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By Otto Fajen
MNEA Legislative Director

SENATE HEARING ON MSTA ANTI-BARGAINING BILL BEGINS, WILL CONTINUE NEXT WEEK
The Senate Education Committee met on April 30 to hear House Committee Substitute for House Bill 2059 (Kevin Wilson). Senate Committee Substitute for Senate Bill 1158 (Rob Mayer), an identical bill, remains on the Senate informal calendar, but debate on that bill now appears unlikely.

The hearing on H.B. 2059 was interrupted by a recess to allow the minority caucus to meet to discuss the “Bombardier” (pronounced “bomb-bar-jay”) bill, H.B. 2393 (Ron Richards), a tax giveaway bill designed to lure that company to locate in Missouri. The committee heard from the proponents of H.B. 2059 and then briefly heard opposition testimony from Missouri NEA and AFT-Missouri before going into recess to allow the caucus on the Bombardier issue. When the committee reconvened, the hearing on H.B. 2059 was not continued. Sen. Mayer plans to complete the hearing on H.B. 2059 next week and will try to vote the bill out of committee after the hearing is completed.

Missouri NEA strongly opposes both bills. The bills discriminate against teachers by treating them unfairly, denying them their right to elect a bargaining representative and restricting their bargaining rights in ways imposed on no other public or private employees. The bills are also impractical and unworkable and will disrupt successful relationships in many of our largest school districts. MNEA will need to continue the lobbying effort to ensure that H.B. 2059 does not pass in the Senate.

An effective bargaining process must have a unified employee voice. Piecing a bargaining team together from various groups builds a communication’s gap into the process and leaves teachers scrambling for a cohesive voice. The bills would force teachers to form a representative council, an extra layer of bureaucracy, which would make reaching agreement difficult.

The bills would make collective bargaining a more difficult and less effective process for teachers than for other employees, and it leaves them, once again, with fewer rights than other public employees. Unlike an elected representative, whose right to represent employees can be removed if it fails to represent them fairly, the council cannot be held accountable, disbanded or replaced with an elected representative organization, even if the council is totally dysfunctional.

Of the 35 states where teachers bargain collectively, no state mandates a process similar to the one proposed in these bills. The bargaining model that has proven effective over time in state after state is the exclusive representation model. In a historic decision in May 2007, the Missouri Supreme Court restored the right of all public employees (including teachers) to bargain collectively with employers. MSTA fought against collective bargaining for years and filed a brief last year urging the Supreme Court to deny teachers a voice in the collective bargaining process.

MSTA MAKES A “FUNNY”
The 2008 session has been a challenging and stressful one, and MSTA helped relieve that stress last week by publishing an article in its legislative update claiming that “MNEA does not understand collective bargaining” and attempting to refute some of MNEA’s arguments in opposition to MSTA’s anti-bargaining bill. If you don't already know that Missouri NEA understands and supports collective bargaining and that MSTA opposes collective bargaining, your name just might be Rip Van Winkle, because you've clearly been asleep for over thirty years!

To fully appreciate the humor of MSTA’s position, it’s helpful first to remember MNEA’s position and work in support of collective bargaining:

1. Missouri NEA has advocated for full collective bargaining rights for all school employees since the organization was created.
   MNEA was created in 1973 as a state affiliate of the National Education Association, a 3.2 million member association with state affiliates in every state and with members all over the world teaching in Department of Defense schools. These members are all working every day, all year long in support of great public schools for every child and building and sustaining successful collective bargaining relationships in schools across the nation and all over the world.
2. Missouri NEA helped support its brave and steadfast Independence local associations in the landmark legal action that culminated in a Missouri Supreme Court ruling in 2007 granting collective bargaining rights to all public employees in Missouri.
3. Since the INEA ruling, Missouri NEA and its local associations have worked diligently in school districts, community colleges and universities across the state to organize, obtain recognition and bargain binding agreements that will support good salaries, benefits and working conditions for all employees in those bargaining units, even those who are not MNEA members.
4. Missouri NEA has worked in coalition with all other public sector labor organizations to draft and support real collective bargaining legislation that would enact a consistent framework for successful and stable bargaining relationships between all public employers and employees. That legislation was filed this session as House Bill 2030 (Jenee' Lowe) and Senate Bill 1115 (Joan Bray) and is strongly supported by Missouri NEA and a broad coalition of public sector labor organizations.
5. Missouri NEA has steadfastly opposed MSTA’s anti-bargaining bill, which attempts to mandate a process that is not a real collective bargaining process. MSTA’s bill is unworkable for districts, will undermine successful bargaining relationships already in place and will be profoundly unfair to teachers by forcing them to use a purposefully ineffective structure imposed on no other public or private employees in Missouri.

The contrasting record of MSTA merely renders its screed all the more amusing:

1. MSTA was disaffiliated from NEA in 1972, in part, because it sided with school administrators and opposed collective bargaining rights for school employees.
2. MSTA has continued to side with school administrators and oppose collective bargaining ever since. Indeed, last spring MSTA and the Missouri Council of School Administrators filed a joint amicus brief in the INEA case, arguing that collective bargaining was bad for teachers, bad for education and bad for kids.
3. This session, MSTA, a group with a long history of opposing collective bargaining, filed a bill it claims is a collective bargaining bill, but that bill is also supported by the same administrator group, MCSA, that worked with them last year to stop collective bargaining. The bill seeks to undermine successful bargaining relationships already in place in many of the state’s largest school districts and dilute the voice of teachers, making it easier for administrators to pit groups against one another or argue that the teachers lack a unified voice.
4. MSTA seems oblivious to the obvious fact that none of the 35 states that currently allow teachers to bargain require an unelected “council” style of bargaining because multiple representation encourages rivalries among groups and handicaps employers in the development of effective negotiations and stable relationships. Missouri’s constitutional language ensuring that all employees shall have the right to bargain collectively through “representatives of their own choosing” has become a phrase of art, understood both at the federal level and in states across the country to convey the intention that all employees should have the chance to be represented by an exclusive bargaining representative freely and fairly chosen by a majority of the employees. This is the same principle of majority representation that is a commonly accepted and integral part of our democratic form of government.
5. Just this week, MSTA filed a lawsuit to prevent the Wentzville school board from bargaining with the Wentzville NEA and agreeing to significant pay raises for teachers while meeting the contract deadlines that MSTA’s “council” style non-bargaining process had failed to achieve. The district’s teachers are fortunate MSTA’s motion for a restraining order to stop the pay raises from going into effect was turned down by the court on May 1.
6. MSTA seems to be unsure whether it is still entirely against collective bargaining or not, since it is working against successful local bargaining relations for teachers in some districts and attempting to mandate a non-bargaining process for teachers statewide while still seeking exclusive recognition to represent support staff, such as the secretarial employee unit in Springfield.

While Missouri NEA remains resolute in opposing MSTA’s anti-bargaining legislation, the humor afforded by MSTA’s confused and conflicting arguments and actions provide a welcome diversion from a difficult session for all advocates who support great public schools for every child.

SENATE COMMITTEE PASSES OMNIBUS EDUCATION BILL
The Senate Education Committee voted out a Senate Committee Substitute for House Committee Substitute for House Bill 1722 (Maynard Wallace) on April 30. H.B. 1722 contains many provisions relating to school safety. The SCS added a number of other education bills that have already passed the Senate but have either not moved much in the House or have been loaded up in House committees with many onerous provisions opposed by one or more education groups and, in most cases, also opposed by that Senate bill’s sponsor. MNEA supported H.B. 1722 and supports the SCS version as well.

The SCS adds the following bills:

1. S.B. 925 (Rita Days) regarding digital storage of school records.
2. S.B. 1221 (Brad Lager) regarding the “P-20 Council.”
3. SCS/S.B.s 1225 & 1226 (Rob Mayer) regarding special education due process hearings.
4. S.B. 762 (Yvonne Wilson) regarding anti-bullying policies and cyber-bullying.
5. SCS/S.B. 994 (Jason Crowell) regarding the cap on income increases allowed to affect Public School Retirement System pension benefits.
6. SCS/HCS.H.B. 1305 (David Day) regarding reciprocity for mandated courses for students from other states.
7. SCS/HCS/H.B. 1807 (Stanley Cox) renames the State Schools for the Severely Handicapped.
8. S.B. 1085 (Maida Coleman) allows districts to participate in the A+ Schools program regardless of accreditation status.
9. SCS/S.B. 713 (Michael Gibbons) regarding civil immunity for school employee employment references. The language was replaced with more narrowly-tailored language drafted by Missouri NEA.
10. S.B. 1047 (Carl Vogel) provides state school aid to districts for providing special education services to private school students.
11. SCS/S.B. 1170 (Rob Mayer) creates the Rebuild Missouri Schools loan program.
12. HCS/H.B. 2191 (Jamilah Nasheed) allows A+ Schools reimbursement at Ranken Tech and creates the Kid's Chance scholarship program.

The SCS also:

1. Requires school library computers to have Internet content filters.
2. Requires school districts to provide age-appropriate instruction in appropriate Internet use.
3. Limits authority of school enforcement officers on school buses and removes statewide arrest authority.
4. Removes “books” from A+ Schools reimbursements.

TABOR
The Senate Governmental Affairs and Fiscal Oversight Committee will continue its hearing on House Joint Resolution 70 (Allan Icet) on May 6 at 9:00 a.m. in the Senate Lounge. HJR 70 is a constitutional spending limit similar to the Colorado provision known as “TABOR,” or the so-called “Taxpayer Bill of Rights.” The HJR would impose a permanent, constitutional spending limit on state government and would limit annual growth in state appropriations to a cost-of -living adjustment factor plus a population growth factor. The HJR even includes requirements for imposing further tax cuts if the spending limits are operational.

Missouri NEA strongly opposes this unneeded restriction. Legislators should be able to construct a consensus revenue estimate and appropriate according to that estimate. HJR 70’s limit would cause Missouri government to shrink year after year relative to the size of the overall economy. This measure will permanently diminish the state’s capacity to provide appropriate levels of public service and will ultimately make the state a less desirable place to live and reduce the state’s ability to attract desirable employers.

PROPERTY TAX
Several pieces of legislation affecting property taxes have passed the House and await Senate action. Among those is House Committee Substitute for House Bills 1321 & 1695 (Michael Sutherland). The bill has been heard in the Senate Ways and Means Committee and now awaits a committee vote.

Rep. Cynthia Davis’ amendment to HCS/H.B.s 1321 & 1695 would disallow growth from new construction for school districts, so while districts would not receive the new revenues from a new home, the district would be expected to educate the children in this new home. Missouri NEA opposes this portion of the bill and urges that Rep. Davis’ amendment be removed. The original H.B. 1321 seeks to expand the “Circuit Breaker,” a state income tax credit for low-income seniors based on residential property taxes or rent paid. The Association supports the original bill and urges the Senate to pass that language without Rep. Davis’ harmful amendment.

RETURN OF THE SCARLET LETTER
The Senate Education Committee completed its hearing on H.B. 1314 (Jane Cunningham) on April 30. The bill would revise several provisions affecting school employees, including a provision to grant civil immunity on job references. Missouri NEA opposes the bill. The bill requires districts to maintain data even on unsubstantiated reports of employee sexual misconduct and require districts to report this data to other districts, on request, if the employee waives the right to keep such information confidential. Failure to waive such rights will automatically serve as a “red flag” to a potential employer, even if the information is related to a false allegation or wrongful termination. This “guilty until proven innocent” presumption will be profoundly unfair to education employees.

CAPITOL ACTION DAYS
Capitol Action Days continue on May 6 with MNEA members from Governance Districts 2 & 3 visiting the Capitol. A series of Capitol Action Days throughout most of the session will allow planned, face-to-face contact with legislators throughout the session. Capitol Action Days will be on Tuesdays and Wednesdays continuing through the rest of session. Your MNEA calendar includes the dates that MNEA Board of Directors members selected for your governance district.

If you are not able to attend on these designated days, feel free to contact Otto Fajen (otto.fajen@mnea.org) to arrange to attend a different Capitol Action Day. Each Capitol Action Day will start with a briefing at 10:00 a.m. to provide you with the most up-to-date information.

FINDING INFORMATION ABOUT BILLS
To find out more about legislation this session, go to: http://www.mnea.org/gr/legissues.htm. This page contains numerous links, including: the NEA Legislative Action Center, which addresses key education issues at the federal level; and, the Missouri NEA Legislative Action Center, which will address key education issues at the state level. This page also will contain links to legislative updates, the MNEA Legislative Platform, legislative priorities and other policy-related links.

To find information about a specific bill currently pending before the Missouri General Assembly, go to:
http://www.house.mo.gov/billcentral.aspx. Type the bill number (example: HB1000) or sponsor name in the “search” box to find a link to the bill. This link will take you to a “home page” for the bill that provides bill text, bill summaries, fiscal notes and information on legislative action on the bill.

Legislative Update 2008
Missouri National Education Association
1810 East Elm Street
Jefferson City, MO 65101-4174
(573) 634-3202 or (800) 392-0236

Chris Guinther , President
Ben Simmons, Executive Director
DeeAnn Aull, Director of Programs and P.R.
Leila Medley, Political Director
Otto Fajen, Legislative Director
Judy Glover, Secretary