The MTA Bargaining Summit, held virtually in late February, emphasized how local associations can strengthen their positions in contract negotiations by organizing beyond their own membership.
"The other side is already coordinating, so we better be coordinating, too," said Justin Fox-Bailey, who leads a multi-union bargaining coalition for educators in Washington state.
Fox-Bailey joined the summit to share his experiences as similar coalitions take shape among the MTA’s preK-12 and higher education locals.
"It’s not about ceding power, but more about consensus and making a choice to work together to gain power," he said. "Collective pressure raises the standards for everyone."
That kind of pressure is building throughout Massachusetts.
The summit highlighted victories resulting from collaboration and important campaigns that have gained traction because of the work that MTA members are doing with allies in communities and at the state level.
MTA President Merrie Najimy said that the bargaining summits began as a way to involve more members in actual contract negotiations and to promote the value of open bargaining.
"That was the start of democratizing bargaining," Najimy said. "We want to keep that work moving forward, and that means working with each other in coordinated bargaining across the state."
The 2021 summit, held on Feb. 27, was the MTA’s sixth such event.
Speakers addressed four types of collaboration: among different units within a single local, among different locals that share an employer, among locals with comparable employers, and among statewide stakeholders.
Kinga Borondy and Dayshawn Simmons, members of the Somerville Teachers Association, described how classroom teachers in one unit supported the local’s Education Support Professionals unit in its fight for a living wage.
Simmons explained that in the past, the two bargaining units had existed in silos, which did not reflect the true relationship between classroom teachers and ESPs.
"I know how essential ESPs are to my classroom," Simmons said.
ESPs launched a community outreach campaign that addressed the lack of respect they faced and the low wages they had to live on, Borondy said. The participation of classroom teachers in the campaign signaled to the employer that picking a fight with one bargaining unit was picking a fight with all 800 members of the STA.
"We shifted power to our side and were able to change the narrative," Borondy said. That led to a significant boost in the starting pay for ESPs in Somerville.
Adam St. Jean, a member of the faculty union at UMass Lowell, recounted how the university administration tried to "divide and conquer" workers based on which union they belonged to.
"By forming a strong coalition, we demonstrated that we refused to be divided," he said.
After a rolling rally in May 2020 that involved several unions and went from UMass Lowell to the home of Chancellor Jacquie Moloney, the university rescinded some of the furloughs it had intended to impose two months earlier, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
UMass unions have formed a coalition that spans all of the system’s campuses in order to more effectively advocate on health and safety issues, which workers continue to face because of the prevalence of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth.
"We started making joint demands backed by joint actions," St. Jean said.
Sudbury educator Sonia Fortin highlighted a statewide campaign to win support for the MTA PreK-12 ESP Bill of Rights.
"Eighty-four percent of the ESPs make less than $30,000 a year," said Fortin, who was named the 2020 MTA ESP of the Year. "It took me nine years to earn a living wage. ESPs statewide are organizing around issues of pay and professional recognition."
MTA Vice President Max Page pointed to the issues of racial justice and climate education, as well as an initiative to demand a nurse and librarian in every school, as ripe for statewide collaborative action.
Locals represented at the summit met in regional breakout rooms, sowing the seeds for collaborative work. MTA locals have been stitching together educator action networks within their regions, using them to gain strength at their individual bargaining tables.
"It begins with sharing information between locals," said Gardner Education Association Co-President Debra Leone, whose union is part of the Central Massachusetts Educator Action Network.
MTA on the Web
