The Manchester Education Association continues with its confrontational tone over the city’s request that they alter their current contract as have Manchester’s other unions. At stake is some 143 teacher positions slated to be eliminated in the current budget. School department unions remain virtually the only holdouts in granting the city concessions necessary to keep people on the job and avoid massive tax increases. Below is the email from MEA President Ben Dick urging “solidarity” while calling them to action by flooding the coming meetings of the Board of School Committee and Board of Mayor and Alderman to share their plight in pursuit of greater funding. Read the text of the email here, ONLY on Girard at Large!
Subject: Meetings next week
Date: Sat, 12 May 2012 01:33:09 +0000
Dear member,
I want to take this time to remind you that there are Board of School Committee and Board of Mayor and Aldermen meetings next week. The Board of School Committee meets Monday night at 7 PM in the Aldermanic Chambers at City Hall. The Board of Mayor and Aldermen meet Tuesday night at 7 PM in the same Chambers.
This is the time to show the elected officials and, through them, the pubic, what it means to lose 143.5 educators to layoff. Tell YOUR story, whatever it may be. If you’ve been issued a pink slip, tell them how your life and the lives of your family, students and colleagues will be affected. If you’re going to be in the classroom next year trying to make up for the loss of your colleagues, tell the city what that will look like. No matter which group you’re a part of, tell them what it means to be a teacher.
There was a wonderful Op-Ed piece in the Union Leader today (Friday) sharing a glimpse of what it means to be a public school teacher. This is the personal aspect I’m referring to. Personal stories resonate far more than the general terms that I can speak in as the President of the Union.
This is the next step in continuing the great showing of unity we saw at our General Membership Meeting on Monday. Let’s continue to move forward as a Union.
When you go to school on Monday, ask your colleagues if they’re planning to attend one or both of these meetings. Remind them that this is the type of action we need to show on a consistent basis whether you live in the city or not.
I look forward to seeing you there on Monday night. And Tuesday night. In red and in solidarity.
Ben Dick
President
Manchester Education Association
Certainly, one cannot fault the union for fighting at every opportunity. However, there are different ways to fight.
Strategically, this can cut two ways: It can anger or mislead union membership into believing that this tactic will bear fruit, that it will somehow convince the aldermen to exceed the city’s spending and tax cap and create a standoff that leads to layoffs actually happening. Or, if in failing to increase funding, it may be designed to persuade the members that despite their best efforts, they will have to accept the city requested concessions to save as many of their 143 laid off members as possible.
What’s particularly disconcerting is in the email we’ve posted to the blog below, where MEA President Ben Dick states that the contract extension will be presented to the membership for a vote, even though the union’s executive board does not support it.
Not sure how that’s going to cut or how the union sees that public posturing as helpful to the cause of saving its vulnerable members and preventing what they say will be disaster in the classrooms this fall, but we’ll have to wait and see.
RH Girard
Host.