Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter



CAT Tracks for September 6, 2003
IEA...OUTSIDE AGITATORS - NOT!

THE RIGHT TO STRIKE: ILLINOIS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION NEGOTIATORS PLAY KEY ROLE

BY RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
THE SOUTHERN
[Sat Sep 06 2003]

SOUTHERN ILLINOIS -- When Jim Tammen comes to dinner, he says, he is always invited.

The Illinois Education Association representative for the western side of Southern Illinois, from Cairo north to Pinckneyville, is a former Illinois teacher and now a trained negotiator.

"I usually get called in when bargaining becomes difficult or the teachers become uneasy with their situation and need help," Tammen said Friday from his Marion office.

Tammen does not represent teachers in the Benton high school district strike. That is the job of his colleague and officemate, Wally Zukas, who is serving as lead negotiator for the Benton Teachers Association.

Zukas said through a spokesman with the Illinois Education Association that he began negotiating on behalf of teachers in Benton when the school board called in a professional negotiator of its own.

But Tammen offered insights into the role the IEA and its representatives play in the tense atmosphere surrounding a teachers strike such as the one nearing its third week in Benton.

Tammen personally has represented teachers in the three-week Cobden school strike in 2000 and last year's three-week strike in Cairo.

Gary Ellis, a former Harrisburg school board president, was at the center of a bitter three-week strike in that city in 1992.

"The IEA was always involved. It's always in the background. Very seldom do you see the IEA come to the front," Ellis remembered.

Ellis said he couldn't remember whether he considered the IEA an instigator in the strike in Harrisburg.

But Tammen acknowledged the suspicion that the state union is behind work stoppages at schools. He denied it.

"The public's perception is almost inevitably that we're driving the strike. But it in fact doesn't happen that way," Tammen said. "If IEA puts itself in a position to recommend a strike and it turns out to be a bad strike we're hung with it."

In Cobden, union president William Britt, a fifth-grade teacher who has led the union through two strikes since 1990, backed up Tammen's assessment.

"IEA does not advise going on strike or not going on strike. It is always entirely, totally up to the people directly involved. They make that decision," Britt said.

Tammen said he tries to lay out for teachers the consequences of decisions, and to warn of legal pitfalls.

He also keeps teachers informed on a daily basis about the progress of negotiations. He said in practice that means the entire bargaining unit decides when a contract offer is good enough to vote on.

Tammen said the state organization provides no pay to teachers who are off work during a strike.

The vast majority of bargaining units in Downstate schools, and that includes Southern Illinois, are represented by the Illinois Education Association, itself a branch of the National Education Association.

In Illinois there are 119,000 IEA members served by about 215 union employees, said Charles McBarron, a spokesman for the IEA in Springfield. McBarron wouldn't say how much teachers pay in dues to the organization. He said he didn't know and couldn't find out Friday afternoon what IEA's budget is.

In the past 20 years, Southern Illinois has endured its share of teachers strikes. Since 1982, Southern Illinois schools have had 25 walkouts, past stories in the Southern Illinoisan and data compiled by the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board show.

The longest local strike was almost a month in 1994-1995 in Cairo. Statewide, the longest strike in the last two decades was 44 days in 1997 at the North Greene Unit School District in Greene County.

The Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board reports that two strikes are ongoing in Illinois. The other is in the Harlem school district in Winnebago County, where a bargaining unit represented by the Illinois Federation of Teachers/American Federation of Teachers has led 111 school workers off the job.

According to the Educational Labor Relations Board, seven Southern Illinois school districts have filed intent to strike notices this school year. Benton was the only union local that walked out.

Tammen, who worked as a union representative in Kentucky before returning to Illinois, said Illinois laws encourage settlements without work stoppages.

Under state law, mediation is required, an intent to strike notice must be filed with the Educational Labor Relations Board and a 10-day cooling-off period must be observed before a bargaining unit can actually walk off the job.

"The whole process is designed to try to find a local solution, that's basically what it comes down to," Tammen said.

So why do some teachers strike when their contracts expire and others do not?

Tammen said a lack of trust between teachers and the school board often leads to strikes.

If teachers accept an earlier contract for less than they believe they deserve, then it could bear the fruit of a strike during the next contract negotiation.

But Ellis, the former school board president, pinpointed pay and benefits as the reason underlying strikes.

"Money is always the principle of the thing. For whatever reason there's a push for benefits," Ellis said. "It does come down to finances."

After Ellis' role in the 1992 strike he lost re-election to the school board, partly because members of the local union worked against him.

Whatever the cause of the strike, Ellis predicted that the conflicts now seen in Benton will resonate for years to come.

"When you get to a strike situation like this nobody wins, and in retrospect when you look back at it ... it's a bad situation that hurts the community," Ellis said.

-- Brenda Kirkpatrick contributed to this story.

Richard.Goldstein@lee.net