PFT message: Come back to the table or we’ll try to make you

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Teachers’ union officials wrapped up a whirlwind week of protests and rallies by calling Friday on the School Reform Commission to scuttle its plans to cancel the union’s contract and come back to the bargaining table.

“What has been created in Philadelphia is not good for the children,” said Jerry Jordan, head of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, as he sat before a host of Democratic legislators, union leaders, community advocates, and teachers.

At the same time, Jordan said, the union is preparing to take legal action to block the SRC’s plans.
“I expect next week we will go to court and file our response” to the SRC’s latest legal moves, he said.

By Jordan’s side at PFT headquarters sat Randi Weingarten, head of his national union, the American Federation of Teachers, who said she was asking union members to show “patience and resolve” while union leaders try to bring the SRC back to the bargaining table.

Among the legislators and officials present were state Reps. W. Curtis Thomas, Mark Cohen, and Maria Donatucci; state Sens. Vincent Hughes, Shirley Kitchen and Tina Tartaglione; City Controller Alan Butkovitz; and City Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell.

Weingarten said she was encouraged by all the support and blasted the SRC’s decision to cancel the PFT’s contract as a “political stunt” driven by Gov. Corbett and his appointee SRC Chair Bill Green.

“I have no idea how they did it,” said Weingarten, when asked why Mayor Nutter’s SRC appointees also supported canceling the contract, if in fact it was a move designed to help Corbett. “But I am saying that it is political opportunism of the first order.”

SRC officials have said that they feel they are on legally safe ground in canceling the contract and that the financial realities give them no choice but to do so. They have already begun spending the anticipated savings, handing out a first installment of $15 million to schools this week and making plans for more. All in all, District officials say that by canceling the contract they will be able to put an extra $44 million into school budgets.

Nonetheless, union officials plan to keep trying to force the SRC to reverse course. Weingarten hopes for some kind of formal resolution from City Council next week.

“We’ve asked [Council] to call on the SRC to go back to the bargaining table and not to do this reckless, illegal, and immoral option of imposing a contract and withdrawing health care, three weeks before an election,” Weingarten said.

Blackwell, chair of City Council’s Education Committee, said she wasn’t sure exactly what form such a resolution would take, but she expects to see action.
“We’re going to call for it,” she said. “We really do need negotiations open – they haven’t done it since July 1, and that’s unconscionable.”

Jordan said the union would be willing to continue talking about any number of contract issues, including health care.

And as for challenging the SRC’s right to cancel the contract, Jordan wouldn’t say what exactly the union’s legal strategy will be. “After we file our pleadings, I’ll have an answer,” he said.

But he strongly believes the SRC quit negotiating long before it had to.

“We’ve been bargaining in good faith,” said Jordan, who says the last proposals were exchanged at the end of June, and that he’d heard no proposals since July 1.

“It was very clear based on the statements Bill Green gave to the press this week that they planned to do this [cancel the contract] over the summer, but because the cigarette tax was stalled in June, they waited until the tax passed,” he said.

Earlier, Jordan and Weingarten visited Greenfield Elementary School in Center City, where they brought the same message to staff and parents. “Just so you know, the national union is with you every step of the way,” she told a group of teachers.

Some parents and students welcomed the attention. Sashoya Dougan, an 8th grader at Greenfield, said it’s easy to feel the impact of the budget cuts.

“We’ve had a lot of important categories and classes cut – technology, some sports — the ones we liked,” Dougan said with a smile. “We miss them, and we feel they’d better our education, but we get used to it.”

Rochelle Raheen, parent of a 5th grader, said that canceling the contract without notice “doesn’t seem fair.” She called Greenfield a “good school” that hasn’t felt the crunch too badly – “it’s only 30 to a class.” But watching students from a nearby high school rallying in support of their teachers had a big impact on her.

“I wanted to cry,” Raheen said. “It’s just sad.”

Back at the union hall, Jordan said his staff has been taking “an inordinate amount of calls from teachers asking what do they have to do to resign.”

Some of those calls could have come from friends and colleagues of Stephen Flemming, a teacher at John B. Kelly Elementary in Germantown.

“It’s been affecting morale,” Flemming said. “Teachers have been considering leaving – including yours truly at one point. We’ve already put out so much out of pocket for our classrooms to begin with.”

Flemming estimates he spends $600 a year on supplies and subscriptions. He does not yet know what his new health care expenses will be, but “whatever it is, it’ll be a bill,” he said. “Things we do for our students in the classroom, we’ll have to think twice about.”

And although he’s prepared to sit tight while the union makes its moves, Flemming is also prepared to strike if that’s what it comes to.

“Whatever the leadership says,” he said, “that’s what we’ll do.”