Latest / New Teacher Talk / Ep 215: What Your Union Card Actually Means

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Ep 215: What Your Union Card Actually Means · New Teacher Talk

Welcome back to New Teacher Talk.
Beth here with Anna and today we're talking about something
almost every new teacher signs and almost no new teacher
fully understands.
Your union card.
It's in that stack of onboarding paperwork.
You sign it, you tuck it away,
and that's usually the last time you think about it.
Which is a shame,
because what it means for your career is a lot bigger than
that one signature.
So we brought in two people who can actually explain it.
Amy Howard and Katie Popp are with us today to walk through
what membership does for you, your contract, your pay,
and who has your back when something goes sideways.
And it always does.
Whether you've already joined or you're still deciding,
stick with us.
You'll leave knowing what you're actually a part of.
Welcome to New Teacher Talk.
My name is Amy Howerton,
and I'm an English teacher and English department
chairperson at Oswego High School in Oswego, Illinois.
And I'm Katie Popp,
President of the Indian Prairie Education Association in
Illinois.
Today we will be talking about the importance and benefits
of union membership as someone in the educational field.
After today's podcast,
you should walk away with more information about unions and
what they can do for you as a young and veteran educator.
Katie, thank you for joining us today.
You're welcome.
If you could start by telling us a little bit about teacher
unions, professional unions,
and the benefits of them because not all states have unions
for teachers.
In fact,
my oldest daughter taught in North Carolina and her working
conditions there were a little different because they
didn't have unions.
So there were things that she experienced that were
different from what my experiences were here in Illinois.
So I've been a part of the union since I got hired as a new
teacher 23 some years ago.
We've been vin the field for a long time.
Yes.
And I have been the union president.
I'm just completing my seventh year and just got reelected
for a third term.
I represent 2,100 teachers.
We are the third largest union in the state of Illinois in
Illinois Education Association.
And we are the fourth largest unit district with just over
26,000 students.
The job of the union and what unions are really is a
collective group of people who have like-minded ideas that
work together to speak in one voice to kind of improve the
working conditions and the benefits and the wages of those
that they represent.
What else do unions do to support teachers?
So probably the number one thing that's usually associated
with unions is a contract.
And what unions absolutely do do is make sure that the
contract is followed or enforced.
And if there are questions around language or things like
that related to the contract,
usually the union is involved with, in our case,
management, which is administration,
and kind of deciphering what was the intent of that
language when it was bargained and discussed.
But probably the biggest thing that we spend most of our
time is just in the day to day operations,
making sure that the schools run smoothly.
We work collaboratively with our administration in my
district to work to take on different issues or topics or
initiatives that are coming up that work to the betterment
of improving not only just the working conditions,
but also the learning environment for students.
What we do kind of more at a state and national level,
what you usually hear unions a lot about deal with focusing
on specific laws and improving laws, which again,
the ultimate goal is to improve the working conditions of
the learning environment of both the teachers and the
students.
One of the things at the state level we spent some time
focusing on that really impacts new hires,
or new teachers rather,
is new teachers in the state of Illinois fall into a
different tier retirement group.
And what the state organization has spent a lot of time
focusing on is kind of looking at that,
what is known as Tier 2,
and looking at what are those retirement requirements now
for those new hires and new teachers that are coming into
the profession,
and how can we make them a little bit more palatable and
manageable because they are quite high now.
For example,
the retirement age for them now is 67 as opposed to 55.
So we're kind of working at the state level with regards to
that.
What we've also seen is that you do have people who are
coming into the educational field having had an other
profession in the private sector,
and what the National Education Association worked on,
or NEA, and they worked on this for quite some time,
was to ensure that if you came from the private sector and
you paid into Social Security,
you do have that ability to get Social Security back.
Correct,
so you could have both your teacher's union pension and
social security.
And that had not always been the case.
So that was really beneficial for people changing from the
private sector to the public education system.
Really helpful.
There are some misconceptions about unions, however,
because there has been kind of a move away from a
collective bargaining unit just north of us in Wisconsin,
for example.
Their governor previously, Scott Walker, passed Act 10,
which significantly limited collective bargaining rights in
that state for the public sector, which includes teachers.
And then later passed a right to work bill in 2015 that did
not require employees to pay union dues,
even if they benefited from the results of those collective
bargaining agreements.
And I know you know quite a bit more about that if you
could share with our listeners some of those details and
that legal background.
Sure.
So you've always had the right to decide whether you wanted
to be in a union or not in the union.
But it really kind of,
even before what Governor Walker did,
it kind of started a little bit before then as well with
regards to what became known as the Janus case.
What kind of plays out with unions is whether you're in the
union or not.
So if you're not in the union,
you were still benefiting from the work of the union.
You still benefited from whatever was collectively
bargained and determined the working conditions and the
wages and the benefits.
Before Janus, because you still benefited from those,
you still paid what was called fair share.
While it wasn't the full dues amount,
you still paid a small portion because, again,
you benefited from the work that the union did.
What Janus did is eliminated fair share and said you no
longer had to pay anything.
But what the Illinois Education Association was able to
successfully do in the state of Illinois,
what they were able to solidify was that locals like mine,
like the Indian Prairie Education Association,
are considered what we call the exclusive bargaining agent,
which means the district can only negotiate with us.
So even with Janus and you are no longer paying fair share
and you're not paying any dues,
you cannot go as an individual to the administration and
say,
I'd like to negotiate my own salary or I'd like to negotiate
my own start time and end time.
So in this case,
that's something that we saw the benefits from being in the
union and how they still were able to protect our rights.
Thank you for that clarity.
So sometimes new teachers will ask, is it worth the money?
Should I join?
Because as new teachers, every penny counts.
But membership into the union is of value.
So can you share a little bit of information about why that
is so?
Sure.
And I can even give you a really quick example too.
So this year my local happened to be negotiating their
contract and we always reach out to our new teachers at the
start of the year and explain who we are and what we do
and, you know, ask that they'd like to join right now.
I have almost 1% that is not a part of my association.
So I have a pretty good rate that most people believe and
understand what it is that we do, but the younger teachers,
like you said, they're, you know,
this is their first paycheck out of college and their every
penny counts.
Every penny counts.
So I had a couple elect not to do it,
but because we were negotiating this year and when our
tentative agreement came out and it came time to vote on
it,
those teachers who had elected not to join this year started
to realize they had no voice and they had no say and they
could not even vote on the contract because they were not a
part of the union.
So I did have two people join as a result of that because
they understood now why it is they wanted to be able to
vote and participate.
Some of the other things that we do,
we kind of offer support and what is it, you know,
kind of you asked like, what is your money by?
Um, so it gives you a lot of different things.
One of the biggest things people think the support comes in
is discipline.
Yes, absolutely.
The union offers advice council when it comes to
discipline.
And I always tell people are especially new teachers at
some point in your career,
you're going to have an experience with DCFS.
If you are not in the union,
most lawyers are billing anywhere for one hour somewhere
between five, six, $700 an hour.
That is your entire union dues for the year.
And you have access to attorneys when you need them.
When you are in the union,
you're not searching because the other thing is finding an
educational attorney is extremely hard.
You need someone who not only understands labor laws,
but you also need someone who understands school code.
So absolutely disciplinary is one of the reasons that you
would want to join the union,
but not every teacher is going to find themselves in a
disciplinary type situation.
So we offer other things that are beneficial.
We know there's a teacher shortage and we want to encourage
people to not only go into this profession,
but to stay in this profession.
So we do a huge thing that the union is involved in is
through IEA, through our state local,
they have what is called a mentoring program.
Yes.
And so our younger teachers are given virtual coaches.
They could be anywhere in the state.
They are veteran teachers who teach the same discipline as
them so they can get that feedback because when you're a
new teacher,
you're just trying to make it through the day and you're
hoping that you're,
you have all your lesson plans and you hope you can make
the time that you're supposed to have because having
children stare at you is like your biggest nightmare.
So we make sure that they have a virtual coach,
someone who can talk them through the curriculum and answer
questions and kind of give them ideas on guidance on lesson
plans and ideas.
And then we also give them the building mentor.
And I always equate the building mentor as like the person
who teaches you the culture and the climate of the
building.
And we all know how sacred the copier is.
So one of the things we always, you know,
we joke around is,
is they're going to tell you how to use the copier,
how not to break the copier,
which is probably the bigger key because that's the last
thing you want to do.
But we also use our building mentors to do mock parent
teacher conferences.
Our new teachers know working with the veteran teacher,
this is what you can anticipate or this is what you can
expect when you go in.
So those are some of the things that we provide support.
We even provide support when it comes to evaluations.
And that can be really helpful for new teachers because
that evaluation process in a variety of districts,
it might look a little different,
but it's going to happen and it's nice to have somebody
there with you to help explain the process and to be a
guide with you.
Right?
And one of the things I did as president in working with
collaboration with my administration is for the last couple
of years we've been hiring almost over 150 new teachers.
Anywhere between 150 to I think last year was our first
lowest at about 90.
And what we were realizing is because we are hiring these
new teachers they don't understand the evaluation process.
So we were able to work with the administration and we both
identified a need that these teachers needed to have a
clear understanding of the expectations and just the
process itself.
Because there's many different components as you know to
the evaluation process.
So we were able to develop a professional development class
that we required all our new teachers to go through to kind
of walk them through that so that the first time they were
doing it wasn't when it actually counted.
But it was so they understood here's what's going to happen
here's what you need to do here's the things you need to
look at and what when you're putting your lesson together.
And it was so beneficial I had several veteran teachers
asking why can't they do it as well just to get some
refresher.
So that's one of the things we've kind of looked at.
New teachers may not realize this immediately,
but after you gain tenure, you don't have an evaluation,
a formal evaluation cycle, every single year,
and it kind of maybe goes every other year,
depending on what the negotiated contract might would
state.
Lots of really good support there,
so every penny counts when you're a new teacher,
but those pennies spent in your union membership offer so
many different kinds of supports.
So well worth it.
It also offers some professional voice,
and so being a member of a local union,
which also gains the state and the national union,
also gains that professional voice.
Could you share a little bit more with our listeners about
what kind of professional voice that offers new teachers?
Yeah, a lot of the things that we focus on,
especially in my district,
is that we're always constantly collaborating together.
And what we do is we spend a lot of time getting our
teachers in front of initiatives and getting their voices
in the room,
because we all know that if the teacher's voice is in the
room,
we know that the implementation and how it impacts the
student learning drastically changes in a positive way,
in a positive way, because those voices are so critical.
They're the boots on the ground.
They're with the kids every single day, working with them,
looking at the learning environment,
looking at what needs to be addressed.
And what are the concerns putting in those interventions
and things so that kids can be successful reality.
It's the day to day grind.
So what our goal as a union always is to make sure that
that teacher voice is heard in different ways.
And like you said,
it impacts whether you're a veteran teacher or a new
teacher, you know, your concerns look vastly different.
One of the things we heard overwhelmingly from our new
teachers, again,
going back to that idea that every penny counts is
contractually, the way we had things,
they weren't getting their first paycheck till September
15.
And that's a really long time when you're starting in
August.
So one of the things we successfully worked on
collaboratively and put language this coming year into our
contract is, is that we've moved up that payment time.
And that came from our new teachers coming to the
association in our meetings and saying,
we can't wait till September 15 to get paid.
That's kind of that collaborative work.
We went to the administration,
they didn't disagree with us.
And it was a mutual interest topic when it came to
negotiating.
And that's how you get your voice in the room.
And those are the things that we do to help improve the
quality of, you know, the working conditions.
What I'm hearing is that there's a lot of collaboration
that happens between the union and the administration to
improve working conditions and communication.
There's also a lot of collaboration and networking that
happens between the teachers in the union and the union
with other larger unions and networking in the field.
Could you share a little bit more about how that union
membership helps with collaboration in the field as a
whole?
Sure.
So one of the things as specific with our new teachers that
we focus on is we make sure that our new teachers know who
their senators are in the building.
Our senators are our building representatives.
And they're just another sounding board for our new
teachers to go to and ask questions and talk,
share concerns and clarification of things that they may
have.
As a whole, you know,
there's various different ways that we all network with
each other.
I am part of, it's a weird name,
but it's called Skunk Works.
I didn't come up with it,
but it is kind of our version of a professional learning
community.
Okay.
And it is all of the union presidents pretty much that make
up the majority of Illinois districts north of I-80,
which is where the bulk of our school districts are.
A lot of the Chicagoland areas.
Chicagoland take.
We try to meet once a month during the school year,
and it's our professional learning community because it
gives us the opportunity to say how other districts are
solving certain common problems.
It's again,
another sounding board to kind of bounce different ideas
off of.
And it's also,
we bring in guest speakers and things to help us.
So we've had our IEA attorney who's come in,
who's talked to us about workman's comp,
who's talked to us about, you know,
just actually following up with disciplinary type things
and what things should look like and how things should be
put in place.
We've had people come and talk to us to give us more
information with regards to FMLA and how to counsel around
FMLA.
But then we do the day-to-day stuff like,
how is your district handling the new law that might get
passed this weekend with regards to AI and using AI and
evaluations?
Have you guys had a conversation around that?
So we talk about those are the things that we kind of
network and we come together.
And then education is always what I say is like six degrees
of separation.
Everyone knows somebody.
So if I don't know it,
I know there's somebody else I can call who I heard
experienced it or did it so that they can give me the
feedback and stuff.
That's the kind of collaboration.
Yeah, good.
Katie,
I really want to thank you for sharing a lot of information
with our listeners about with the value of unions,
not just for brand new teachers,
but for anybody in the field,
especially for people that are coming from out of the state
who may not have had experience with professional
organizations or unions before.
So I really want to thank you for that time.
Sure.
And I always encourage new teachers,
if you're not totally sure,
find a representative in your building,
ask them some questions, have a conversation,
even go to one of the meetings just to see what it's about
and just to get some idea.
But I guarantee you it's money worthwhile spent.
That's a good line to end, and I love that.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
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