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Finding their voice: How ACCESS emerged from a bargaining crisis stronger than ever · Public Education Matters

• Various student voices 0:08 Public education matters. Public education matters. Public education matters. Scott DiMauro 0:15 This is Public Education Matters, brought to you by the Ohio Education Association. Katie Olmsted 0:26 Welcome back to Public Education Matters. I'm Katie Olmsted, and I work in the communications department for the Ohio Education Association's nearly 120,000 members across the state. These are dedicated educators who work in Ohio's public schools, pre K through 12th grade and higher ed, plus in places like the State Library, Ohio's Correctional facilities and with county boards of Developmental Disabilities supporting individuals of all ages to learn and to meet their full potential. A few years ago, the Association of Cuyahoga County Employees for Special Students or ACCESS really discovered their own potential when they found themselves very close to going out on strike. It was 2023 and ACCESS was trying to negotiate a fair contract agreement with the Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities, but the board had essentially told them, If you don't like it here, you can leave. ACCESS leaders instead said, let's make it better here. And they helped rally their members to stand together for that contract and beyond. A little earlier this year, my colleague Julie Newhall sat down with one of the ACCESS presidents to learn more about what happened and where things stand now, as ACCESS gets ready to go to the table again, parts of that conversation were included in the April-May edition of OEA's Ohio Schools magazine. In this episode of the podcast, I wanted to share more of that really insightful conversation with you. And yes, even after I chopped some bits of it out, it is still longer than our usual episodes. And no, I am not sorry. It's a really good conversation, and I think it's worth it for you to hear it. Let's listen. Ky Theophanous 2:19 My name is Ky Theophanous, well name Kyriakos Theophanous. I'm a physical therapist. I work with ages three and up at Cayo County Board of Developmental Disabilities, and I am also co-president of the ACCESS local union. I started my work at the county board in 2019, August of 2019 and I joined ACCESS just around the same time actually, I received a little packet when I first got hired, and then I wasn't really sure what all it was, but I talked to a couple colleagues, and they said, well, that's our local union, you know, they they advocate, they help with contracts, a lot of other stuff. We're not really sure. And I said, well, okay, my dad was in the union, so I mean, we're very union, strong family, and I definitely wanted to take that opportunity to protect my own rights at work, so I decided to join in 2019. Julie Newhall 3:10 Once you were at ACCESS and a member and working in your current role, how did you become involved in the union and what led you to become a local president there? Ky Theophanous 3:22 So you can call me a little bit of a nerd, maybe, but I was always in the extracurricular stuff after school. As a kid in high school, college, I was always in clubs, and so this just seemed like a natural segue into attending union meetings, even though I was just, I don't want to say just a member, because I think our members are really what make us what we are. They are the union. But I was a new member, and I didn't really know my place yet. So I said, oh, I'll just show up to some of these meetings as they schedule up. And they had actually just been negotiating a contract this first few months when I joined. That was actually their negotiations. And so I came in at a time where a new contract was being settled. I really didn't know what was, you know, changing from the last ones when you are in but I said, I want to go. I want to learn. I want them to explain to me what's going on here. So I showed up, and I started going to these meetings, and I want to say about a year, year and a half into it, I ended up having the opportunity to become my department rep for the three and up PT group that I'm in. And so I said, okay, I'll try that. You know, I talked to some of the other people in my department who were also leaders. So I said, okay, you know what? I'll start there. And they kind of snowball affected. Our last president, Adria Ramirez, unfortunately, was terminated just before the end of her probation would have been done. She was elected to finish out a term or to start a new term. Excuse me, a little bit of ACCESS history is that we've had a little bit of tumultuous leadership. We've had some really good leaders back in the day, and then we had some different perspectives come in over time. So there was some shifting back and forth, different different ideas, different ways to lead. And somebody decided to take a role right after negotiations during the middle of her term and she left the agency. And so Cindy, who's currently now our treasurer, membership chair, she filled in, but she said, I'm only able to do this to finish out the term like I really can't sacrifice the time with my family, with all the other things I do. I'll give it my all for this term, so we have time to find someone else. But I will not be running, and I will not accept a nomination following the end of this, you know, year or so term. So she, thankfully, she carried us out one more year, and then we ended up with Andrea, who was a probationary staff member, but she had worked in schools and other settings. She was a very strong leader, very strong advocate, and she said, no, like, management has talked down to us. We have this really bad culture here where staff is kind of take what they're given, and that's not acceptable, like, it's not acceptable for me, it's not acceptable for my, my colleagues. And so she stepped up on this platform of, I would say, social justice and fighting for equity for others. And unfortunately, that ended up with her getting a target on her back and being, you know, taken down little by little by management, you know, as they do, unfortunately at our workplace, and they ended up removing her just, I mean, just a few weeks before she would have been off probation. It was very intentional. Unfortunately, that left us yet again in a lurch, because she had started a lot of good work, started a lot of good committees. She pulled a lot of new young people, including myself and my co president, Emily, we were getting more involved and interested, and so, funny enough, I got a text, hey, do you have a minute for a quick call? This is Adria. And I was like, why is, why is our, you know, president that I don't, I don't really know her, you know, Why is she calling me? And she said, Hey, I, I really hate to do this, but obviously, you know, I just lost my job, and this, this speaks to her character. Her first concern was, you know, the union needs a president. We need some leadership. So she's calling me, and she's like, hey, would you be willing to hop on a quick zoom tomorrow night? We have this other person, she's going to be president, but we want a strong second, you know, to be supporting her. Would you consider being a vp with her? And I thought to myself, I never thought I would agree to do this, you know, associate in my career, I just had a probation, you know, like, you know, you're two and a half, maybe three at the job, so I'm still pretty fresh and new to this place, you know, to be leading these staff. Some of them have been your 25-30 years. I don't, I don't know about all that, but okay, maybe as vp, I could consider this little do I know, cut seed, Emily's having the same exact palm where they're telling her, hey, we have this guy who's willing to be president, but he needs a strong co president, a strong vice president to help him lead this organization. And would you be willing to be his vice president? He, he doesn't really mind. You know, he's going to take over president, and you can just help him. And so we basically both had the same phone call and got thrown on a zoom, like right after that. Then they kind of pulled, you know, pulled the rug out. Said, actually, our thought was, you two don't know each other very well, but we think you work very well together. And we talked some of your colleagues, we think you're both pretty strong leaders in your departments and everything else you do, we think that you should consider being co presidents. We can't make you do it, but we strongly think this is what's best for you and for the agency, for our union. So twist my arm. I said, yes. Julie Newhall 8:36 That's quite a story. So you were relatively new in your role at work. You were relatively new to the Union, and you found yourself as as a new leader. How soon after that did you go back into bargaining? Ky Theophanous 8:56 I think I had about a year. And thankfully it wasn't all on me. We had some really good, more seasoned, more senior staff who were still involved, like our secretary Jody, who got me, like interested in being the union rep for my department. She was still secretary, you know, we had a good vp. She was a pretty strong leader in the department. She had been there about eight years more than me, seven years more than me. So I had some really good people to look up to. And so I think I had a few months to kind of figure things out before we had to be at the table. And we also ended up having a really good LRC done hold up. And so I will say it kind of was a uniting experience to go through arbitrations and fighting to try to advocate for our past president Adria, who was fired because we didn't go down without a fight for her. And I think that opportunity actually helped solidify the leadership that Emily and I had together as CO leaders, because we, like I said, we didn't really know each other all that well. We work in totally different departments, totally different age groups, totally different parts of the community. So we didn't have this overlap that you would have maybe if they're in the same school building. And so being able to sit in for meetings, for, you know, prep meetings, whatever, with Don to get to know Adria, that we got to know each other through that. And I will say to Don's leadership style as LRC, he's the personal he's like, we want to show up together and united to the actual thing, whatever it might be, whether it's the arbitration, whether it's bargaining, you know, whether it's just a union meeting with our you know, our whole team are all of our members. You know, if we can show up united to that, we'll be there together. You know, not running late. It really creates a good visual, a really good presentation. And I think Don in all of his years of experience, he knows a lot of different things. And thankfully, I've been able to pick up a little bit here and there. And hopefully I have a lot longer to keep doing that. Julie Newhall 10:54 Hopefully you do want to talk a little bit about some of the challenges your local faced when it did go into bargaining access came close to a strike a few years ago, and ultimately you were able to reach an agreement to avoid a work stoppage. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you and your co-president dealt with the contentious bargaining situation, and also, at the same time, worked to organize your membership. Ky Theophanous 11:28 For our bargaining, this past bargaining, we started so early on. I mean, we were fired up. They had fired our past president. We were two new, strong leaders who we saw the oppression or the issues that Adria had been fighting. I mean, she really brought them to the forefront, and we were very passionate about the same feel those same concerns. And so we started bargaining prep almost a full year prior to being at the table. And we had meetings with membership, we did surveys, we did a whole lot of different ways to collect information from our membership to start that dialog. And we were meeting for hours or like, just every other week or so throughout the summer, we met over a dozen times for long days to start writing this language, to work it out. And so we felt a lot of ownership and a lot of pride over what we accomplished. And we went to the table and basically they slapped this in the face and said, you're not getting any of that. You know, you might get a 211, for your raises, if you're lucky. And we're thinking you have over $160 million cash reserves. You can fund this place for two and a half years. We don't even have steps. We don't have a salary schedule. You know, at the very least, we want an equitable percentage in light of everything going on in the world, inflation, cost of living. You know, at the very least, we want to get caught up to cost of living and maybe get a little bit on top of that, if we're able to, like our members deserve that, they've taken historically low raises. You know, I think we checked the average race over the 10 years prior to us taking taking this leadership role, I think an average, like 1.4% or 1.6% a year for over 10 years. I mean, it was a pattern of just being beaten down and taking less than you deserve. And management was just used to it, so he got to the table, and they thought they could just keep going with the same attitude. And Don was like, yeah, no, don't talk to my members that way. We go over a caucus room, you know, we stepped outside. It's like, how do you all feel about what just happened? And we're like, we're riled up. We will not be spoken to like that. We are not taking that. You know, we worked so hard on what we presented, what they gave us, does not show any insight or perspective or anything to what our issues are like they just picked some low hanging fruit, and then they want to take as much as they could from out from under us, on top of it, you know? And so we said, No, we're digging our heels in. We're going to go back and forth on this. We're inexperienced. We had two people on our team of eight who had bargain before. The rest of us were still learning. But I think just strong leadership at the table, strong leadership in the caucus room. We started to, we started to figure out what we really needed, and checking in with our membership routinely what they really needed so that we could try to settle a contract, and management just wasn't giving it. And so I was a little shocked, but you know, Don's like, I think it's, I think it's time, time For what, you know, time to get an organizing, you know, team together. Time to get another LRC. And I was like, what do you mean, another LRC? We have you. So he was able to tap some, some friends of his Marcus Whitmer, comes to mind. And then, you know, the team kept growing. And there were a few other really, really great people that got pulled in over, you know, the course of of our organizing and eventually crisis campaign. But Marcus got pulled in. We had a few meetings. I couldn't tell you exactly the order, because it's kind of a blur, you know how it goes. But Emily and I were like we need to, we need to partition, like, what can handle and what we can't handle. And, you know, some of the best advice was to find some good organizing chairs to work on the organizing committee. And I kind of said, I struggled to give up control of things, so at the very least, can I, like, get a channel of communication, you know, let them know what's going on at bargaining. They let me know, kind of like, well, what direction do you need us to go? What can we offer with supports? And so I kind of took that role, and Emily was corralling our members and a lot of other things. You know, it was really great to have co-presidents for that. You know, we were able to divide and conquer a little bit. And so our organizing team, you know, they started doing some different escalations and community building with, you know, they did a power study, all these different things they were sharing, what they were working on. Our board didn't seem to care. Our superintendent doesn't even have bargaining. She doesn't even go to the table with, you know, her team. So they didn't really care. We were attending board meetings regularly. We were telling them about staff that they had terminated and how that negatively affects families, and they would just kind of look at us cop their heads say, well, thank you for sharing that. You know we're not doing anything about it, but thanks for sharing that. And so month after month, we kept scheduled, scheduling a couple of bargaining dates as they would let us go to the board meetings, and meanwhile, organizing is trying to rile up membership. These are, these are really the issues that they're fighting for, guys, this is for you. And it came down to they weren't even trying to compromise on the big stuff. And so I believe it was Scott met me, and we talked about this at one of our regional we have regional presidents meetings. So we got together was the West Shore Regional Leadership Council meetings that we do here. And Scott was there. We were grabbing dinner. I'm talking about like the chaos that's happening in life and all the struggles. And he's like, I hear I hear you. I hear you. Like, this is exactly what I need to know. You know, I can. I want to run this up the train. I want to talk to some people I know. You know, Columbus about this. I want to see what I can do to help. You know, let's keep this channel communication open and see where it goes. And so while our organizing teams really fighting, you know, tooth and nail, building these campaigns, trying to route membership. Let's all wear the same shirt. Let's all go to the board meeting. Let's pack the room. Let's do all these things. And Scott's over in Columbus, and he's talking to local leaders. Emily and I had the great idea. We said, You know what? You know, Don, Don pointed out, how do our board members get elected? They're not elected by the public, so we can't remove them either. They're appointed. And so we have a county executor and a county council that are involved in the process. And Don said, you know, try your luck there. Go down to their meeting, tell them what's going on. Tell them how bad it is and that you really need to settle a contract and lights in their best interest. And so we did just that. The two of us went down there, we wrote speeches, and we immediately presented the information in a very polite, objective way. These are our concerns. We are your voters. We're your constituents. We need to hold you accountable. There's no oversight here at the county board. It's your job to do that. You know, would you be willing to work with us on this? And I don't know exactly the timing, but around the same time was when I think Sherrod Brown got wind of our concerns. And so when county council said, you know, this is not this is not acceptable for one of our county organizations to be doing this, and we told our management that at the table, and they said, we still don't care. We told our membership exactly that. They told us, if you don't like it here, you can leave. And we said, no, we don't like it here, so we're going to make it better. So we told our membership that we put a PowerPoint slide together, because that way and I were very organized. And we joke it was like surgical precision on a Google Doc. You know, we started the outline, and she's like, I went back to the top and you had done that. I was like, I went to the end and you had done that, and suddenly, somewhere in the middle, it was all God. And we took this to our membership and presented it with the bargaining team, and we went issue by issue and said, like, they gave us 10% and they want us to give the night for this issue. We're giving them this, and they want this for this issue. They haven't even gotten close to what we need for salary, you know, not even close to what they gave themselves the last few years for salary. You know, that sort of stuff. And it's not all about the money. It's about the respect and the culture, and it's about their willingness to try to work with us, at least to treat us like people and to know that we have needs too, and they're not selfish needs, they're, they're needs so we can preserve staff, so we can take care of the families preserving like they just didn't see the connection there. And our memberships. Like, you know, what? Enough's enough, you know, tell us what you need. And our organizing team and environment, like, well, it sounds like we're at the point where we should consider an intent to strike. Of this, you know, let's, let's show them what power we have, what collective power we have. And so we made sure we had plenty of time for questions. I mean, it was like a three and a half hour like town hall style presentation, meeting time for questions, people coming up. I mean, a lot of them were scared. A lot of them were new. Staff only been there for a year or two. And so we were doing a lot of education, very patiently, trying to make sure everybody knew what they were voting on and what the implications were and what the risks were. And once people felt informed, I mean, it was nearly unanimous, like a 95% vote, and we had almost, I would say, like, 85% of our membership was able to go. And so, I mean, it was a pretty strong showing when the majority of the majority shows up and they say, hey, tell you want us to jump, tell us how high, but let's do this. And so we took that, we took that back to bargaining. And around the same time behind the scenes, I guess Sharon and Scott and whoever else were talking and we were sending out statements through Katie Olmsted, like, through OEA about, like, this is where we are. This is where we are. Well, finally, it was like, access is considering walking out, like we're considering striking our contract three months expired. They're not even trying to work with us. This is where we are today. You know, who wants to come with us and see what happens. And so the rumor has it, I never 100% confirmed this. I was told that Sharon called our county board members at some point and basically said, hey, I'm just checking to see how things are going on at Cuyahoga County Board of Developmental Disabilities, I heard there might be some collective action happening. You happen to know what day they're picketing? I'd like to be there, you know, I'll see you then, hopefully, that was more or less than just what was related to me, of what was said. And so it was fascinating, because they were even refusing to give us at the table for like months, like they said, Oh, the next time might not be until April or May. You're without a contract, so we really don't care. And that call happened. We moved to county council and had this vote with the attempt to strike serve it to them, and suddenly they emailed, and they said, we cleared our schedules. Can you meet with us on Monday? We need to meet with you on Monday. We're willing to try to fix this, you know, we're willing to try to move this forward. I think we have a little bit more leeway we can give than we realize. Julie Newhall 22:28 Wow. So, so after that happened, it sounds like it turned the tide. And how was your agreement resulting from that? Ky Theophanous 22:39 We didn't get everything we wanted you never do, but we settled some of the biggest issues, like rapid fire, and I will say a large number of them did go our way, some of the biggest issues of what our membership needed to be able to vote on a contract and agree with it, like we tried to reduce probation. And they were like, absolutely not. We're not going to do this. They buckled and they gave like they cut it nearly in half. They, they changed a lot of things that they didn't want to change. We definitely made some sacrifices that wasn't going to happen or that that was going to happen either way. Excuse me, but I feel like we had more control over what we sacrificed and what we prioritized because of those changes and those supports outside of our bargaining table. Julie Newhall 23:20 How did the experience strengthen your local and your membership and unify your group together? Ky Theophanous 23:30 Don would probably tell you he came in, but local was kind of like a dead local. There was not a lot of activity. Membership didn't really know each other. There were so many new staff, it was kind of disjointed. This experience, I think not only brought our bargaining team and our leadership team together and really strengthened a direction for us and like our mission, but I think it brought a lot of focus on what members can do and their control over the situation, as well advocating in their own ways and meetings and whatever work they do, and knowing how to work with us so we can carry these these actions forward in the future. And I mean, out of that organizing committee, we had some really great leaders who helped organize a lot of social events that were able to bring these same people together not to vote on a strike notice. But let's, let's have a cocktail. Let's get together, and let's just hang out. Let's talk about the things that are going bad at work, things that are going well in life, you know, and just get to know each other as people a little bit. So we had a really positive direction, I would say, out of this difficult situation, and Emily and I felt a lot more solid as leaders going forward. I mean, we were burnt out for a bit, but we knew who we could rely on. We knew we had a great team around us, and that was enough, I think, to just keep going. Julie Newhall 24:50 What advice would you have for other locals who might be facing similar challenges that ACCESS had? Ky Theophanous 24:58 I would say. You need to build your solidarity in your community and your union. You need to know who your players are in the community. It's not easy. It's not it's not easy work. It's hard work. That's why it's work. But it's worth it. I think if you have a good mission, and you're transparent with your membership about what your mission is, and you ask for help, and I don't do that nearly enough, so I strongly say ask for help when you need it, before you realize you need it. EInclude everybody so there's ownership. You will, you will change a lot in your community. I think you have the power to just about anything you want, if you do it with your membership behind you and you're transparent about why. Julie Newhall 25:41 I know that you're heading back to the bargaining table later this summer, I believe in August. Yeah. How are you preparing as you do that anything, anything different from before? I'm guessing. Ky Theophanous 25:58 I would say so, like I mentioned, we've got a really good organizing culture kind of going on now with, like, more meetings, more social things. So membership, I would say, knows each other a lot better at this point, months before than they did three years ago. We want to keep that good work going on. You know, looking through OEA with the LDP, LDPs that they do to get some funding to help support these events. I've been to multiple trainings my new co-president, Sharon, who just got sworn in December, our secretary, Alex, the three of us were just at the OEA AOI conference that I met you at in Columbus. I was at the new president's training that NEA puts on. I was down in Orlando just last month. I've been doing a lot of trainings for leadership, trying to learn a lot of new tools, a lot of new strategies that I can implement, not just to take care of myself, but take care of my members, and to keep the mission moving forward. We're doing surveys, but we're handing that all off. We're learning to not only train new people, but just let them be independent and do it their own way, as long as there's that dialog there. And so we think it's going to be a tough road ahead. I will say a lot of the same issues we had last bargaining that we didn't settle, the things we compromised on or didn't quite get right. They're going to come back with a vengeance. And so we need to do the same. We need to be willing to stick, you know, stick to our guns. We need to really hold ourselves to that high standard of what our membership deserves and what's right for our membership. Julie Newhall 27:31 For you, what is the most rewarding part about being a local leader? Ky Theophanous 27:36 I would say knowing that I'm improving the lives of my membership, that I'm getting them something fair and something that they feel proud of fighting before, I think at the end of the day, if my membership sees that their voice is heard and they know that somebody has their back, that's worth it. At the end of the day, that's worth it. Katie Olmsted 27:57 Many thanks again to Ky Theophanous for sharing his perspective, and to Ohio schools editor Julie Newhall for sharing this conversation with us. We will continue to share conversations about the big issues facing Ohio's public schools, students and educators with you every Thursday, as this season of the podcast continues next week, we're digging into the power of diverse books and the really important work of OEA members in two different locals who are helping their students see themselves and the world around them in new ways, because in Ohio, public education matters. Transcribed by https://otter.ai