Page One

The Berkeley Federation of Teachers filed an unfair labor practice charge against the school district last week, demanding that the district hand over its master list of student addresses so the union could give parents its side of the ongoing labor stalemate. 

The teachers’ union, which is locked in a two-year contract dispute with the district, also claims that the PTA leaders have blocked them from airing their positions on the PTA’s e-mail distribution lists. 

Over the past month Superintendent Michele Lawrence and School Board President Nancy Riddle have used the district’s master address list to send mailings outlining the district’s position on labor negotiations. 

“They’re trying to dominate the information airways,” said BFT President Barry Fike. “We don’t have a quarrel with the district’s right to communicate its negotiating perspective, but we do think it’s unfair that they have denied us the same opportunity.”  

Berkeley teachers have been without a contract since 2003. In protest, last month teachers stopped doing work not specified in their contract. The tactic has meant no homework and fewer extracurricular activities for some Berkeley students. 

If the state Public Employee Labor Relations Board rules in favor of the teachers, it could compel the district to provide the listing. However, knowing that a decision likely won’t come for several months, Fike said the district had little incentive to heed the union’s demand. 

“They know that by the time the labor board rules on this, the issue could be moot,” he said. Fike also charged that the district mailings contained outdated facts on teacher salaries and distorted the district’s budget. 

Mark Coplan, district public information officer, said BUSD did not intend to provide the mailing list. 

“My understanding is that it is privileged information only available to the district,” he said. 

The teachers’ complaint is a novel one, said Joseph Grodin, a former State Supreme Court Judge and a labor law professor at Hastings School of Law. He said federal law grants a union the right to information to enable it to bargain effectively, but that the law has traditionally applied to data on issues like safety or drug testing, not parent addressees. 

“My guess is that there is no precedent and that the labor board will have to decide if the legal principal should be extended as a matter of fairness,” Grodin said. 

Coplan added he did not know how much the mailings cost or which fund the district billed for the distribution. 

Superintendent Michele Lawrence was in mediation talks with the union Monday afternoon and unavailable for comment. 

During the dispute both sides have been hesitant to detail their proposals. Coplan said Monday he understood that the district’s latest offer included a 1.2 percent raise in teacher salaries for the next school year. 

Fike said that in light of Gov. Schwarzenegger’s plan to increase education by 4 percent next year, he believed neighboring districts would agree to raises of 3 to 4 percent. 

“We just want to keep pace,” Fike said. 

After finding themselves near the bottom of the Bay Area pay scale, Berkeley teachers signed a contract in 2000 that guaranteed they would be paid the median of selected neighboring districts when the contract expired in 2003. Since then Berkeley teachers have not received raises. However the district maintains that since it has had to pay for soaring employee health benefit costs over the past two years, teachers have received additional value since the contract expired. 

Other local unions have in the past filed unfair labor practice complaint as a pretext for calling a strike, but Fike said the teachers had no plans to walk out on their jobs. 

“We’re trying to do everything possible to avoid a strike,” he said. “That is not our motivation in any way.” 

The last teacher strike in Berkeley was in 1975, said School Board Director Terry Doran, a former Berkeley teacher. Doran said that both district mailings came with the full consent of the school board. 

The BFT is also fuming about its access to school e-trees—electronic mailing lists that distribute school news to parents. Fike said that until the weekend, PTA leaders had allowed the district to broadcast its position on the e-trees, while denying the union equal access. 

“E-trees were told by leadership not to send out teacher perspectives,” Fike said.  

PTA Council President Roia Ferezares said that while some school e-trees did circulate the district’s statements, she ordered them to stop after receiving complaints from Fike. She added that she then disseminated district and union perspectives on the dispute and sent it to five PTA presidents giving them the option to post the information.  

So far two schools have agreed to do so, she said. 

The Berkeley High School e-tree, the district’s most widely read, has not posted perspectives from either side, said Janet Huseby, e-tree co-coordinator.  

“We made it a policy not to publish political notices,” she said. “It would have just opened a can of worms.”›