Brookline Educators Union To File Unfair Labor Charges

BROOKLINE, MA — With the existing three-year contract for educators set to expire in August, teams of negotiators from the School Committee and the teachers union sat down in December and again last week to talk.

But they didn't get far.

After a 2 1/2- hour meeting on Feb. 25, the two school committee members on the negotiation team announced there was already an impasse.

This year, the school committee's negotiation team includes two members of the committee as core negotiators and assistants who come and go, including Superintendent Andrew Bott, Deputy Superintendent Maryellen Dunn and Town Council.

The Brookline Educator's Union, which represents teachers, administrators and paraprofessionals, usually has a core negotiation team of about 15. This year, officials said its core negotiators would stick to 15 members but the team should also include the entire membership - some 1,000 educators.

That has not gone over well with School Committee Negotiations Subcommittee Co-Chairs Michael Glover and Julie Schreiner-Oldham, who called it an unproductive tactic in a statement:

"We find it extremely disheartening that after we have requested to begin negotiations multiple times and proposed multiple meeting dates since October 2018, BEU leadership now insists on starting negotiations with a tactic that is neither serious nor productive. Rather than follow decades of past practice, the BEU leadership is asserting that their entire membership is their negotiating team and is demanding that any and all members can come and go during negotiations as they see fit."

In response, the Brookline Educator's Union announced it would be filing charges with Department of Labor Relations citing "unfair practices" against the School Committee, after it said committee members refused to negotiate with the dozens of "silent representatives" present in the room Monday night.

The union said it hasn't filed anything yet but plans to reference section two of the Massachusetts collective bargaining law.

The union said the school committee originally OKed the idea of allowing silent representatives at the bargaining sessions, who would not speak during bargaining but would be able to participate in caucuses with the bargaining team.

“Having more members listen and participate in the caucus will add important expertise to our discussions and allow us to settle a contract much faster,” said BEU Secretary Jody Curran in a statement.

But school committee members said they never agreed to any silent bargaining members.

Glover told Patch, "Allowing any, or all, of the approximately 1,000 members of the BEU to participate in negotiations on a transient basis is great for creating a spectacle, but it is not conducive to actually negotiating a contract."

He argued that a large audience would hinder communication by causing the parties to be more concerned about crowd reaction than about actually talking to each other about issues, which could lead to grandstanding or cause negotiators to be less candid with each other than they might otherwise be, he said.

"It’s also incredibly intimidating to sit across from dozens of people that are gathered there to support the BEU and oppose the administration. I felt intimidated on Monday night, and I believe that was the BEU’s goal. I think it’s unfair to expect anyone to try and negotiate a contract in that type of environment. "

The union argues that there are no prohibitions against silent representatives being included on a team of their choosing.

“The School Committee simply does not want to bargain with educators on their own terms. There is a pattern of committee members stalling and looking for any excuse to avoid addressing the BEU’s concerns about our students’ learning environments and our members’ work environments — which are one in the same,” said BEU President Jessica Wender-Shubow in a press release.

The union said it rejected the School Committee’s request to split up teachers, paraprofessionals and administrators into separate bargaining teams to negotiate the separate contracts.

The last series of negotiations was also fraught.

In 2014 when a three-year contract expired, the two sides agreed to a short-term "bridge" contract ahead of an override. When that contract ended in 2015, the educators worked under the terms and annual raises of the previous contract for two years before a retroactive contract was put in place.

Now three, three year contracts are set to expire August 31.

"Ideally we would like to have a new contract before the current contract expires," said Glover.

The next scheduled bargaining session is set for March 4.

The Glover and Schreiner-Oldham said they want the union officials to name a negotiating team and engage "in a collaborative and productive process.... Until the BEU leadership takes this step, there can be no fruitful negotiations," a statement reads.

From the Brookline School Committee:

UPDATE FROM NEGOTIATIONS CO-CHAIRS ON CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS

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Jenna Fisher can be reached at Jenna.Fisher@patch.com or by calling 617-942-0474. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram (@ReporterJenna).