TruthToTell, Mon. Jan 30@9AM: TEACHER CONTRACTS(cont’d) & GRAD ASSISTANT UNIONIZING–LISTEN/DOWNLOAD BELOW

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We return to the subject of teacher contract issues in Minneapolis after running out of time last week…if ever sufficient time is possible. And we talk with Grad Assistant organizers at the UofM trying to unionize their colleagues.

As we said last time, all school districts in the state of Minnesota – have been negotiating their teachers’ contracts over the last many months, some arriving at agreement well before some others. St. Paul in the throes of its negotiations. Minneapolis Schools concluded theirs last Fall.

Core Minnesota city schools, especially Minneapolis and St. Paul – contain more kids of color than white students in their classrooms – and have been shown among the worst in the nation for their achievement gaps – that scholastic chasm separating white children from kids of color, especially Black, Latino and Native children.

Teacher-bashing seems to come easy for some who see their organizing efforts as a threat to the notion that teachers should do only what they’re told to do and should be subject to parental and administrative overlords. But, what role can and do teachers also play in keep the gap alive? As we said last week, many parents, advocates and educators cite the clear disparity in the color of students and the person teaching them.

Change ain’t easy – for people or groups of them. Organizations who have maintained insider relationships long enough usually want no other stakeholders involved in their “business,” and suggest such public decision should remain private.

Last time, we included representatives from the Minneapolis teachers union – the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) – the long-standing bargaining unit for those standing in front of our kids. This week, those reps found themselves forced to withdraw by personal circumstances, so we’re bringing back the critics and hope to clarify their positions. Those stakeholder groups – like Action for Equity and Put Kids First Minneapolis started atte

nding the meetings and, in no uncertain terms insisted that, as progressives who support collective bargaining and closing the gaps. In coalition with others, and calling it “Contract for Student Achievement,” they advanced five key ideas for last Fall’s bargaining. They, and their ideas for reforms, ran into a brick wall, essentially dismissed as interlopers with no business being part of the process. We talk with our returning advocates.

In Segment Two, we learn about the effort to organize University of Minnesota Graduate Assistants into a UAW local (GSWU/UAW). Grad Assistants are those research and teaching aides who do much of the work collecting and imparting knowledge to undergraduates and other graduate students while administrating classes and compiling data for professors and instructors as they work their own way toward masters degrees and PhD.

Why organizing efforts in general always seem to bang heads with highly resistant administrations seems so strange. Here’s a thought: ask General Motors or Ford and other large corporations if they would really want their unions to go away – and you will hear a whispered, “Hell, no”. Such bargaining units are critical to the bottom line because they keep workers in line. And yet – almost no cooperation melts away in the initial stage establishing a local.

Join TTT’s ANDY DRISCOLL and MICHELLE ALIMORADI as we give some vent to and ask some key questions of critics of the Minneapolis teacher negotiations and hear from grad students about their work to essentially herd the cats of academia – the often ego-driven ranks of deans and professors and administrators and their graduate assistants.