Present Progressive Dec. 13th, 2012 No. 2

From Management,

A Modest Proposal

Kaplan management representatives on Monday presented Guild negotiators with a 24-page contract proposal that was centered on their “operational flexibility,” but offered little or nothing in the way of employee rights, not to mention salary, hours or benefits.

The counter-proposal, which followed the Guild’s Nov. 28 opening proposals, would largely preserve the "at-will" employment relationship Kaplan International Centers management had with teachers before they voted for Guild representation by a 2-to-1 margin on June 6.

Now that we’ve had a few days to review it carefully, it’s clear that the management package, with all of its legally crafted clauses, offers only the illusion of a contract, one that enshrines all of the power company managers have always had without making any serious commitments to teachers about how KIC will behave as an employer. Even our ability to make sure management lives up to what little it is offering to promise would be severely limited.

Here are some examples (we’ve attached management’s full proposal to this message as well):

-        The proposals actually seek to broaden management’s scope of authority above and beyond the company's current practices. Even though they have never used surveillance cameras and email monitoring equipment, or implemented random drug testing, they now want you to agree to give them that right.

-        Under the guise of “flexibility,” they want the right to reassign teachers to any duty (even custodial work), location or starting time that management deems fit.


-        The package allows management to use subcontracted teachers for up to six months, followed by a 12-month probationary period, resulting in an 18-month period during which an employee would have no employment security rights. In fact, they could even use subcontracted temps to replace teachers in the classrooms.


Equally important is what the management package doesn’t contain:  a just-cause provision, a cornerstone of any labor agreement that would protect teachers against being disciplined or fired without “just and sufficient cause.” Although the term may seem vague, it has deep meaning in labor relations. Without it, the Guild would be severely limited in its ability to defend teachers unjustly terminated. An arbitrator hearing the case would have no standard by which to judge the matter, and would therefore most likely defer to management. Instead of offering a policy of steadily escalating reprimands, known as “progressive discipline,” that is widely accepted even among nonunion employers, management wants the right to terminate teachers after two verbal warnings. What's more, those verbal warnings could not be challenged and, as we said, the arbitrator would have no standard for judging the case.

The ability to grieve and arbitrate disciplinary matters is a staple of any union contract, without which employees have very little protection. This is how we ensure that management lives up to its commitments and that a contract actually means something. But KIC management wants to exempt several areas, including verbal warnings, from the scrutiny of an independent arbitrator. This would prevent the Guild from protecting teachers in a profession where performance – the ability to stand and deliver – is of utmost importance.

The ability or inability to have an arbitrator review reprimands short of termination has a profound impact in a professional workplace, even if you never get a reprimand. For one thing it makes a manager think twice about issuing a warning. It also means disputes over the legitimacy of reprimands can be resolved while teachers are still employed. At Thomson Reuters, where the Guild represents journalists, we recently learned that management there went on an unprecedented disciplinary binge earlier this year that included two dozen reprimands and eight terminations. Last month, in a case involving a verbal warning, an arbitrator ruled that management's basis for the discipline was fatally flawed. As a result, Thomson Reuters has offered to reinstate the dismissed journalists and the Guild tells us that discussions are currently underway to make that happen.

KIC management understands the importance of these provisions, and we made it clear that we will not accept language that limits our ability to grieve and arbitrate on behalf of our members.

The KIC package, which deliberately excluded economic issues, is actually quite typical of opening proposals designed by management lawyers – the KIC team has three – and outside  consultants. Like digital pop-up agreements on the web from media giants like Apple or Google, it gives the company virtually all of the rights and us none of the rights. But do they expect us to click “I Accept?” There has to be a balance that shows respect for the rights of teachers. We have a lot of work to do.

Due to the holidays, the next bargaining session is scheduled for Jan. 23 at the Guild’s offices.

The Guild Bargaining Committee
Emily Lessem, Unit Chair
Shana Dagenhart, First Vice Chair
L. Toby Kahn, Second Vice Chair
David Sedgwick, Treasurer
Jon Blanchette, Assistant Treasurer

             

Present Progressive Nov. 28, 2012 No. 1

A

New Hope:

Negotiations Begin

Today, negotiators for the Kaplan bargaining unit of the Guild sat down with Kaplan’s management and lawyers for our first collective bargaining session to negotiate terms of a contract. The meeting, originally set for November 1, was postponed because of Superstorm Sandy.

Bargaining unit teachers were represented by Emily Lessem, David Sedgwick (Midtown), Shana Dagenhart, Jon Blanchette (Empire State Building), L. Toby Kahn (East Village), Anthony Napoli (Guild Representative) and Richard Corenthal (Outside Counsel). The company was represented by Jay Kennedy (Vice President of Labor for Washington Post), Mary Kennett (VP of Human Resources), Jessica Margolin (Employment Counsel), Oliva Gautschi (Regional Vice President East) and Trish Dunn (Outside Counsel).

We presented them with a 25-page contract proposal developed over several months that took into consideration responses to our teacher surveys and concerns raised at membership meetings. After introductory statements from both sides expressing their desires to reach a deal that works for both the employees and the employer, the proposal was presented to the management negotiators. Napoli then reviewed the proposal in detail. Kennedy expressed his appreciation for such a detailed written proposal. He told the committee that the company would have a counter-proposal at the next meeting, scheduled for December 10.

In their closing remarks, management team members emphasized a desire to retain “flexibility” in the company’s daily operations. The Guild committee was pleased to hear this, as flexibility is of great importance to teachers as well.

Kennedy also expressed management’s concern that Kaplan remain competitive in the ESL market, claiming that the present business model works well for both the company and the teachers. Napoli reminded him that the teachers’ problems with their current compensation and benefits were the reason we are at the table. He also reminded management that Kaplan had already improved its pay scale since we voted to organize with the Guild in June, but that the nationwide increase in prep time pay to $12 an hour (from the $7.25 federal minimum wage) wasn’t offered to teachers in New York schools.
Even though Kaplan is obligated to bargain with the Guild before changing any terms or conditions of employment for New York teachers, the Guild could have approved the increase with a simple phone call from Kaplan.  In fact, we still could.

The bargaining committee looks forward to the next session on December 10.  We will keep you informed of all new developments as they occur.

The Guild Bargaining Committee
Emily Lessem, Unit Chair
Shana Dagenhart, First Vice Chair
L. Toby Kahn, Second Vice Chair
David Sedgwick, Treasurer
Jon Blanchette, Assistant Treasurer

The Unionization Process

The following is one KIC teacher's recount of the process of unionizing our three centers in New York:

I’ve been a teacher at Kaplan for a few years and there have always been discussions about unionization. In the fall of last year a few fellow teachers and I got together for drinks and discussed the main reasons why it would be good to join a union. We contacted the union for the Washington Post first since it is the parent company of Kaplan. They are in DC, so they put us in touch with the folks at The Newspaper Guild in NYC. It took about 2 months to schedule our first meeting at the union.

There are three schools in NYC so before the first meeting we tried to get in touch with teachers from the other schools. This was a bit of a challenge because we couldn’t just send a blanket email and ask who was pro-union. Luckily, we got in touch with someone, who got in touch with someone else, and were able to get at least one or two from each school at the first meeting.

The purpose of the first meeting was to explain who we were, to find out about the process of unionization, and to learn more about the role of the union. Although many of us had been in or connected with a union in the past, none had gone through the initial process of unionizing before. At that first meeting, we were encouraged to seek out other unions to see what they had to offer. We did some research and even had meetings with other unions, but in the end voted 7-1 to go with the Guild. 

Our aim was not to install the union through our small group, but to get to the point of having a school-wide vote on whether or not we should have a union. The vote is monitored by the NLRB (National Labor Relations Board). In order to signify to the NLRB that our group was interested in having a vote, we had to get 60% of our coworkers to sign union cards. The card is a printed index card with basic info: name, date, address, title, signature, etc. Actually, we only needed 30% or 35% to take this step legally, but it is safer to go forward with a vote when there is at least 60% of the people demonstrating interest.

The importance of secrecy may seem obvious, but I didn’t realize how key it was before the first meeting. It was essential that management didn’t know what we were doing. Initial discussions had to be held outside of the workplace. Even if managers seemed to be pro-union, it was best that they don’t know because it could have put them in an awkward place of having to lie at some point.

Secrecy can be construed as sneakiness; in fact, it is just being necessarily strategic. Unfortunately, because we had to be quiet about our discussions, the atmosphere at work became intensely uncomfortable. While we were collecting signatures, we didn’t know whether those involved in organizing would be fired for leading the drive. We didn’t want to talk to people who we knew or thought were anti-union because they of course might have informed management about what was happening. Basically, we had to gauge each person individually before asking them to sign a card.

It helped that I had worked there for a while already because I knew most of the teachers at my school. We made it easier by dividing the task among a few teachers, so we each had to talk to not more than 5-6 others. We couldn’t give the cards out and have them returned later, but rather had to sit with the signer and be sure the card didn’t end up left on a table somewhere. Sometimes I just invited someone out to coffee to make it easier to talk freely. While telling people about the process, we were clear that the goal was to have a vote. Even though we weren’t able to talk to everyone initially, nothing would have been decided without everyone having a chance to put in his or her opinion. I also tried to focus on the issues. People generally have similar problems with the workplace, and it was important to not lose sight of the fact that we were doing this in hope of making our lives a little better.

The secrecy did freak some people out. It’s easy to feel like there is something nefarious going on when people are not being open about what they are doing. We just had to hope that eventually others would understand why it had to be that way. Like I said, one of the main reasons for secrecy was because we were worried that people would be fired. It is illegal to fire someone for being involved with unionization, but what would stop them from firing people for other reasons? We also knew that once management learned what was going on they would begin an anti-union campaign.

Management did find out but not until we had gotten signatures from nearly 50% of the teachers. It was important that we had worked fast and spoken to as many people as possible in a short amount of time. Because Kaplan is probably on the lookout for union activity in other schools, it may be even more difficult now to get past this beginning stage.

Kaplan began the retaliation by holding mandatory meetings during breaks and even pulling people aside individually to give them “helpful” information about why unions were bad. Many people saw that the fliers were poorly written propaganda pieces meant to intimidate, but I’m sure others were swayed, at least to want to stay out of the whole thing altogether. We knew that regardless of their real opinions, our direct supervisors had to tow the company line in order to preserve their own positions. I think some teachers were afraid of losing the respect of and camaraderie with their supervisors if they went against what they were saying.

At some point one of the teachers at one of the schools came across some papers that our supervisors were given by upper management about how to recognize signs of unionization and how to talk to teachers about the process. There were notes taken about everything that everyone said during the meetings. Our managers were instructed to look out for groups of teachers who were having private conversations, among other things.I’m pretty sure they were roaming the hallways a lot more than usual during that time. I have to say, it was one of the most stressful few weeks I have ever experienced. In theory, I wasn’t that afraid of losing my job, which was really the worst that could have happened, but the psychological pressure that Kaplan put on us was so great that I dreaded coming to work every day. This dread, however, only made me more resolute in my belief that we needed a union.

In the end, we did reach very near our goal of having 60% of teachers sign cards to signify to the NLRB our wish to have a vote. With that, the cards were submitted, Kaplan was officially notified (at that point still not knowing that we were already so far along), and a vote was scheduled for a month down the line in June.

After that, the meetings continued to go on and on and people got more and more heated in their discussions. I don’t know what Kaplan thought they were doing, but much of their anti-union campaign just seemed to push people like me further along the road to unionization. There is a fairly good record of some of the fliers they were putting out on the teacher’s blog. Have a look for a laugh! Some teachers, on the other hand, became vehemently anti-union. This was most difficult to deal with because we wished that we could just have calm discussions to share our opinions but emotions were too high to do so. Without rational discussions, it was hard to give important information or to clear up misinformation. Once people decided they were anti-union, it was tough to convince them to go to meetings that weren’t being led and controlled by Kaplan.

In the beginning of June, the NLRB set up voting booths in each of the schools and each teacher was able to vote anonymously. I believe that nearly all eligible teachers voted. The count was 2-1 in favor of the union. We are now in the process of electing officers who will be helping the Guild put together a survey to see what issues are most important to all teachers. What we aim to bargain for in our first contract will also be decided by all of the teachers democratically. Once this information has been gathered, a bargaining committee consisting of several teachers from each school will sit down with Kaplan and Guild lawyers and representatives and physically negotiate a contract.

While I personally enjoy my work at Kaplan, I feel the company has cut so many corners that it severely compromises the quality of education it can provide and the quality of life that teachers lead while working there. The union never promised that we will get anything. They offer help in negotiating a contract that provides us with improved working conditions. It is my hope that Kaplan can begin to view the teachers not as adversaries who need to be outwitted of dollars and cents, but as responsible workers providing valuable input on the creation of a sustainable and healthy system.

Email from abetterkaplan@gmail.com

Hello!


Some of you may be visiting this site after getting an email on Saturday from the address "abetterkaplan@gmail.com".

Just to be clear: This email did not come from any of the teachers who run this blog, nor does it appear to have come from another teacher at one of our three branches in NYC. While we find the aims of the email's author commendable, we are not the authors of it and don't wish to be misconstrued as such.

Regardless, thanks for stopping by. Feel free to comment and subscribe to receive new posts via email.

Have a nice day!


- Those in Favor


(It should also be pointed out that this blog is 100% operated by KICNY teachers, despite rumors that this is "the Newspaper Guild's blog".)

Kaplan English teachers vote Guild, despite intense campaign

Newspaper Guild Press Release 06-07-2012

 Pay rates as low as U.S. minimum wage

New York City-based teachers of English as a second language at the Washington Post Co.'s  educational subsidiary, Kaplan Inc., voted today for workplace representation by the Guild, becoming the company’s first U.S. employees to unionize.
In a government-supervised election, the teachers, based at the three Manhattan facilities of Kaplan International Centers, voted for the Guild by a 2-1 margin (56 to 28), despite an intense anti-union campaign by management that included a steady stream of leaflets and regular work-time meetings with managers and outside consultants, all urging them to vote no.
“These are professional employees, many with masters degrees, who are paid at an assortment of illogical hourly rates as low as the $7.25 federal minimum wage,” said Guild President Bill O'Meara. “They know they should be treated better and they deserve a lot of credit for maintaining their focus through Kaplan's incredibly intense campaign.”
The National Labor Relations Board, which conducted the election, is expected to certify the Guild as the bargaining agent for the group of about 95 teachers after seven days. No other Kaplan teachers in the United States are union-represented. The results require Kaplan to bargain in good faith with the Guild for a contract covering the teachers’ employment terms.
A group of the Kaplan ESL teachers approached the Guild several months ago seeking help not only in raising their pay, but in bringing some clarity to their confusing compensation system and in getting benefits, like paid time off for sickness and vacations.

“This is, of course, a great day for teachers at Kaplan,” said Kaplan teacher Danny Valdes. “But I hope that this shows teachers that we can increase standards industry-wide by coming together to organize.”

New York-based Kaplan Inc., with $2.5 billion in revenues last year, was founded in 1938 by Stanley Kaplan and provides higher education programs, professional training courses, test preparation materials and language instruction around the world.

Just Imagine

The Guild sent the following email to all Kaplan teachers earlier today. Please feel free to comment in the section below.

Just imagine: a better future is within your reach.

A chance to have a voice in your workplace, to be able to bargain for things like a commonsense pay scale, sick pay and vacation time – it’s all going to be at your fingertips when you vote on Thursday. You will be exercising the most democratic right you have on the job—the right to organize with one another for better pay and working conditions.

Since the June 7 Guild election was set about a month ago, we’ve held our emails to a minimum. We’ve kept a very respectful distance and let you get the information yourselves, as many of your co-workers have already done. Despite the misleading, false and even illegal things Kaplan executives have said about us, we haven’t badmouthed the company or its managers. After all, when this election is over, we expect to deal with them, and there’s no point in needlessly poisoning the atmosphere. When Kaplan’s parent, the Washington Post Co., owned Newsweek magazine (where the Guild represents editorial employees), we had a good working relationship with management. There’s no reason we can’t get along with Kaplan managers too.

Kaplan, on the other hand, has hired one of the premier union-busting firms in the country, Jones Day. At this point, the company has surely racked up a bill in the tens of thousands of dollars to try to keep KIC union-free. This is why you’ve been inundated with flyers, shuttled off to meetings with “impartial experts,” had you classes cancelled and doubled up, inconveniencing your students and fellow co-workers and pressured to the point where some teachers have left meetings crying. Hey, we heard the sandwiches were good, but doesn’t it tell you something when management has to try this hard to keep the Guild out?

Unfortunately, these kinds of things often happen in campaigns like this. Managers get increasingly desperate and testy before an election. They are under an incredible amount of pressure from the company to keep you from organizing. At times, they have said and done things that crossed the line. For example, it’s illegal to suggest that they will improve conditions if you reject the Guild, but will steadfastly refuse to make anything better if you go with the Guild (how can you have it both ways?). We’ve notified the National Labor Relations Board and management has responded by cleverly trying to cover up its tracks. Again, these things happen.

No matter how many times managers have told you otherwise, they will not make things better if the Guild just goes away. Are you supposed to believe if you “give the company a year,” as they’ve suggested, that they’ll provide you with the benefits and pay you deserve, when they have no obligation to do so?

Let’s remember why and how we got here.

- For years, you’ve worked under conditions unsuited to the professionals that you are. Not only has Kaplan lowered teaching pay in recent years, but it uses a needlessly complex pay scheme that nickels and dimes you with rates as low as the $7.25 hourly federal minimum wage.

- Because your managers discourage you from putting in for all of the time you need to prep for classes, you often wind up working for free. This is considered wage theft.

- When you’re sick you’ve got no choice but to bring your germs to class, or lose a day’s pay.

- If you want a week or two off each year, it’s at your expense. Holiday pay? Forget about it.

- You’ve been forced to take an uncompensated “float week,” despite Kaplan charging students for that week.

- You’ve been double-banked into full-time hours while being treated as a part-timer without full-time benefits. Management did this for years to avoid paying overtime.

- For those who want full-time employment, you’ve been told there aren’t enough hours, while management hires an endless pool of new teachers at part-timers.

- Co-workers of yours have disappeared off the schedule, many without notice or cause. When you’ve reached out to them, you’ve found there had been few, if any, attempts to progressively discipline or assist them.

And these are just a few of the unprofessional working conditions at Kaplan that have festered for years. There was no reason to believe management would ever fix them. And so, several teachers decided to do something about it. They checked out the Guild. They checked out a union that represents teachers. They decided to go with us. And we’re glad they did. A large majority of Kaplan ESL teachers quickly agreed. They showed their support by signing cards designating the Guild as their workplace representatives.

The New York Guild has more than 2,800 members, mostly at news organizations like The New York Times, Thomson Reuters, Consumer Reports and Time Inc. We also represent employees who work for Standard & Poor’s, in retail and even for another union. As far as we know, New York Guild members are overwhelmingly satisfied with the service they’re getting, and that includes members currently embroiled in difficult contract negotiations. Do we represent teachers? No, we represent professional workers. Most of their needs are similar, and we know you’ll soon agree. And to the small degree that they’re not, we learn very fast.

At the Guild, we're as passionate about improving workers' lives as you are about teaching. It's what we do for a living and we're proud of it. Our function is to facilitate. You'll elect your representatives, you'll discuss and vote on your proposals and we'll help you get them. We know the nitty gritty about benefit plans, employment terms and negotiating. We have have the expertise and the resources, but you'll be calling the shots.

Despite what Kaplan’s lawyers have said about the Guild not being able to promise you anything, here are some guarantees we can give you if the Guild is voted in on June 7: 

- You will elect colleagues who will represent your interests and sit at the bargaining table alongside someone from the Guild.

- Every teacher will be asked for bargaining priorities and proposals and will get to discuss and vote on the package that goes to management.

- A contract settlement will have to be approved by a majority of your colleagues on the bargaining team.

- A contract settlement must be ratified by a majority vote open to all teachers.

- No Guild contract will deny you the right to negotiate higher pay or to deal directly with your supervisor about operational issues like scheduling.

Collective bargaining can be challenging, yes, but it beats the alternative. That’s why union members make 29 percent more than nonunion workers on average. If collective bargaining weren’t so critical to the terms and conditions of your employment, do you really think management would be freaking out over it?

Kaplan is not the first, nor will it be the last, company to claim it doesn’t “need to agree to anything at the bargaining table.” But here are the facts: every Guild contract provides for time off, sick days, vacation, health insurance, just cause and grievance and arbitration procedures. Will Kaplan be the first company to break that standard? We highly doubt it.

As most of your co-workers have already made clear, without a union Kaplan management is free to fire you at will and has ZERO obligation to discuss your terms and conditions of employment. As the Kaplan Handbook states: “Employment at Kaplan is at-will. Kaplan reserves the right to modify, supplement, deviate from or rescind this [Handbook] at any time, with or without notice, as it deems appropriate in its sole and absolute discretion.”

After the votes are counted on June 7, all of this will change. June 8 will truly be a new day. You won't be at-will employees anymore. You'll have the right to bargain. And from that, all things are possible.

Imagine that!

In Unity,



The Newspaper Guild of New York
Local 31003, CWA

A Brief Response to Oliva's Speech (and a recent flyer)

In yesterday’s meeting, Oliva mentioned the possibility of economic trouble in the Eurozone. The teachers and the business have weathered similar things in the past—student fears of the swine flu epidemic, the 2008 economic crisis, the less robust than usual Japanese economy. Last year during the Spanish crisis, there was  surprisingly more Spanish students than ever. More importantly, if the Eurozone changes cause problems for enrollment, it will cause them with or without unionization. I would rather face those problems with a union than without.

The Union contract for the Kaplan school in Vancouver has been circulating around the 3 branches, and has been brought up a meeting. Oliva states that the Vancouver school has difficulties, but apparently this is due to low enrollment—an issue that we certainly don't have in NYC. In fact the three New York schools are likely among KIC's largest and most profitable. We all know the economic and business culture of Canada and KIC Vancouver may be different, but this contract is an example of what Kaplan's corporate office has agreed to through collective bargaining. Corporations generally aren't looking to agree to things that will trigger their financial ruin.

Similarly teachers at a KIC branch in Australia make $42 AUD/hr ($41.63 USD). While Australia may also have a different business climate, Kaplan has chosen to expand into these regions because they believed it would be profitable. While these countries have strong pro-labor cultures, they maintain successful economies and high standards of living.

A Kaplan flyer yesterday mentions that membership in the Newspaper Guild has gone down. Declining unions membership is a trend that has been happening all over the country for the past few decades. This trend closely parallels the expansion of the wealth gap in the U.S. and the disappearing middle class. An opinion piece in today's New York Times addresses this very issue, as did a piece in Washington Post Company's own Slate.

The flyer also discusses the salaries of high-ranking Guild officials, which are hardly astronomical. Kaplan recently gave a $76 million dollar golden parachute given to the CEO of Kaplan Education. This is enough to pay the salaries of 2,500 Kaplan ESL teachers at around $30,000 per year. The Kaplan flyer accused the guild of the atrocious crime of paying none of their workers less than $40,000 per year(!) To me, $40,000  per year sounds like just a decent living wage.

It may be a little late in the game for this, but I'd like to see a flyer that has the salaries of every Kaplan executive juxtaposed with the salaries of the teachers.

Why?

Why couldn't we (teachers) just have sat down together and had a conversation about whether voting for a union was a good idea or not?

We're all educated adults here. Joining a union or not has to be a dispassionate choice. The only question on the table: Will we be better off financially with union representation or no?

I would have loved to have this conversation with every single person I work with. I'm generally not a very social person, but through this I feel like I've built stronger connections with every single teacher at my school, and look forward to continuing these relationships no matter what the outcome of the vote is on Thursday.

The secretive nature of how this thing started upset a lot of people at the start. We could have recovered from this however; the signing of union cards only made possible for the election to be held. We still could have had healthy discussions for over a month about how we should vote.

But instead, people got so inundated with KIC's propaganda and fed up with overly tense meetings with management that many just got completely turned off from even talking about it. As someone who feels strongly that membership into the Newspaper Guild will be beneficial for every teacher, this has been quite maddening.

It's not maddening because we don't share the same point of view, it's maddening because most of us don't even understand why we have different views.


Anyone who looks at the comment sections on this blog can see that we are not having a real dialogue about this issue. Just to be clear: I 100% blame KIC upper-management's anti-union strategy for this lack of understanding we have. Not the managers we see every day, but these people that we don't see. Who are they? We know David Jones' name of course, because we all got an email from him as he was suddenly very interested in how we were all doing...

Their strategy has poisoned our workplace by creating an atmosphere of fear, and muddied our conversations with misinformation.


These people have somehow also convinced our managers to take this personally, when it in fact has nothing to do with them. Since they're taking things personally, they've been able to make appeals to emotion about why a union will be bad. Due to their position as our superiors, I feel completely patronized by this. Plus, when our managers' superiors are spending hundreds tens of thousands of dollars for lawyers from Jones Day and obviously putting pressure you to get us to vote "no", playing out this farce of "we just want you to have all the information" is just incredibly insulting to my intelligence. Maybe I'm simple-minded in this regard, but I still am having a hard time believing I work for a company that would feed me such obvious propaganda and not think that I have the mental capacity to see through it.

By the way, KIC managers, if you are reading this, this is how you sound to me at meetings:

"Don't vote for a union, or we will be sad. We know what's best for you anyhow, because we have all the right information. You're simply not capable of finding and processing information like we are, so let us do it for you, OK? And all of you who are supporting a union, how could you bring this immoral organization into our sacred workplace? You should be ashamed of yourselves for wanting to collectively bargain a contract with KIC!"


Despite all of this, I still respect my managers and actually like them a lot as people. And despite whatever you've been told, you will still have the ability to advocate for us since guild contracts are very clear that they only set minimums. 

If we vote "yes" however, you should be secretly happy: Instead of you shouldering all the burden, we will have the ability to advocate for ourselves as well.

An example of a Kaplan union contract

We recently received a copy of the union contract Kaplan signed with the teachers at their school in Vancouver.

Some high points include:
- 4 weeks paid vacation per year
- 10 paid holidays
- 5 sick days
- 2 personal days
- 3 bereavement days for immediate family
- $5000 extra annually for anyone with a DELTA or applicable master's degree.
- $300 per quarter if students do 90% or more 4's and 5's on the exit survey.

In this contract, there are two varieties of teachers: 22.5 teaching hours per week and 30 hours per week. There's also very logical approaches to subs and temporary teachers, i.e. while temporary teachers don't receive vacation benefits, etc. they do receive 4% more salary in lieu of that.

If I taught 22.5 hours per week, under this contract, as a teacher with four years experience, I would be making a base salary of $41,355 (Canadian) a.k.a. $40,166 USD.

We know there are differences between the labor climates in Canada and the U.S. but this gives us an idea of the kind of things Kaplan can offer while still turning a profit. 

To see a full copy of the contract, contact a teacher-organizer at your branch.

Busted! Someone is Posing as a Teacher

The second name for this post could have been: "They must really think we're stupid."

Those of us who run this site have had a sneaking suspicion that not all the comments are actually from teachers. To test this theory, we recently installed a plug-in that can trace the locations of IP addresses to the general area they come from.

Today, June 2nd, from approximately 2:03-2:17 PM, there was only one IP address (81.94.195.202) looking at different pages. During this time, 3 comments appeared under the name "Skeptic":

- Skeptic June 2, 2012 2:07 PM

That's a pretty serious accusation. If you can back it up you should go to the NLRB. If not then you have nothing, and you're setting up a Straw Man to stir up trouble for its own sake.

- Skeptic June 2, 2012 2:10 PM

I hope you're right and the union isn't trying to censor discussion. That would be very bad form.

- Skeptic June 2, 2012 2:16 PM

What I would find really interesting is if we knew what they had before and, for a true comparison, factored in the dues money that had paid the union.

Then we'd have an accurate picture that would show if they did better or worse, although we still wouldn't know what they would have received from their company without having a union represent them.

I'm not anti-union, but as my screen name implies, I'm skeptical that the Guild can do anything for us that we can't do on our own merits. If we are going to pay for a service (representation) it should deliver tangible results.

Is the Guild willing to put guarantees of better pay and benefits in writing?

 I added the bold for emphasis. Note the use of the pronouns "us" and "we". This is interesting, since when I trace the IP address of this person, this is what I get:

Visitor Analysis & System Spec
Referring URL:				(No referring link)
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Yes that's right, these comments didn't come from NYC, they came from the UK. I checked with teachers from the other 2 schools, and no one knows of any teacher currently on vacation in the UK. Who is in the UK though that may be interested in our efforts to unionize? The headquarters of Kaplan International, of course. 

 

Trying to pass yourself off as one of us is pretty low, KIC. 

You fail.

- "Teacher"

Divide and Conquer

Right now, our employer is holding meetings every day in the Midtown auditorium. These meetings are all under the usual guise of being for "informational" purposes, being conducted by "impartial" or "ambivalent" 3rd parties.

These are paid Union Avoidance experts, otherwise known as "union busters".

One of them may or may not have worked for the NLRB at some point, but they most definitely do not work for the NLRB now.* The NLRB is a government agency; they do not send people to "inform" workers in situations like this.*

*(Update #1: There seems to be a few different reports about how one of the presenters, Kia Stevens, is presenting herself. Among them:


- She works for or used to work for the NLRB

- She's a teacher of labor law somewhere
- She's a physical therapist who had a bad/good experience with unions


Very strange. Hopefully we will find out more tomorrow when all the vocally pro-union teachers are herded into a meeting together. If anybody has attended a meeting, post a comment about who she said she was to help clarify this.)


Update #2: LOL. I just realized something: Both Jay and Kia at our "training meeting" on Tuesday acknowledged Update #1 of this post, but yet said they had no idea when they were told that we were all pro-union people.


And we still don't know who the heck this Kia person is...unless we're just to believe our company would stick "a physical therapist who just knows a lot of about unions" next to a legal heavyweight like Jay to be to one to advise us about the NLRA and NLRB practices. They must really think we're stupid.

So far, these meetings have only been for people who Kaplan has deemed to be anti-union or undecided. People who have been vocally pro-union people have not been invited to attend. Some of us have asked to attend, and were turned down for "scheduling reasons". One Three even showed up at meetings asking to attend, and were turned away at the door. Kaplan has canceled other people's classes to have these meetings, yet many pro-union people who don't have a class at these times were not invited, even though it's in a large auditorium.

They may invite vocally pro-union people to a separate meeting next week. With us isolated from everyone else, they won't have to worry when we call out on their distortions and misrepresentations.


One distortion that has surfaced from these meetings is about the "Exclusive Representation" part of the NLRA. It's an attempt to scare people into thinking they will be giving up all their rights to the union. Here is what the NLRA really says:

REPRESENTATIVES AND ELECTIONS

Sec. 9 [§ 159.] (a) [Exclusive representatives; employees' adjustment of grievances directly with employer] Representatives designated or selected for the purposes of collective bargaining by the majority of the employees in a unit appropriate for such purposes, shall be the exclusive representatives of all the employees in such unit for the purposes of collective bargaining in respect to rates of pay, wages, hours of employment, or other conditions of employment.

This means that if we elect a union to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement for us, management must bargain the contract with that union. They can't go around the union or bargain with a different union. It says nothing about what can or can't happen after the collective bargaining agreement has been signed.

The NLRA, signed into law by FDR in 1935, is a fantastic document that is all about protecting workers' rights. Read it here:

https://www.nlrb.gov/national-labor-relations-act

Excerpts from Hudson News Employees' Contract

GOOD UNION AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE NEWSPAPER GUILD AND HUDSON NEWS

(Hudson News is the company that runs the newsstands in NYC.)    2008-2012
Excerpts from 45-page contract.  To see the full contract, contact one of your colleagues or blog admin.

“Section 1 -- Minimum Salaries
The following minimum hourly rates for each job group listed shall be in effect during the term of this Agreement...Effective upon ratification, all current employees shall be slotted into the appropriate wage level commensurate with their length of service with Hudson News.  However, no employee shall suffer any reduction in salary or benefits as a result of putting this Agreement into effect.” (pg. 10)

“Section 2 -- General Wage Increases
On the effective date of the general wage increase in each year of this contract, each employee shall receive the general wage increase for that year, or the ‘step up’ increase due based upon his or her experience level for their applicable job group, whichever is higher.  All wage increases due under this section shall be applied to the employee’s actual weekly base salary, inclusive of any merit pay or other salary increases granted by Hudson News.” (pg. 14)

“Section 5 -- No Pay Cuts
There shall be no pay cuts during the term of this agreement.” (pg. 14)

“Section 6 -- Merit Pay Increases
The Salaries established in this Agreement are minimums only.  They do not keep an employee from seeking or Hudson News from putting into effect increases above the minimums to recognize individual merit...Under no circumstances shall merit increases be revoked.” (pg. 14)

“Section 11 -- Longevity Increases
Upon ratification employees who have attained 5 years of service or more shall receive the appropriate increase (which shall be included in their rate for all contractual purposes) as per the schedule below.” (pg. 15)

“Section 1 -- Named Holidays & Floating Holidays
An employee shall be granted holiday pay as specified in this article, for each of the following six named holidays and a day off for each floating holiday that occurs during his or her service with Hudson News: New Year’s Day, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Thanksgiving Day, Independence Day, Christmas Day, and 1 floating holiday.” (pg. 18)





“Section 1 -- Length of Vacation
The following annual vacation with pay shall be granted … to each employee … as follows:
Continuous Service:
10 years or more - 4 weeks
5 years or more but less than 10 years -- 3 weeks
2 years or more but less than 5 years -- 2 weeks
7 months or more but less than 23 years -- 1 week” (pg. 19)

Health Insurance
“Employee contributions for the plan(s) shall be according to the following schedule:
Less than 1 year -- Employee contribution of 25%
1 year but less than 3 years -- Employee contribution of 20%
3 years or more -- Employee contribution of 15%” (pg. 21)

Sick Leave
“Hudson news shall pay sick leave to each full-time employee at his or her normal base pay rate who is absent due to illness, injury or disability...
Less than 2 years -- 5 paid sick days per year
2 years or more -- 5 paid sick days per year
5 years or more -- 6 paid sick days per year
10 years or more -- 7 paid sick days per year” (pg. 22)
“Regular part-time employees who work at least twenty (20) hours per week shall be entitled to pro-rata sick pay based on their normal work schedule and the schedule in sub-section a above.” (pg. 22)


The full contract also includes additional sections of employee benefits, including leaves of absence for pregnancy, bereavement, etc. 

KAPLAN’S “COLLECTIVE BARGAINING” FLYER – FACT-CHECKED

We did some googling, and found some interesting information related to the "Collective Bargaining" flyer from management.

We had to look through some documents on a site called DOCSTOC, which unfortunately wants you to pay to download or print the documents, but if you follow the links below, you can just read them in your browser.

----
The first link is fun - it's an almost identical copy of the Kaplan “collective bargaining” flyer, but from some other employer and against some other union (the CNA...?) - the same out-of-context quotations from labor "law" are used! And as you will see below, more than two companies have used these same quotations.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/89365961/The-C

The second link is the real meat and potatoes - it is the text of a 2008 decision by an administrative law judge, James M. Kennedy, recommending that a decertification election be overturned.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/6812551/OConnor-Woods32-RD-1536JD%28SF%29-17-08James-M-Kennedy041508

Basically the union representing workers in a residential community for the elderly had been in contract negotiations for a year (2006) with the management. After failing to reach agreement, some of the workers petitioned to decertify the union. The decertification election was held in late 2007, and the union narrowly lost (i.e. slightly more than half of the workers voted to decertify).

The union appealed on multiple grounds, and this judge examined some of those grounds. To cut to the chase, he found that management had engaged in unlawfully misleading and intimidating behavior before the decertification election, and he recommended that a fresh decert election be held (scroll down to the last two pages, 15 and 16, to see this).

The part that we are interested in is on pages 3-5. You should read it all, but in summary, the judge describes a company flyer that was handed out to the workers with THE SAME QUOTATIONS as Kaplan is now using (this is in 2007 remember, who knows how many years this stuff has been being recycled??)... the judge breaks down how these quotations are taken out of context to deliberately mislead.

Like I said, read it yourself, but here's a summary, in the order the judge explains them, with Kaplan's quotations for easy reference:

(1) "in the give-and-take of bargaining a union might give up insurance”, etc - (La-Z-Boy, Inc.) - the quotation from the La-Z-Boy case is presented as if it is from the NLRB board's ruling in that case, as if it is a statement of law that was decided by that case. It is in fact, a quotation from the case's judge DESCRIBING WHAT A LA-Z-BOY MANAGER HAD SAID TO THEIR EMPLOYEES!! Notice how the double-meaning of "might" with the implication of "may" (as in permission) is used to mislead us as to what a union "might" do... So imagine that, someone in Kaplan management says in a weekly meeting, “the union might ask for your first-born child in exchange for dues check off”, then later we all go to court over the result of the election, then during the case the judge quotes the manager’s comment about first-born children, then the next thing you know… future corporations faced with employees considering unionization will be citing the well-known case of Kaplan vs Newspaper Guild: “the union might ask for your first-born child! IT’S IN THE LAW!!!”

(2) "Collective bargaining is potentially hazardous" etc. - (Coach and Equipment Sales Corp) - this one is a doozy, because the quotation is from a case in which the NLRB ordered a second election because the company in question had violated the law by strongly hinting to its workers that if a union came in, the company would make sure that no increases in benefits would be produced by the negotiations. The quotation is actually from the judge’s analysis of the company’s bad behavior. Here is the full quotation:

“Taken together, these statements do not simply confine themselves to the legitimate message that collective bargaining is potentially hazardous for employees and that as a result of such negotiations employees might possible wind up with less benefits after unionization than before. Rather, these statements can only be taken as meaning that Respondent intended to adopt a bargaining stance designed to insure that collective bargaining could not result in any increases in benefits for the employees and would probably result in decreased benefits – in short, that unionization, if it had any effect at all, would, because of Respondent’s intransigence, result in worse benefits, not better.”

“Respondent” here means the company, Coach and Equipment Sales Corp, and “these statements” refer to statements made by Coach and Equipment to their employees. So do you see what is going on here? This statement is a sharp criticism from a NLRB judge of a company’s behavior in overstating the possible downsides of collective bargaining, and indeed of threatening to not bargain in good faith; but multiple corporations, including Kaplan, choose to selectively quote from this passage to try to suggest that the board’s decision in this case was that “collective bargaining is potentially hazardous”. In fact, the board’s decision in this case was that the company acted illegally and they ordered a second election!

(By the way, to give Kaplan some credit, it could be worse. This is the quote that the management of the elderly residential community lifted from this same passage: “Collective bargaining could not result in any increases in benefits for the employees and would probably result in decreased benefits, in short, that unionization, if it had any effect at all, would… result in worse benefits, not better.” Unbelievable, right? You can see yet another example of this in the first link above, where the company butchered this same passage to deceptively make their point.)

(3) “The U.S. Government and the NLRB do not guarantee employees…” (Bendix Corp, 6th Circuit Appeals) – this one is interesting, and judge James Kennedy goes into detail about how the quotation is not contextualized and in some situations could be considered threatening.

However, if you look at the case yourself - http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?page=5&xmldoc=1968541400F2d141_1509.xml&docbase=CSLWAR1-1950-1985&SizeDisp=7 – you will see that the quotation is, at least, an accurate representation of what was said in that decision. The problem is that it isn’t relevant to us at Kaplan!

This 1968 decision overturned a NLRB decision to hold a second election at Bendix after the union lost the first one. It seems that both the company and the union behaved badly – the company promised better wages and conditions if the union were defeated, and the union promised that conditions could only get better if the workers unionized. That’s why that language is in that decision – the appeals court states very clearly that neither the US Government nor the NLRB guarantee workers’ current conditions. But the reason they are stating that is to explain their decision to overturn the union’s second (successful) election. That union had been making the false claims since before the first election, but they still lost the first time.

The point is, the Newspaper Guild has never claimed that nothing can change for the worse if they are chosen to negotiate on Kaplan teachers’ behalf. What they did say, which is entirely different, is that a general contract stipulates minimum salaries, not maximum ones. In other words, if a company wishes to offer an individual employee, or indeed all of its employees, more than is specified in the contract, they are free to do so, and the employee is free to accept!

This is completely different from speculating about what may or may not be “on the table” in a contract negotiation. It’s entirely possible that workers, or management, might wish to “trade away” a current benefit or condition in exchange for a different one.

What Kaplan seems to want everyone to forget is that, if the negotiated contract is unsatisfactory to most teachers, or indeed if no agreement can be reached on a contract at all, then nothing changes. So if the union’s and teachers’ negotiating skills are so poor that teachers stand to “lose all benefits and get none of those we wish to change”, as it were, then when it comes time to vote on that contract, it will be defeated, and the union will go away.

Currently our management seems to be hell-bent on making us forget the fact that, just as the union has to first be chosen by a majority of voting teachers to even earn the right to negotiate, whatever contract that finally emerges from negotiations also has to be voted on and approved by a majority of the voting teachers. In the event that the Guild is elected to represent us, our primary task will be to make sure that the various interests of all teachers are represented in the negotiations, so that a contract emerges that is acceptable to everyone (including management). And if such a contract cannot be achieved, then it won’t be voted in and we can all go back to negotiating with the company on an individual basis.