Tag Archives: labor

The Uphill Battle of Unionizing a Philly Charter School

Originally published in The American Prospect on June 4th, 2015.
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On April 30th, faculty at North Philadelphia’s Olney Charter High School voted 104-38 in favor of forming a union, an NLRB election that Olney’s charter operator, ASPIRA, has since announced they’re challenging. Olney’s union campaign is only the latest in a small but rapidly growing wave of charter union drives nationwide. But few efforts have been as contentious, or as revealing, as this one. Ever since the campaign began three years ago, ASPIRA has pumped tens of thousands of dollars into an elaborate union-busting effort, even as the beleaguered district it’s funded by struggles with massive debt. Unionizing Olney also threatens to shine light on ASPIRA’s questionable finances, at a time when authorities at the state and district level have failed to act. More broadly, the union drive in Philadelphia reveals how charter management organizations can use lax regulation to dodge financial accountability.

ASPIRA took over Olney, along with John B. Stetson Middle School in 2011 through Philadelphia’s “renaissance” school turnaround project, whereby charter operators are given the opportunity to improve the academic performance of struggling district schools. As part of the renaissance conversion, remaining educators at Olney and Stetson lost their union membership.

It wasn’t easy for Olney staff to reach their April 30th election; for the past three years they have dealt with an administration intent on suppressing union organizing efforts. Tactics have included threatening teachers with layoffs and cuts to benefits, putting anti-union literature in teachers’ mailboxes, and instating new discipline policies, which included barring employees from criticizing ASPIRA on social media. The NLRB sided with educators in three of the four unfair labor practice complaints they filed in response to these measures.

Other tactics that have garnered criticism, including from Philadelphia Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sanchez—who once served as ASPIRA’s Executive Director—relate to services ASPIRA has employed, with public dollars, to fight the union effort. In August 2014, Philadelphia City Paper reported that ASPIRA paid a law firm with experience in fighting unionization efforts at least $72,163. This past April, the chair of the Olney school board signed a contract with consultants to lead self-described “union avoidance” meetings for Olney staff, as well as to help ASPIRA design and implement a campaign to fight unionization. The cost for these consultants was $25,000 and the contract stipulated that that figure “does not include any time that may be spent in responding or defending any charges filed by the union at the NLRB.”

Stetson educators recently launched their own organizing drive, and ASPIRA is sending consultants and lawyers there, too. Moreover, ASPIRA sent their consultants to lead a mandatory meeting at Eugenio Maria de Hostos Charter School, another one of ASPIRA’s five charters, to reportedly “pre-empt an organizing effort.”

The budget problems plaguing Philadelphia public schools have forced the district to close dozens of schools, to lay off thousands of workers, to reduce transportation services, and more. How then, do we get to a point where charters are able to spend such significant sums of public dollars to fight union efforts? Who, if anyone, gets to have a say?

Are Charter Employees Public or Private?

Charters, which have been around for a quarter century, are publicly funded but independently managed schools. In education circles there’s a fierce debate over whether these schools are truly “public”—charter proponents insist that they are, while others see charters as a means to privatize education.

Aside from whether charter schools are public or private, another question is whether charter school employees are public or private—important distinctions not only for union formation but also for labor rights more broadly. The courts have taken the position that there is no clear-cut answer for charter employees, and each situation must be determined on a case-by-case basis depending on individual state laws and regulations, as well as the composition of each charter organization. But in one significant case from 2012, the NLRB ruled that educators at the Chicago Mathematics & Science Academy Charter School (CMSA) were private employees mainly because no government entity has the authority to appoint or remove CMSA board members, and no board members are directly accountable to public officials. In 2013, citing the CMSA ruling, the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board effectively disclaimed jurisdiction over charter labor disputes in the state, concluding that such matters should be dealt with at the NLRB.

Which brings us back to Olney and Stetson. Despite previously stating that it would respect the results of an NLRB election, ASPIRA now claims Olney teachers are in fact public employees, and thus not subject to the NLRB’s jurisdiction. Stetson educators also recently filed for their own union election and ASPIRA challenged them, too. While the NLRB held a regional hearing and determined that Stetson educators are in fact covered under the NLRB, no determination has yet been made for Olney educators. However, since the legal arguments are the same for both renaissance schools, one can assume that the NLRB will ultimately uphold jurisdiction.

Many view ASPIRA’s NLRB challenge as a stalling tactic, but their action is not illegal. Wilma Liebman, a former chairman of the NLRB, told me that jurisdiction challenges are permitted at any stage of the election process. But considering that ASPIRA has not dropped their Olney challenge despite losing their Stetson one, many wonder how far ASPIRA will go before they agree to collectively bargain, and how expensive the legal bills are going to be.

In theory, if the regional NLRB rules in favor of Olney educators, ASPIRA could appeal to the national NLRB board in Washington, D.C. If ASPIRA loses all possible appeals, and they still refuse to bargain, then the NLRB will have to take them to District Court. Such cases are extremely expensive. “If they still refuse to bargain past a District Court ruling, then they’d be found in contempt,” said Liebman.

Other Questionable ASPIRA Expenditures

One reason ASPIRA so staunchly opposes unionization may be that the collective bargaining process could shed light on the organization’s suspicious finances.

One reason ASPIRA so staunchly opposes unionization may be that the collective bargaining process could shed light on the organization’s suspicious finances. Over the past several years, evidence suggests that ASPIRA has engaged in other instances of questionable financial behavior. The Philadelphia Daily News found that ASPIRA has borrowed nearly $3.5 million from its charter schools, though the public doesn’t know where that money went. Journalists also found that school staff used debit cards without providing receipts, and that bank loans were signed where one charter school would guarantee the debt of another. Under the law, each charter is supposed to function as an independent entity.

Lauren Thum of the Philadelphia School District’s Charter Office told Newsworks that the district couldn’t confirm whether ASPIRA is spending its charter school dollars in the schools themselves, or whether money is being siphoned off for other things. Part of the complication stems from the fact that although each of ASPIRA’s five charters is organized as an independent nonprofit, they all share the same board of trustees through their parent organization, ASPIRA, Inc. of Pennsylvania. And although the school district worries that ASPIRA charters may be improperly shuffling money around, they have thus far been denied access to the parent organization’s financial records. “It’s very difficult to follow the financial trail when there are so many complicated, connected entitles, and money flowing throughout them,” Thum said. In the meantime, ASPIRA continues to deny any financial wrongdoing. ASPIRA also declined to be interviewed and several school board members did not return requests for comment.

In 2010, the Philadelphia City Controller released a report criticizing a practice common amongst Philly charters whereby the schools use public funds to pay rent to parent organizations or subsidiaries; this is what ASPIRA does with ASPIRA, Inc. of Pennsylvania. “Properties that are being paid for with taxpayer funds are being either transferred [to] or controlled by nonprofits with no accountability to the school district or taxpayers,” the report concluded. However, five years later, the practice continues.

Under the law, unions are entitled to see the financial information that pertains to their bargaining unit. (This includes things like health insurance costs, salaries, etc.) And if during negotiations management shoots down a union’s proposal by claiming they have an inability to pay, then the union is legally entitled to access more financial information to verify management’s claim. “In my opinion, I think the real issue is ASPIRA doesn’t want a union poking around in their finances,” a Philadelphia School District official told me. “Having a union gives them the right to do that in order to bargain in good faith, and [ASPIRA] doesn’t want anyone looking at anything.”

And so far, no one really has. As millions of dollars move around between the charter schools, the parent organization, and ASPIRA’s two property-management entities, the school district’s ability to challenge ASPIRA’s financial behavior remains unclear. In January, the district sent a letter to ASPIRA outlining 17 conditions the nonprofit would need to meet if they want to have their Stetson charter renewed. Conditions include reorganizing Stetson’s school board so that the parent organization doesn’t directly control it and getting a treasurer with a background in finances and audits.

Since then, ASPIRA has complied with some of the district’s requests, and has challenged others. Notably, they have so far refused to provide access to relevant financial information of its parent organization, though conversations between ASPIRA and the district are still ongoing.

“Nobody has enough power or enough money to really stay on top of things, so it becomes really easy for things to end up in a big mess,” said Susan DeJarnatt, a Temple University Law School professor who studies Pennsylvania charter law. “I frankly don’t think the state legislature thought ahead about the financial ramifications in any serious way. It’s [as] if everyone thought ‘oh this is a great idea, oh there will be cool new schools.’”

A Need for Greater Oversight

ASPIRA’s accountability problem is similar at the district level. “We just don’t have time right now to oversee [all that] we’re supposed to oversee,” the Philadelphia district official told me, who added that they need far more resources and manpower to do comprehensive charter investigations. And, as the situation with ASPIRA suggests, perhaps school districts need to be granted explicitly clearer legal authority to track where charter dollars go. Though charters are premised on a model of increased accountability, the public, as it stands, is unable to hold these schools accountable.

Beyond tracking the unclear money, what about the costs that are clear, like the lawyers and consultants? When I asked David Lapp, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Education Law Center whether the school district could protest ASPIRA spending public dollars to fight a union he said it would be unusual, though not necessarily illegal. “Generally speaking, the charter authorizer, which in Pennsylvania is the school district, has the general duty to oversee that charter schools are following the law,” he said. “I’ve never seen a school district give any sort of opinion to a charter school about labor law issues, but whether they could seems to be an open question.”

Regardless, as ASPIRA will find, there’s only so long that an employer can delay negotiating with a staff that’s committed to forming a union.

At UN Conference, Domestic Workers Push for International Labor Standards

Originally published in In These Times on March 19th, 2015.
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Between March 9 and March 20, member states and global NGOs gathered at the United Nations (UN) Headquarters in New York City to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action, the key international policy document aiming to achieve gender equality. Coinciding with the conference, the Clinton and Gates Foundations released No Ceilings: The Full Participation Report, which traces women’s demonstrable progress in global health and education since 1995, as well as their insufficient gains in economic participation, leadership and security. Dignitaries, celebrities, and philanthropists gave speeches calling for “50-50 by 2030”—meaning full gender equality in the next in 15 years.

Mobilized at the conference was a group whose organized presence was simply non-existent two decades ago. Representatives from the fast-growing global domestic workers movement came to New York to pressure the international community for the ratification and implementation of labor standards that would impact more than 52 million domestic workers all over the world, 83% of whom are women.

Domestic Workers’ Momentum

The domestic workers movement is relatively young; their first international gathering took place not even a decade ago, convening in 2006 for a conference hosted by the largest trade union in the Netherlands. Three years later, at the International Labour Conference in Geneva, they formed the International Domestic Workers Network (IDWN), tasked with organizing for an ILO Convention that would protect domestic workers’ rights. Two years later, in June 2011, ILO Convention C189 was adopted—marking a watershed moment for the movement.

ILO C189 outlines clear domestic labor standards, calling for, among other things, a guaranteed minimum wage, freedom of association, the right to collectively bargain, abolition of child labor, protection from abuse and harassment, at least one day per week of rest, formal employment contracts, social security and maternity leave. The convention was adopted with 396 votes in favor, 16 votes against, and 63 abstentions; the convention went into effect beginning in 2013, and today 17 countries have ratified it.

“After 2011, we finally had a rallying point for which we could gather internationally and push this issue,” says Daniel Naujoks, a political scientist at Columbia University who attended the recent UN conference. “C189 made it non-refutable, not just a pipe dream. Now you had this strong international backing and normative framing.”

After the adoption of C189, the IDWN decided to evolve from a loose international network into a formal federation, organizing its membership base and drafting a constitution. By October 2013, the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF) officially launched.

“Once things start to get really concrete, like with the passage of conventions, there becomes incentives for networks to form associations,” says Naujoks. “It is a legal entity that actually represents [domestic workers], whereas a network doesn’t really have representative functions.”

One of the IDWF’s central goals for this UN conference was to ensure that the implementation of C189 remained high on leaders’ agenda for the next 20 years. “We are talking about at least 52 million very poor working women without rights,” says Elizabeth Tang, the IDWF’s General Secretary who flew from Hong Kong to attend the conference. “If the government can at least implement this convention, that will be a very concrete achievement for gender equality.” Though there has been real progress made since C189’s passage in 2011, Tang says it is too slow, and too many governments still do not understand why they should take heed.

“We want things to look very different when we convene again in 2030,” says Barbara Young, a national organizer with the National Domestic Workers Alliance, a group that represents domestic workers in the United States.

International Gains and an International Problem

Activists can point to some notable achievements since the passage of C189. For example, in 2013, Brazil adopted a constitutional amendment granting 6.5 million domestic workers overtime pay, unemployment insurance, pensions, and a maximum 8-hour work day. In Africa over the past few years, Namibia, Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania all passed minimum wage laws for domestic workers. In 2012, Thailand passed a new regulation entitling domestic workers to at least one day off per week, in addition to public holidays, paid sick leave and paid overtime for work on holidays. The first Pakistani Domestic Workers Trade Union formed this past December.

“In Hong Kong, all domestic workers, including migrant workers, are covered by the same labor law as other local workers,” says Tang. “We are now trying to show other governments that it is possible to protect domestic workers like other workers, because in some places it is already happening.”

Though there is a country-by-country approach, given the global ramifications wrought through the employment of migrant labor, domestic workers’ rights are an international issue. The UN conference discussed the problem of “global care chains”—where people feel compelled to move from one (typically poor) country to another (typically richer) country to care for someone else’s children and aging parents—often leaving their own children and parents behind.

Sexual abuse regularly occurs during the migration process, and with the threat of being fired or deported, women are strongly discouraged from reporting abuse or seeking medical attention.

“We must end visa dependency on employers and husbands that undermine women’s safety and rights,” said Young in a speech at the UN. “We must advocate for clear and accessible pathways to citizenship that will allow all migrant women workers to come out of the shadows.”

The organizers hope to raise domestic labor standards and formalize interactions—ideally through written employment contracts. Currently there are few remedies, practically speaking, for domestic workers with grievances.

“Once [domestic work] is recognized as a ‘real job,’ then it will count as job experience,” says Naujoks. “And by formalizing it, it gives people a greater opportunity to opt out if they want to go somewhere else later. As long as it’s seen as informal work, it becomes very difficult to break into the traditional labor market.”

The tide may be turning for domestic workers, but serious challenges remain. Some are practical; there are questions about how to best implement and enforce the laws and conventions in a feasible way. However, with centuries of racial and gender discrimination, most challenges facing domestic workers are ideological.

“Domestic workers are mostly women, and people in general look down on what women do,” says Tang. “The other problem is race and ethnicity, because a lot of domestic workers are from indigenous and marginalized groups, so they are discriminated against.”

Moreover, there exists a widespread perception that many domestic workers are living in countries illegally and thus are seen as a less important political constituency to help. And the longstanding cultural opposition to seeing care work as formal labor remains.

“Some people always say, ‘Oh well this is a private affair,’” says Naujoks.

Progress in the United States

Barbara Young, who migrated from Barbados, worked as a domestic worker in New York City for 17 years. She began organizing for better labor conditions in 2001, while she was still a full-time domestic worker. Young joined with others to push for the nation’s first domestic workers bill of rights, which passed in New York in 2010. The historic law grants domestic workers—including undocumented domestic workers—time off, overtime pay, protection from discrimination and inclusion in local labor laws. Since 2010, three more states have passed similar bills, and Connecticut’s version will soon be headed to a Senate vote.

At the UN conference, Young pointed out that only 27% of U.S. employment visas are issued to women, and the majority who migrate through legal channels are legally dependent on their employers and husbands. This can, and does often, entrap them in abusive and exploitative situations with little or no legal recourse. Young called for the UN to help grant women “the right to report abuses and violations and for violators to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Unlike the majority of domestic workers around the world who are can form trade unions, most U.S. domestic workers are legally barred from joining unions. This is due to a clause in the National Labor Relations Act passed in 1935, designed by Southern legislators to prevent African-American domestic and agricultural workers from organizing. Young tells me she believes removing this clause is their biggest organizing challenge.

Though the U.S. voted in favor of C189 in 2011, it has not ratified the international convention. Ideally, Young says, all sectors of the labor movement would unite together to push for U.S. ratification, but she notes the labor movement’s declining strength. The Department of Labor did announce in 2013 that it would begin to extend overtime and minimum wage protections to the majority of domestic workers; this is expected to go into effect later this year.

“Overall, we are on a forward trajectory, and the momentum is growing,” says Young. “Real recognition is there that we didn’t have 15-20 years ago.”

CPAC Labor Panel Does GOP No Favors in Outreach to Latinos, Women

Originally published in The American Prospect on March 2nd, 2015.

CPAC Labor Panel

Photo Credit: Rachel Cohen, CPAC Conference 2015

On February 26, day one of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, a panel convened on the state of the labor movement. To describe the tone of presenters as triumphant would be an understatement. At the Thursday afternoon breakout session titled “There’s No ‘I’ in Teamsters: Obama’s Bow to Big Labor Bosses,” panelists discussed a long list of topics, ranging from the salaries of top union leadership to “pernicious” attacks on franchisers of fast-food restaurants, whose workers have taken to the streets to demand predictable schedules and livable wages.

Indeed the anti-labor forces represented here found much to be happy about, and the speakers could hardly contain their glee.

“Labor policy is one area where our side is actually winning,” boasted Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee.

To a large extent, their confidence is certainly justified. Mix was speaking less than 24 hours after the Wisconsin Senate passed a so-called right-to-work bill—legislation that would make it illegal to require that employees pay fees to unions, effectively hurting unions’ ability to bargain and organize. If, as he is expected to do, Governor Scott Walker signs the bill, Wisconsin will become the 25th U.S. state to enact such a law.

But when it comes to the labor rights of domestic workers, the right’s self-assuredness at CPAC was overstated. If nothing else, its leaders’ intransigence against the rights of the largely female and non-white workforce in this sector is bound to hurt the image of the Republican Party, with which the anti-labor forces are allied.

Tammy McCutchen, a CPAC panelist who formerly worked in the Department of Labor (DOL), accused the Obama administration of trying to “devastate the home care industry”—referring to the administration’s attempt to ensure that the nation’s more than two million domestic workers receive guaranteed overtime pay. Through an old provision in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) known as the “Companionship Services” exemption, domestic workers have been left out of the minimum wage and overtime pay protections that most other workers are entitled to. In 2013, the DOL announced that it would begin to extend FLSA protections to the majority of domestic workers. Though the start date was pushed back, the expanded protections are still expected to go into effect later this year.

The median wage for domestic workers (also commonly referred to as home health and personal care aides) is $9.70 per hour. With an expected job growth of 70 percent between 2010 and 2020 as the baby-boom generation enters its golden years, domestic care is easily one of the fastest-growing industries in the nation. Low wages and minimal labor protections are an economic non-sequitur in a sector where demand is positioned to quickly outpace supply.

In 2012, the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) published the first national survey of domestic workers in the U.S. It found that although domestic workers play an increasingly important role in the U.S. economy, their work is unregulated and highly prone to exploitation. Nearly a quarter of all workers were paid less than the state minimum wage, and 60 percent of workers reported spending over half their income on rent or mortgage payments. NDWA’s labor organizing has been gaining prominent recognition. In 2012, NDWA Director Ai-Jen Poo was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World, and in 2014 she was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow to continue her work organizing domestic workers.

But at CPAC, McCutchen didn’t mention any of this. She didn’t mention that the vast majority of the home care workers are women of color. She didn’t mention the historic Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights that passed in New York, Hawaii and California. Instead, McCutchen pretended as though all the momentum in domestic labor organizing has come through the overreach of faceless bureaucrats in government agencies and from a power-hungry president. And she insisted that the regulations would greatly hurt the industry, leaving our aging parents to suffer.

It’s unsurprising that labor-minded conservatives would be so proud of themselves at CPAC, what with union membership declining, and the recent spate of anti-union victories at the state level. But the right’s refusal to reckon with the growing domestic workers movement could come at a cost. As the Republican Party tries to improve its image among women and minorities—the very people who fill most low-wage jobs—doubling down on anti-worker policies will only dampen its appeal.

Labor Reawakens

Originally published in the Baltimore Sun on April 26, 2013.

This week, hundreds of Chicago workers organized a major labor strike, demanding a wage floor of $15 an hour and the right to unionize. Their protests come on the heels of the largest strike in the fast food industry’s history, which took place in December in New York City, and a nation-wide Walmart strike to protest what workers felt were unfair wages and treatment. Here in Baltimore, workers have also begun organizing around the idea of “fair development” — calling for higher wages and other benefits.

Chicago’s strike represents just how contagious this type of unrest has become. Led by the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago, in collaboration with other local worker groups and unions, they are leading the “Fight for 15” campaign to raise the minimum wage.

Who can blame them? Minimum wage in Chicago, at $8.25, is already $1 more than the federal requirement. Yet if one works 40 hours a week, for 52 weeks a year, the resulting salary is $17,160 before taxes, well below the poverty level for a family of three. In November, the Census Bureau announced that more than 16 percent of the population lived in poverty, including almost 20 percent of American children. This figure had risen from 14.3 percent in 2009 and was at its highest level since 1993.

The National Employment Law Project found last year that low-wage positions made up just 21 percent of the jobs lost during the recession, but they accounted for 58 percent of jobs “recovered.” Additionally, researchers found that food service, retail and employment services represented 43 percent of employment growth over the past two years.

The workers organizing strikes and protests face tough odds, as unionism is widely perceived to be on the wane, even in the public sector. But something has to give. A mere 88,000 jobs were created in March, and labor-force participation is at its lowest since 1979, as millions have decided that the work world offers insufficient opportunities. If we can’t figure out a way to incentivize stable employment through livable wages, then we could be in for years of economic stagnation or worse.

The protesting workers doubtless have decided they need to take matters into their own hands because Washington has done little to help.

To be sure, President Barack Obama has talked extensively about the need to revive the middle class and about the ill effects of a system in which the rich get richer and the rest fall behind. He has endorsed increasing the minimum wage and included a proposal to do so in his budget package.

But he has managed to accomplish little. Even talking about the problem inevitably leads to Republican cries of “class warfare” that drown out and end the conversation. But it’s a conversation we need to have. Real annual median household income has dropped to $45,018, from $51,144 in 2010. Virtually all the gains from the economic recovery continue to go to the richest people in the United States.

The increasing polarization of our wealth is stunting economic growth, and that’s bad for the poor and rich alike. But it is not inevitable. We’re glad to see workers in Baltimore, New York, Chicago and elsewhere speak up and demand change. Washington needs to brave up and confront this too. An increase in the federal minimum wage won’t solve the problem, but it would surely be a step in the right direction.