EDUCATION POLITICS-Below are several rules that equally apply to good poker playing and good United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) union teacher representation and negotiations with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) administration. Breaking these rules in either poker or the present union negotiations and the results could be disastrous.
1. Never sit down at a poker game that's too rich for your blood.
2. Don't telegraph to the opposition what cards you are holding.
3. Don't bluff the opposition in either poker or negotiations, unless you are willing to follow through with what you have threatened with a reasonable likelihood of succeeding.
And in the present salary negotiations between UTLA and LAUSD there is something far greater at stake than whether or not teachers get paid more after years of no salary or cost of living increase.
What is also at stake- and yet remains unacknowledged- is the likelihood that if UTLA calls a strike that it will not be able to sustain or enforce it. This could very well destroy what remains of an already demoralized union and rank and file- and with it the very existence of UTLA that has stood by for years while LAUSD has put the prerequisites for this final solution in place.
It is precisely because teachers have not had a raise in so long that they are in no position to sustain a strike- and LAUSD knows it. As I have said for years in applying the same principle to falsely targeted teachers, "LAUSD can bleed longer than a teacher deprived of salary and benefits can"- especially if the added incentive to LAUSD is the final elimination of unionized and fairly compensated teachers- something they are already implementing with charter schools.
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And to exacerbate the situation, sucessive UTLA leadership has made no preparation for a protracted strike nor made any attempt to incorporate the concerns of rank and file teachers into the isolated UTLA House of Representative monthly agenda process that has for years seemed to have more to do with a free meal and socializing than it has for preparing for what UTLA teachers now face's - that's one expensive meal.
Add to this the complete failure of UTLA leadership under sucessive regimes to defend falsely targeted teachers, even though it clearly has the authority to do so under Article V of the LAUSD - UTLA Collective Bargaining Agreement- and you have the uncontradicted belief among LAUSD leadership that UTLA will ultimately fold in any strike. Simply stated, LAUSD believes it can offer anything it wants to a UTLA that has done absolutely nothing to stand up for rank and file in years.
(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He’s a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected]This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . )
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 19
Pub: Mar 6, 2015
