A Better Way
Wisconsin can once again be a leader in public employee/employer
relations by adopting a new collective bargaining law that fosters collaborative
problem solving that responds to the interest of both parties.
Enlightened students of labor relations know that increasing employee
participation in workplace decisions increases employee satisfaction and
this, in turn, leads to greater productivity. For the good of Wisconsin's
great education system, it is time for Wisconsin school boards and teachers,
represented by their unions, to come to terms on a new collective bargaining
law acceptable to both, so they can collaborate effectively to create
the best possible schools.
Like all citizens, Wisconsin teachers want great schools that prepare
students to be vital, reflective adults capable of succeeding in a democratic,
information-based society. As the new century nears, our public schools
are under intense pressure to achieve at unprecedented levels, and the
work of reform and improvement is falling heavily on the shoulders of
teachers.
Today's teachers perform a long list of tasks that are much more complex
and difficult than those expected of any earlier generation. Throughout
the state, they are being asked to:
- restructure the entire teaching and learning process to ensure that
all students meet new standards.
- maintain unquestionable mastery of both subject matter and pedagogy.
- teach students with special needs who were previously excluded from
the classroom.
- contribute expertise to organizational change through participatory
management.
In short, they are being asked to do many things they may not have been
taught, and they are given little time and opportunity to learn them.
Conventional wisdom has long made clear that an employer demanding so
much from the minds, bodies, and spirits of their workers will be disappointed,
unless those workers feel that their contributions are appreciated and
their needs will be satisfied. High levels of morale and good feeling
are prerequisite to creative, efficient, and effective institutional change.
Unfortunately, Wisconsin's defective system of collective bargaining
too often blocks teachers' ability to participate in educational decision-making
that bears directly on their dignity and economic well-being. This is
a distressing condition that threatens Wisconsin's great schools. Teachers
are the only organized employees in Wisconsin regulated by the Qualified
Economic Offer (QEO). Teachers are bitter; school boards are frustrated.
Neither knows how to achieve meaningful collective bargaining in the current
framework.
In 1959, Wisconsin became the first state to pass a
law regulating collective bargaining between local units of government,
including school districts, and their employees. This law sought the impossible:
institutionalize peacemaking without equalizing power. It failed. The
statutory prohibition of strikes could not deliver the stability and continuity
that it promised. The law did provide for mediation and non-binding fact-finding
but this proved inadequate, and strikes followed along with the predictable
abuses of unrestrained power.
The resulting series of 21 teacher strikes culminated
in the ugly and destructive Hortonville work stoppage. In response, the
1977 legislature established a new impasse resolution process that truly
equalized power by providing for binding arbitration. The interest arbitration
process proved to be an effective substitute for the strike.
Our Wisconsin experience has confirmed the conventional
American wisdom that collective bargaining in the context of balanced
power creates a productive partnership between labor and management; and
it does so in nearly all types of institutions. So, the National Labor
Relations Act declares it to be the "policy of the United States
to eliminate the causes of certain, substantial obstructions to the free
flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when
they have occurred by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective
bargaining." Even U.S. Senator Orin Hatch, a Republican representing
a right-to-work state, recognizes the value of unions: "Unions contribute
to the economic health of the nation by leveling the field between labor
and management. If you didn't have unions, it would be very difficult
for enlightened employers to not take advantage of workers."
As these prophetic voices had promised, Wisconsin's
revised approach to collective bargaining was successful. Between 1977
and 1993, labor peace and abundant good will was the pattern in Wisconsin
schools.
In 1993, the Wisconsin legislature fixed a process that
wasn't "broken" when it fundamentally altered the provisions
of the Municipal Employment Relations Act by singling out teachers and
enacting the Qualified Economic Offer (QEO). Under the QEO, when employers
choose to maintain existing fringe benefits while offering an increase
in total compensation of 3.8 percent, they are, in effect, not required
to engage in meaningful collective bargaining. This has thoroughly disrupted
the balance of power and reintroduced labor strife in Wisconsin schools.
Public school teachers are now denied meaningful opportunity to bargain
their wages, hours, and conditions of employment.
The nightmarish set of administrative rules that frustrate
collective bargaining has returned Wisconsin schools to a darker age of
labor relations. Employers are no longer required to come to the bargaining
table with the intention of reaching an agreement. Assuming that they
hold the upper hand, they arrive intending to impose a Qualified Economic
Offer and thereby avoid meaningful collective bargaining. This is a recipe
for certain frustration and, ultimately, disruption.
The current bargaining system puts relationships between
teachers and school boards into a disastrous situation at a time when
peak efficiency and productivity are needed in the public schools. The
arbitration law encouraged voluntary settlements because it worked as
a fair substitute for a strike. The process was balanced for the parties
with neither labor nor management being able to force its will on the
other. The QEO has disrupted this balance.
Frustration, stress, and anger are spreading throughout Wisconsin schools.
This is not a prescription for success. Quite to the contrary, the times
demand a new bargaining law covering K-12 public school teachers. This
new law should implement the declaration of policy found in the Wisconsin
Council on Municipal Collective Bargaining report issued in 1995:
"It is the intent of the legislature that the
municipal government bodies of the state provide efficient service to
the public, and the municipal employers and employees should be encouraged
to develop and introduce new and innovative methods to improve the operating
efficiency and effectiveness of local government. Harmonious, cooperative
employment relations and the efficient administration of municipal government
promote this public interest. These ends are best served by the establishment
of cooperative and mutually satisfactory employee/management relations
and the availability of suitable procedures for adjustment of controversies.
It is recognized that whatever may be the rights of parties with respect
to each other in any controversy regarding municipal employment relations,
neither party has any right to engage in acts or practices which present
a clear and present danger to the health, safety and welfare of the
public. It is in the public interest to encourage voluntary settlement
through procedures of collective bargaining. Municipal employees shall
be given the opportunity to bargain with the municipal employers through
a labor organization or other representative of the employees' own choice.
If such procedures fail, the parties should have available to them a
fair, speedy, effective and peaceful procedure for settlement."
Wisconsin needs such collective bargaining in public
education. Today's schools need effective partnerships based on mutually
satisfactory negotiations between K-12 public school teachers and their
employing boards. The collaborative, problem-solving collective bargaining
that responds to the interests of both parties can produce the Council
on Municipal Collective Bargaining's desired vision. It's a simple process
that assures good faith consideration and precludes the posturing, the
defending, and the threatening which damage relationships that are vital
to the schools.
This new law will direct the Wisconsin Employment Relations
Commission to provide training to the parties and nurture the process
free of charge throughout Wisconsin. In other words, the Commission ought
to catalyze the kind of reasonable and productive partnerships that the
schools desperately need. A third-party decision-making process should
also be included in the new law to ensure speedy resolution of disputes
when the parties prove incapable of finding the terms of agreement.
WEAC encourages a new statute that adheres to the following
principles:
- nurtures local problem solving;
- mandates open, honest, and direct communication between the parties;
- establishes clear and administratively feasible procedures and reciprocal
obligations;
- promotes good will and productivity through voluntary settlements
between employers and unions of employees;
- encourages the uninterrupted delivery of high quality public services;
- institutionalizes fairness for all those with a stake in the bargaining
process
- and, finally, encourages creativity in the labor/management relationship.
Such a new law will take Wisconsin into the 21st Century
secure in its traditional role as a leader in both education and labor/management
relationships, just as the 1959 law made Wisconsin the nation's pioneer
in public employee collective bargaining.