Britton May Unite Board, Teachers Union

It was a historic moment on that spring day in 1964 when Detroit teachers’ union President Mary Ellen Riordon climaxed an emotional speech at a teachers’ rally with this warning:

“We will hit the bricks and walk picket lines until the snow flies if the school board doesn’t sign a contract with us.”

As the hall reverberated with cheers from most of the teachers, a white-haired, hard-of-hearing, matronly lady in a long dress leaned over to a reporter to ask, “What did she say?”

When told, the teacher quickly stood with her colleagues and primly but enthusiastically applauded her approval of the plan. She somehow symbolized the changing views of America’s teachers, who now number 2.3 million. Things haven’t been the same since in the nation’s $260-billion-a-year education industry. Teachers became more militant and their relations with school officials often became harshly adversarial.

But now, another dramatic change is possible. A new, cooperative relationship between teachers and school administrators could emerge and, with imaginative leadership, Los Angeles could be in the forefront of the trend.

This would be a welcome advance from the days of the Detroit school battle, which ended with the school board recognizing the union as the teachers’ bargaining agent, one of the first victories for a teachers’ union.

Back in the 1960s, teachers began demanding a larger education pie and a bigger piece of it. The once-conservative National Education Assn. became at least as militant as the AFL-CIO’s American Federation of Teachers.

The right of collective bargaining for teachers was put into law in most states. Teacher unions at the national, state and local levels became deeply involved in politics and few hesitate these days to lead strikes when necessary.

But they all insist that they really want to end what has become their usually combative relationship with education officials. They want to join management in a cooperative effort to improve the school systems, and their own salaries.

There have been a few instances of cooperation and even teacher participation in school management. Miami is one of the most impressive examples of that.

Now that Miami’s school superintendent, Leonard M. Britton, has been named superintendent of the Los Angeles school system, this city might well be the nation’s next example of sensible labor-management cooperation in education.

Britton is one of the country’s few top school administrators who has worked actively with a teachers’ union to develop a power-sharing program under which teachers and school management share the authority to make crucial decisions about everything from school curriculum and budget allocations to textbook selection.

The idea was promoted in last year’s highly acclaimed report from the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy.

On the surface, the idea that school management here would share any real decision-making power with teachers seems unlikely for several reasons:

- A teachers’ strike here was only narrowly averted last week after nearly nine months of fruitless, extremely bitter negotiations.

- Leaders of United Teachers-Los Angeles say the school board lied about its ability to pay the much-needed and deserved 10% salary hike that the board finally accepted.

Agreement came only after Gov. George Deukmejian refigured the state budget. But most teachers are convinced that the money was there for the raise without finding extra state funds. And it is true that somehow “extra” money is found routinely by school boards everywhere when teachers press hard for higher salaries.

- School officials concede that Los Angeles teachers gave overwhelming support to their union leaders, but the officials maintain that the support came only because union leaders put out false information about the district’s ability to pay.

With that intense antagonism, it may not be easy to get cooperation between teachers and school executives. But it can be done.

Because of the latest display of teacher militancy here, the board might now be less inclined to brush off proposals to give teachers a greater voice in running the schools. When teachers quietly accept management decisions, power-sharing isn’t a high priority for the administrators.

Since the teachers did win the salary hike they sought, they are now in a position to press more vigorously than ever for a real share in all decisions made about the schools.

Perhaps the most effective spur to cooperation can come from the union’s political activities, even if some of these efforts in the past have backfired. Four of the seven school board members were elected with union support, including the newest member, Warren Furutani, but the board has continued to battle with the teachers.

School officials contend that the board is not anti-teacher but that even members elected with union support learn that they have to face the “realities” of the $3.1-billion-a-year system once they take office.

The union says the real problem is that board members are brainwashed by school administrators who don’t want any kind of power-sharing system and don’t put teachers on top of their priority list. But the necessary mutual trust could develop when Britton arrives.

Pat Tornillo, executive vice president of the United Teachers of Dade County, Fla., said Britton believes strongly in sharing decision-making power with teachers.

“He doesn’t play games with the budget. He worked with us to get the most money possible for education and allocate it equitably,” Tornillo said.

“Thanks in significant part to Britton, we are already part of the decision-making process in Dade County schools. And now we’re starting to experiment with a plan for us (the teacher’s union) and top officials to work out basic budgets and send the money to 32 schools where administrators and teachers, through their union, will jointly decide how to spend it.”

With a superintendent Miami teachers say is pro-teacher, with their success in political action and with their ranks more united than ever, Los Angeles teachers should take the lead to end their unhealthy adversarial relations with school authorities.

They could become a model for the nation.

Injury Compensation

Some imaginative lawyers are working hard these days to find more money for workers who are injured on the job, and they think union treasuries are a dandy place to look.

Under workers’ compensation laws, a worker can collect only a limited amount of money, plus medical expenses, when injured on the job. It is a no-fault system. The worker collects whether or not company negligence was responsible for the injury.

But to tap union treasuries--a presumed “deep pocket” that isn’t limited by workers’ compensation law--a relatively new legal theory is evolving: Since unions negotiate contract provisions to help ensure workers’ safety, both the company and union are responsible for providing safe working conditions. Thus, the argument goes, the union should be partly responsible for covering compensation costs.

Sally Hechler’s attorneys used this theory to try to get more money after she received her regular benefits from her company’s workers’ compensation insurance. She lost both of her arms in a tragic 1982 accident.

Attorneys for Hechler, an apprentice electrician for Florida Power & Light Co., said the union negligently allowed her to be assigned by the company to an unsafe job. It was particularly unsafe for an inexperienced worker like Hechler, they argued.

She was hurt after coming into contact with highly charged parts of an electrical substation.

Her attorneys tried in Florida state courts to get money from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 759, arguing that the union should have helped protect her because its contract has workers’ safety rules. The union failed in its duty to enforce the contract, the lawyers argued.

Last week, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court said workers cannot sue their unions in state courts for allegedly failing to provide a safe work place. If a suit is filed, it has to go to federal courts because federal labor laws take precedence, the court ruled.

Now Hechler’s lawyers are pushing the case in federal courts.

There have been a few similar cases, but except for Hechler’s, none has reached the Supreme Court so far, and no worker has been able to get money from a union because of an on-the-job injury while working for a company.

Severly injured workers often have deserved more than they can get from workers’ compensation.

But it would be a distortion of justice if unions were forced to slow down their increasingly aggressively efforts to protect workers with safety clauses because they, instead of employers, face massive legal damages when a worker is hurt on the job.