Unions

[Jacen McCullough]

Hey all, As I edge closer and closer to my first paid teaching position, one topic that has been on the brain lately has been whether or not to join a teachers union. I wanted to ask the crowd on here what they thought of them. Are you in a union? Which one? What do you see as the benefits of union membership for you? I'm also curious to hear from college professors. Do they have unions for you all? I also want to hear from the students on here. Do you hear about the teacher's union at your school much? Have you ever had to deal with a strike or a threatened strike? Thanks for any replies!

[needs]

Hey all, As I edge closer and closer to my first paid teaching position, one topic that has been on the brain lately has been whether or not to join a teachers union. I wanted to ask the crowd on here what they thought of them. Are you in a union? Which one? What do you see as the benefits of union membership for you? I'm also curious to hear from college professors. Do they have unions for you all? I also want to hear from the students on here. Do you hear about the teacher's union at your school much? Have you ever had to deal with a strike or a threatened strike? Thanks for any replies!

I was in the grad student instructor union at Michigan (GEO, which was a AFT member union) and am currently teaching at a small college where I'm represented (mainly to set salary levels from what I can tell) by the AAUP. My wife was also a NEA member when she taught high school for three years.

I'll concentrate on my experience with GEO b/c frankly, I'm unsure what, if anything, the AAUP does or how it works. I'm also a pretty big proponent of grad student instructor unions (at least at state institutions) from comparing benefits between Michigan and other state schools. The benefits basically fell into financial and procedural categories. Grad Student Instructors (GSI) receive a full tuition waver, full health and dental coverage for the GSI plus partner, and a child care subsidy, for all GSI's with a 10/hour per week work fraction (as the fraction drops, so do the benefit levels) All these benefits are far from standard for GSI's at state institutions. In my six years at Michigan, there were 3 day-long walkouts/teach your class off campus days, two late in the contract negotiation, one over an attempt to alter health care funding.

The procedural benefits may correspond more to those of teachers' unions (my wife, teaching full time, had less involvement in the negotation portion of the union and no strike actions). The main procedural benefit was to establish a set plan to deal with grievances with the administration. Such a plan, in my experience, transforms what can be nasty personal disputes into disputes between two sets of bureaucracy with established standards. The union should also provide a similar conflict resolution process for any disputes that might arise with parents (which proved very helpful for my wife on one occasion).

The other benefit is to provide a means to exert control over the conditions governing your employment. In my final year at UM, the administration tried to preemptorally change GSI's health coverage in a way that would of hurt a number of GSIs (which the admin didn't realize). Through the union, we were able to challenge the change, point out the problems, and (after some intransigence by both sides) arrive at a reasonable compromise that met the needs of both sides.

On whether or not to join, my glib answer is that they're going to charge you a representation fee if you don't so why not at least have a vote. My serious answer is that I saw the unions my wife and I were in providing real, tangible benefits. The downsides were minimal, mainly dealing with a lot of requests on my time around contract negotiation time and a bit of excessive "We, the workers" rhetoric.

[bigredfutbol]

Hey all, As I edge closer and closer to my first paid teaching position, one topic that has been on the brain lately has been whether or not to join a teachers union. I wanted to ask the crowd on here what they thought of them. Are you in a union? Which one? What do you see as the benefits of union membership for you? I'm also curious to hear from college professors. Do they have unions for you all? I also want to hear from the students on here. Do you hear about the teacher's union at your school much? Have you ever had to deal with a strike or a threatened strike? Thanks for any replies!

I'm a librarian not a teacher, but for what it's worth the library system I work for is unionized and it works well for us.

My Dad was an educator his entire career, and the Nebraska teacher's union worked well for him.