Dear Editor,
The California legislature says that there should be a process
in place between public school employers and employees concerning
matters of wages and working conditions.
Dear Editor,
The California legislature says that there should be a process in place between public school employers and employees concerning matters of wages and working conditions. The Public Employment Relations Board is the agency that administers collecting bargaining agreements in public schools ensuring that the “rule of law” is followed.
When education parties don’t follow the process, PERB is asked to settle the dispute, thus allowing instruction to continue uninterrupted. Neither the employer nor the employee association is allowed to indiscriminately alter the collective bargaining agreement, imposing new working conditions on the other.
The Dispatch’s Editorial Board believes that this process is less important than student achievement. An employer has the right to change working conditions within the context of the collective bargaining agreement. Within a contracted work day, the employer can tell teachers not to work at all, but they can’t tell teachers to work extra hours.
PERB agrees with the National Labor Relations Board (private industry) in this matter. For one side to impose, without negotiating, new working conditions onto the other party, only chaos and bedlam would ensue. Wildcat strikes, sickouts, and labor slowdowns would dominate the educational landscape. The reason why public education strikes of the mid-seventies do not occur is because parties abide by the process.
Increased student achievement is constantly on educators’ minds. Like any employees, if teachers are overworked. then it affects production in the workplace. For two decades Gilroy Unified School District educators have been at the bottom of comparable districts in wages and benefits with the longest work year. GUSD becomes a training ground for new teachers when hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on staff development is frittered away as educators leave to other districts.
It would make more sense for the employer to follow the process, pay comparable wages and benefits and create a work environment conducive to career-building rather than being a “stagecoach stop to Dodge.”
Dale Morejón, Gilroy
