The Manhattan Beach Unified Teachers Association and the Manhattan Beach Unified School District settled on a new teacher contract earlier this month, after a long period of controversial and hostile negotiations.
Although many parents and students have chosen to blame and speak out against the teachers’ union for dragging MBUSD students into the heat of negotiations, the teachers do not deserve to bear the brunt of the blame for the strung-out,, tension-filled nature of the recent negotiation process.
The teachers’ actions, which included refusing to write letters of recommendation for seniors, to open classrooms at lunch and snack and participate in Scholar Quiz in June of the last school year, were understandable despite their aggressive nature.
Some teachers who were critical of union negotiation tactics have said that students should “love the teachers,” not be angry at them, and that the teachers should earn this love by making the students as their number-one priority, and not hurt them as a means of getting higher raises.
However, these complaints are irrelevant. Although the job of a teacher is to care for students, the essence of a workers union is to fight for the livelihoods of its members. When a coal miners’ union protests for higher wages, the coal miners aren’t reprimanded for disregarding the quality of the coal being produced during negotiations.
Although teachers and coal miners are not entirely the same, the unions both produce capital, and in both cases, the livelihoods of the members are allowed to supersede the capital they are producing.
The actions taken during negotiations by MBUTA members may have been unpopular, but they were necessary nonetheless. Previous attempts by the teachers over the past five years to raise student and community awareness through more docile methods were unsuccessful. Their actions, though unpopular, achieved the goal of securing a long-overdue raise for teachers.
Students may decry the union’s tactics, but in reality, it’s not right to blame teachers for doing what was necessary to get raises, which they had been unable to attain for the last five years while executing less threatening strategies.
Even though the teachers union’s actions were completely warranted, the district also had logical ground to stand on through the drawn-out process. The two parties clearly had disagreements over what was economically feasible, not what was morally correct. Following the district’s original budgetary proposal in May, the teachers stepped up their hostility and protests, and their methods clearly yielded results.
Solidarity was felt by most teachers at the high school level, but for the MBUTA to ensure success in later negotiations, they will need the full support of elementary and middle school teachers as well.
The agreed upon terms do justly benefit teachers, but the entire process would have greatly benefitted from a more straightforward approach from both sides. Despite the aggravating nature of union actions, the ends justified the means.
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