be negotiated.
  
  
• Recruited activists. "We carefully recruited building activists," said QEA President Paul Phillips. "The group was a mix of vets and junior teachers, and involved non-professional status teachers. I picked young people, fabulous teachers who would tell the Devil where to go!"
  
  
• Kept information flowing. "The bargaining team decided to tell the members every single thing going on, in detail," reported MTA field staffer Ron Suga. Right after each bargaining session, local President Phillips fired off an email to members. "I said far more than I did at the table; I did not pull my punches," Phillips noted. "Members were kept unbelievably informed, and quickly."
  
  
• Demonstrated solidarity. QEA broke down member isolation in Quincy's 20 schools through both 10-minute site meetings (run by building captains) and general membership sessions, at which everyone received the same information at the same time.
  
  
• Escalated member actions, with the goal of not peaking too early. Among other things, members mailed "professional" holiday cards to the mayor and school committee members, sent decision makers more than 1,000 individual e-mail messages, wore ever-more militant buttons (from "Strike a Deal" to "June 8"), leafleted citywide, and did informational picketing.
  
  
• Reached out to the community. QEA reached out for support from parents, community folks, and other labor organizations, from the firefighters to the Boston Teachers Union/AFT. By May, community support was solid. "We Support Quincy Teachers!" yard signs, in English and Chinese, flooded the mayor's neighborhood. A Parent-Teacher Organization activist reported that 80 percent of parents supported the teachers' fight. And community supporters joined QEA's mass teach-in at the May school committee meeting, where some 40 pro-teacher speakers held the floor for hours.
  
  
• Ran a textbook strike. On June 7, QEA members voted unanimously to reject management's "final" (and inferior) offer. They stuck to their June 8 deadline, and
  the rest was Bay State labor history.

There was 100 percent participation on the strike lines, and not one education support professional crossed, in spite of court-ordered fines against QEA. MTA Today magazine reported that striking teachers "received an outpouring of support from retired Quincy teachers, parents and students, members of other unions, and community residents, who in some cases joined QEA members on the lines."

"None of us wanted to strike," Phillips told MTA Today. "But when elected politicians put our backs against the wall and insisted on an economic package that would prevent Quincy schools from attracting and retaining quality teachers, we felt we had no choice. Our teachers deserve better than a pay cut."

—Dave Winans, November 2007