Running Head: BARGAINING
Collective Bargaining Paper for EA 742
Eric Ceresa
Oakland University
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Collective bargaining by teachers was only formally recognized by the State of Michigan
in 1965, but collective bargaining and union organization in the East Detroit Public Schools goes
back much further. The East Detroit Federation of Teachers (EDFT), a local of the American
Federation of Teachers (AFT), traces its roots back to 1935, when a group of teachers tried
unsuccessfully to bargain with the school board for a raise in pay. This group continued to meet
as the “Teachers’ Club” until 1942, when it was chartered as Local 698 of the AFT. Despite not
yet being formally recognized by the state as a suitable representative in collective bargaining,
the teachers’ union organized two strikes in 1947, resulting in an agreement with the school
board. Several more strikes occurred, even after teacher strikes had been made illegal (“History
of the EDFT,” n.d.). It seems safe to describe the EDFT as a relatively militant union, at least in
a historical sense.
More recently, the school district has faced several hurdles caused by scandals. In 2000,
an audit uncovered several instances of bribery and embezzlement in the implementation of a
1996 bond for school construction and maintenance. Several school officials went to jail, and
the resulting deficit in funding caused teacher layoffs (Education Report, 2002). More recently,
in the 2009-2010 school year, the district has weathered another scandal, as negligence of school
officials resulted in a deficit of nearly $12 million (Hotts, 2010). Again, the need to close a
budget deficit, compounded with cuts in state funding, resulted in concessions from the union
and many layoffs.
The two people interviewed for this paper, Principal Paul Szymanski of East Detroit High
School and Lincoln Stocks, current president of the EDFT, each have personal experience of
most of the recent history of the district. Szymanski was hired as a math teacher at East Detroit
High School in September of 1992, and served a negotiator on the side of the EDFT, before
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being hired as assistant principal during the summer of 2002 (having served as interim AP for the
second semester of the previous year) and then principal in July of 2003. In his role as an
administrator, Szymanski has sat on the other side of the table, representing the school board,
though he has also served as a negotiator for the administrators’ union. Stocks has had a long
tenure as a teacher in the East Detroit district since he was first hired in 1986, working at the
high school and the middle school as well as coaching football and track, and was elected union
president in 2007. He was active in the union beforehand, and has been a negotiator for several
contracts, but his position as union president grants him the position of lead negotiator under the
local union’s charter, and he has served in that position for the last three rounds of contract
negotiation.
Both Stocks and Szymanski confirm that the last several contracts have followed the
process of full bargaining. Their descriptions of the usual process agreed on most details with
what was presented in class; both described initial meetings to settle on ground rules, and both
provided examples of proposals from past bargaining sessions from both sides.
The last two sets of negotiations, as well as the ongoing bargaining, saw the school board
represented by an attorney rather than by a team of administrators when bargaining with the
teachers’ union. Both Stocks and Szymanski were somewhat critical of that practice. Both cited
as a concern what they felt to be the considerable expense of hiring an attorney, particularly
when the school is operating under a deficit. Both also cited the attorney’s lack of familiarity
with the teachers’ contract, and in some cases with education law. Stocks provided as an
example one proposal put forth by one of the attorneys in a previous round of negotiations,
where the attorney proposed inserting into the contract language that would have prohibited the
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union from bargaining for a particular health insurance carrier. This language was unnecessary,
as that subject is excluded from bargaining by law.
Szymanski voiced a preference, whether bargaining with the teachers’ union for the
board or as a negotiator for the administrators’ union, for addressing sections of the contract one
at a time, coming to an agreement on a given subject and reaching a tentative agreement (TA), so
that it can be put to rest and considered settled. This, he says, has been the way that negotiations
have generally proceeded in the district. He described the approach of the lawyer currently
negotiating for the board as diverging from this practice, instead presenting multiple proposals
that affect multiple sections of the contract and expecting them to be agreed to or rejected as a
whole.
Both Szymanski and Stocks reported that the EDFT has usually been better prepared with
proposals at the start of negotiations than the negotiators for the school board have been. Stocks
provided examples of union proposals from past negotiations, with the changes in the contract
language noted and the rationale for the change clearly explained. Examples of the proposals
provided on behalf of the board were provided by both Stocks and Szymanski, and in contrast,
they tended to lack a stated rationale, as well as being fewer in number.
Szymanski and Stocks both described a change in the climate of negotiations over time,
moving from less formal, friendlier negotiations to a more adversarial tone. Both separately
related that, in “the old days,” it was not unusual for the lead negotiators for both sides to
hammer out the fine points of the agreement in a bar, and there are stories, the veracity of which
cannot definitely be determined, of drafts of contract language having been written on napkins.
In terms of negotiation goals, Stocks reports being very concerned with the climate of
opinion toward teachers and education, and with the possibility of legislation from Lansing or
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Washington that limits the ability of the union to collectively bargain. One subject that was
discussed at some length was the requirement that student achievement be included as part of a
teacher’s evaluation. Stocks reports that he has currently organized a committee to study the
implementation of that requirement, and to draft proposals that will implement it in a fair
manner.
Given the economy and the tenor of the public discussion on education reform, both
Stocks and Szymanski (speaking in his capacity as negotiator for the administrators’ union)
described negotiations in which they are much more focused on stemming losses of
compensation and rights, rather than bargaining for new ones. Stocks described the last round of
negotiations, at the beginning of which the attorney for the school board reported that the
financial director of the district had informed him that a 17% pay cut would be necessary in
order to free the district from the deficit it had accumulated. During negotiations, this was
reduced to a pay freeze and insurance concessions, and current figures show that the district
would be on schedule to get rid of the deficit if not for this year’s further education budget cuts,
unanticipated during that negotiation.
In negotiations, both Stocks and Szymanski seem to be pragmatists. When the district’s
current deficit became known, Stocks organized with the heads of the other bargaining units to
offer a $1,000 per employee give-back to defray the deficit. Though the school board refused to
entertain this proposal, it would have resulted in approximately $500,000 returned to the district
to help pay down the deficit. It seems that, while the union is certainly concerned with the
welfare of its own members, it is not blind to the needs of the students.
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In addition, both Szymanski and Stocks report working together to implement the new
grant from the United Way and General Motors that will be reshaping the high school starting in
September of 2011. This grant is to be used to implement a school improvement model
developed and overseen by a group called Talent Development, and it includes block scheduling
and team teaching, two concepts that are relatively new to East Detroit High School. While this
change in working conditions might have met with some union opposition, Stocks has been a
supporter of the change and has worked with Szymanski, both report, to put the program in place
on a relatively short timeline.
While it is probably to be expected that Stocks would voice a conviction in the necessity
of unions to the educational process, Szymanski agrees with him that unions, collective
bargaining, and the protections they represent should be preserved. This author concurs. Ideally,
unions can give a collective voice to teachers in how their schools are run, allowing them to
influence procedure and conditions, both to protect themselves and their jobs and to provide the
best possible learning environment for students. Teachers, working directly with students, have
valuable contributions to make to those decisions, and by organizing together, they are more
likely to make their voices heard. It is important for teachers to be professional, and to keep the
best interests of the students in mind while doing this, but it seems given the concessions that the
EDFT has made that in this instance that is exactly what has happened. The bargaining process
in the East Detroit Public Schools seems to be a positive example of contract negotiations under
difficult conditions to protect the interests of teachers and students.
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References
East Detroit Federation of Teachers. (n.d.). History of the East Detroit Federation of Teachers.
Retrieved from http://edft698.org/history.html
Financial scandals exposed in Michigan school districts. (2002). Education Report. Retrieved
from http://www.educationreport.org/pubs/mer/article.aspx?ID=4835
Hotts, M. (2010, May 16). Forensic audit shows school officials bungled budget figures. The
Macomb Daily. Retrieved from
http://www.macombdaily.com/articles/2010/05/16/online/srv0000008282819.txt
The State of Michigan. (1947). Public Employee Relations Act of 1947. Retrieved from
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/mcl/pdf/mcl-Act-336-of-1947.pdf