State of the Union Sept/Oct 2011

September/October 2011

Members speak out for reforms, jobs and justice

A groundbreaking contract ne-gotiated by the New Haven Federation of Teachers (NHFT),

Local 933, helped set the tone and the direction when federal lawmakers sat down on July 27 to consider ways to improve teacher-quality provisions under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which is up for reauthorization in Congress.

David Cicarella, president of NHFT, appeared before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to testify about the New Haven contract, which has been in place since July 2010, and to detail its implications for national policymakers dealing with is-sues of teacher quality and evaluation. The AFT leader underscored how, with the help of the national union, his lo-cal has addressed these issues in ways that keep teachers involved in every decision and promote top-to-bottom accountability in schools. New Haven is also crafting strategies that rely on more than a single test to evaluate teachers and preserving transparency in the design and implementation of the new evaluation.

"What is key here is that we did not just build a teacher evaluation plan that simply acts as a sorting mecha-nism to tell us who is doing a good job and who is facing difficulty," Cicarella

NHFT Pres. touts value of collaboration to Congress

NHFT Pres. Dave Cicarella testifies before Congress on collaborating with teachers.

Labor board sides with Backus nurses

The management of Backus Hospital have settled an unfair labor practice charge with the

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Backus Federa-tion of Nurses, an affiliate of AFT Connecticut. The charge was filed against Backus management during the organizing campaign charging that management had violated labor law by intimidating nurses.

The NLRB is requiring Backus Management to post notification throughout the hospital that they will not interfere with the nurses union rights.

“Management know that the anti-union tactics they used while we were forming our union were against the law and that’s why they settled with the NLRB,” said Mi-chelle Hayes, an RN in Maternity.

The Backus Federation of Nurs-es have also filed another unfair labor practice charge against man-agement for failing to provide the union with relevant information regarding employee data necessary for contract negotiations.

Within weeks of the NLRB rul-ing, management told the union that

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New child abuse reporting regulations

impact educators

2

Two locals give back to their communities

3

Secret efforts to undermine unions

exposed

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State of theUnion

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Sharon PalmerPresident

Melodie PetersFirst Vice President

Leo CantySecond Vice President

Charles MorrellSecretary/Treasurer

Eric BaileyCommunications Director

STATE OF THE UNION is published on an irregular basis up to six times a year by AFT Connecticut, 35 Marshall Road, Rocky Hill, CT 06067.Phone: 860/257-9782www.aftct.orgThird class postage paid at Hartford, CT

Postmaster: Send address changes to: AFT CONNECTICUT 35 Marshall Road Rocky Hill, CT 06067.

Members: To change your address or subscription, call 860/257-9782.

STATE OF THE UNION is mailed to all AFT Connecticut members as a benefit of membership. Subscription fees are included in dues, $20 per year for non-members. Although advertisements are screened as carefully as possible, acceptance of an advertisement does not imply AFT Connecticut endorsement of the product or service.© AFT CONNECTICUT, AFT, AFL-CIO 2009

Toxic school supplies pose threat to children’s health

New child abuse reporting regulations impact educators

The Center for Health, Environ-ment & Justice (CHEJ) released its 2011 Back to School Guide

to PVC-Free School Supplies to help parents choose safer, PVC-free school supplies. The average child’s character-themed backpack is filled with supplies and materials made from the most toxic plastic for our health and envi-ronment, poly v inyl chloride (PVC or vinyl).

A new 2011 st udy found PVC is the most widely used hazardous plastic in the world. Chil-dren are particularly vulnerable to the harmful health effects of toxic chemicals, such as phthalates, lead and dioxin, that are released by the PVC lifecycle. These chemicals are linked to chronic diseases on the rise in children including learning and developmental disabilities, asthma, obesity and cancer.

Go to our website www.aftct.org to learn more about PVC-free School Supplies and download the guide.

Public Act 11-93 expands the law governing the reporting and investigation of suspected

child abuse and neglect, with par-ticular focus on school employees who are the alleged perpetrators and the local or regional school district's response.

The act expands t he state's “mandated reporter” law, which generally requires specified profes-sionals to report to the Department of Children and Families (DCF) or local law enforcement when they suspect that children have been abused or neglected.

The act also establishes addi-tional steps to be followed when the alleged perpetrator of the abuse or neglect is a school employee, includ-

ing notification of certain school personnel and SDE. It adds to the responsibilities school boards have when assisting DCF with investiga-tions as well as performing their own, and requires DCF to do random quality assurance reviews of reports involving school employees.

The act makes several changes in the use of, and reporting to, the child abuse registry that DCF must maintain.

The act also eliminates criminal attempt as a crime, the conviction of which requires the State Board of Education (SBE) to deny or revoke a teaching certificate or other educator credential.

Get all the details about this new law on our website: www.aftct.org.

“We make a difference for our students.”

As a paraprofessional in New Britain, Lorraine Cervonni works every day with children who need special education.

“I enjoy being there for the children,” says Lorraine. “Watching them grow and learn from year to year, I can see we make a difference for our students.”

Cuts to education funding are threatening to eliminate Lorraine’s and other paraprofessionals jobs.

“So many kids on the borderline,” says Lorraine. “If we’re not there to help them I’m concerned they’ll fall through the cracks and be forgotten.”

Public employees like Lorraine Cervonni are essential to education. We’re asking policy makers to find the revenue needed to keep Lorraine, and other public employees, doing work that matters. Learn more about Lorraine at CTworkthatmatters.org

Work that matters

STATE OF THE UNION 3

Smart use of social media

Two locals give back to their communitiesBackus Nurses food drive The Backus Federation of Nurses held a food drive at Stop & Shop in Norwich on August 20, collecting 1,344 lbs. of food and $230. The food drive benefited the Gemma E. Moran United Way Labor Food Center, which collects and distributes food to more than 94 food programs including community meal sites, shelters for the homeless, afterschool programs, food pantries, shelters for victims of domestic abuse, and programs for the elderly.

Windham Teachers donate to libraries The Windham Federation of Teachers, Local 1547, donated $500 to each of the three public libraries in the area to purchase books for children. “Reading is a key component of our curriculum in the schools,” said Randall Prose, president of the union. “Our stu-dents have made great strides in improving their CMT scores, especially in reading, and our union wanted to do something to help keep that going outside of the schools.”

Carol Adams, an RN at Backus Hospital speaks with residents about the importance of donating to the Labor Food Center.

Are your passwords secure?Keep your password secret:

• Never write your password down

• Never use the same password on other systems or accounts

• Change your password if you haven’t changed it in the last 6 months.

• Never choose a password that relates to you personally—such as your name, ID, birthdate, etc.

Many worksites have em-braced social media as another means of commu-

nications. Before you post on your worksite’s social media site or your own think about these guidelines.

Keep it cleanIf your blog, postings or other online activities are inconsistent with, or would negatively impact your work-site’s reputation or brand, you should not refer to or identify your connec-tions with that workplace.

Don’t post at workMost posts on social media sites have time stamps associated with them. Personal blogging is not a work re-lated activity, even if you are posting on your work’s site, and should be done on personal time only. Never use work computers to post even if you are on a break.

LongevityAll it takes is for one person to see your post, photo or v ideo and it could be copied a nd re-poste d elsewhere without your permission. Once posted it could stay on the in-ternet to haunt you forever.

Patient, Student PrivacyThe Health Insurance Portabil-ity and Accountability Act (HIPAA) takes patient privacy very seriously. If your post could be used to identify a patient it would be a HIPAA viola-tion. Educators should never post comments about students on social media sites.

Use common senseThink of it as a big gathering where there are people you know, and people you don’t know, but everyone can hear you. Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want people to see.

4 STATE OF THE UNION

The Connecticut AFL-CIO, as part of the We Are One Coalition, sponsored round table discus-

sions with U.S. Reps. DeLauro and Himes on jobs and the economy. A FT Connect icut members, Steve McKeever, president of the Middletown Federation of Teachers and John Altieri, jurisdictional vice president for teachers, spoke at the roundtables.

“Connecticut workers want Con-gress to act on the jobs crisis with the same urgency that was brought to the manufactured political crisis over the debt ceiling,” said Lori Pelletier, secretary-treasurer of the Connecti-cut AFL-CIO.

“With the economy in such a vulnerable position, I agree emphati-cally with the AFL-CIO that Congress should be working every single day to create jobs. But instead, the House majority decided to hold the country, and our economy, hostage by refus-ing the raise the debt ceiling in a re-sponsible and bipartisan way. Their

final package, which I was proud to vote against, slashes $550 billion from critical public investments like education, infrastructure, research, law enforcement, and food safety,” said Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro. “You can be sure that in the coming months, as the newly created Super Committee in Congress debates further cuts, that I will be fighting to create jobs—not cut them.”

"Job growth is job number one," said Congressman Jim Himes. "Un-fortunately, given the politics in Con-gress right now, it's going to be very hard to get things done. But I voted for the Recovery Act, which kept tens of thousands of firemen and teachers employed."

"Congress needs to focus on job creation and retention, investing in our infrastructure and our children’s future," said John Altieri.

"We need to Congress to invest in programs that will create jobs,” said Steve McKeever.

In July, one of AFT Connecticut’s newest members, John Brady of the Backus Federation of Nurses, tes-tified before the National Labor Relations Board on

the agency’s proposed rulemaking on union election procedures.

The AFL-CIO asked affiliates to have workers testify. AFT Connecticut’s organizer Ole Hermanson identified Brady, who could talk of management delay tactics and Excelsior List fakery. John testified during the five min-utes AFT was allocated at the hearing.

While just individuals who were involved in AFT organizing drives, John and the other workers made a persuasive and forceful case for a change in election procedures.

Watch John’s testimony on our website www.aftct.org.

Newest AFT Connecticut member testifies before NLRB

AFT Connecticut leaders speak at jobs forums


Middletown Teachers Pres. Steve McKeever speaks at the We Are One Jobs Roundtable.

Still image taken from video of Backus RN John Brady testifying before the National Labor Relations Board.

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State employees ratified the State Employee Bargain-ing Agent Coalition (SEBAC) agreement with the Malloy Administration last month.

Kathy Fischer, a member of UCPEA local 3695, has worked for nearly 11 years at the UConn Women’s Center as an educator and advocate on issues of gender equity for students, staff, faculty and the wider community. “Today marks a victory for those who believe in the middle-class and believe that working families should have good jobs with good benefits and a voice at work,” said Kathy. “We as state employees took charge to help keep families from slipping out of the middle class. I am proud to have helped hold the line for the families of Connecticut’s state employees.” You can read the details of the SEBAC 2011 agreement on our website www.aftct.org.

NHFT Pres. touts value of collaboration to Congress, continued

AFT Connecticut member tells why she voted “Yes”


UCPEA member Karen Fischer speaks at a SEBAC press conference.

told the lawmakers. "Instead, we created a system that focuses on the continuous support and develop-ment of all teachers."

The AFT local president went on to detail many of the essentials for making "teacher quality" stand for more than just a cruel exercise in blaming teachers. Among those essential elements: a system that engenders trust, transparency that comes from union-distr ict col-laboration on issues of quality in the profession, strong professional de-velopment tailored to help individual educators improve their practice, and elements of teacher evaluation that are mutually agreed upon.

Cicarella also highlighted the value of addressing these issues through the contract. “Instead of in-stituting ‘top-down’ reforms, with no teacher input, we were able to utilize the collective bargaining process to ensure that teachers are heard and respected. ... It is a tool that teachers and school districts can use to drive real reforms aimed at improving

both teaching and learning.”The contract has been hailed in

the local media as “a first-in-the-nation agreement between a city and a teachers union to work together to change the way public schools work.” It has also helped mobilize commu-nity support for public schools. Yale University, for example, is commit-ting $4 million a year for the next

four years to cover the enrollment costs for college-bound New Haven students.

Cicarella said the contract also reflects a bottom-line essential that any district needs when it comes to dealing with issues of teacher quality and evaluation: “a collaborative en-vironment that puts student learning front and center.”

Connecticut’s pension system sees 21 percent return

The Connecticut Retirement and Trust Funds, Hartford, re-turned an estimated 21 percent for the fiscal year ended June 30, the highest in 23 years, Denise L. Nappier, state treasurer and principal fiduciary of the pension system, said in a news release.

Assets grew to an estimated $25.2 billion, a 15 percent in-crease from 12 months earlier, the

news release said.The improvement in invest-

ment returns was led by gains in domestic equity and emerging-markets equity investments, ac-cording the news release.

“As encouraging as the news may be, we must be mindful of the somber outlook for capital market returns going forward,” Ms. Nap-pier said in the release.


A nonprofit investigative reporting group called the Center for Media and Democ-racy has unveiled a trove of more than

800 "model" bills and resolutions secretly voted on by corporations and politicians through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The bills and resolutions on ALEC Exposed in-clude model legislation supporting vouchers and attacks on teacher tenure and seniority.

The center reports that "through the cor-porate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, global corporations and state politi-cians vote behind closed doors to try to rewrite state laws that govern your rights." These so-called model bills reach into almost every area of American life and often directly benefit huge corporations. ALEC has written measures that limit workers' rights, drain labor unions of resources for protecting employees, under-mine consumer protections, attempt to funnel tax dollars to for-profit corporations through

privatization schemes, and push the "free trade" agenda that has shipped well-paying American jobs overseas.

ALEC-written bills, which largely benefit the organization's corporate members, have been introduced in legislatures in every state—but without disclosure to the public that corpora-tions had previously drafted or voted on them through ALEC. The corporations involved spend thousands of dollars in unreported contribu-tions to ALEC.

Before the Center for Media and Democracy published this collection of bills, it was difficult to trace the numerous controversial and extreme provisions popping up in legislatures across the country directly to ALEC and its corporate underwriters. The center obtained copies of the bills after one of the thousands of people with ac-cess shared them, and a whistle-blower provided a copy to the center.

TOP SECRET

Secret efforts to undermine unions, workers’ rights exposed

Last month, the Connecticut Post newspaper broke the story that a consultant for a billion-

aire from Greenwich was lobbying for charter changes that would give the mayor control of the Bridgeport school board at the same time that local and city officials were also look-ing to reconstitute the board.

According to the Post, Meghan L ow ne y, of F a i r f i e l d , w ho w or k s f o r h e d g e f u n d p h i -la nt h ropi st Steve Ma n-d e l , t r i e d first to find a way to create

a mayor-controlled school board through a charter change and then to get the board reconstituted.

Numerous emai l exchanges between Lowney and State Board of Education Chairman Allan Taylor detail an ongoing lobbying effort that she repeatedly asked be kept con-fidential. Lowney and Taylor were introduced, via email, by Alex John-ston, director Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, or ConnCan, of New Haven on Jan. 11.

In the emails, Lowney tells Tay-lor she is part of a small group strat-egizing a Bridgeport charter revi-sion campaign that would result in mayoral control of the schools. They were hoping to turn it around in time for the November 2011 election. She

called the Bridgeport Partnership for Student Success a new community-based education reform coalition gaining momentum.

In emails to Taylor, Lowney tells him that Mandel, founder of Lone Pine Capital in Greenwich, along with his wife, was interested in making meaningful school change in Bridgeport. They did not think accelerated change could take place under the current school board, which by most counts was deemed dysfunctional.

The emails chronicle efforts to get a resolution to reconstitute the school board on a state board agenda for months, before the effort to re-constitute the school board became public on July 6.

More secrets exposed in Bridgeport school board reconstitution


In Memoriamof Edna Potts

We regret to announce that AFT Connecticut’s receptionist Edna

Potts has passed away.

As the president of her OPEIU union she looked out for the

welfare of her members.

She was the voice of AFT Connecticut whenever someone called our office and was always

there to greet you with a smile.

Edna was a loving wife, mother, grandmother and friend.

We will all miss her very much.

Parent teacher conference help

NLRB sides with Backus nurses, continued

For new and even veteran teach-ers, the first parent teacher conferences of the year can be

daunting. AFT Connecticut, along with the New Haven Federation of Teachers, Local 933, has created two video to help teachers prepare for their upcoming parent teacher conferences. Go to the professional develop-ment section of our website at www.aftct.org to watch these informative videos.

The Backus Federation of Nurses negotiating committee are currently negotiating their first contract with Backus Hospital.

they were not allowed to meet in the hospital conference rooms, which is a violation of the NLRB decision.

The Backus Federation of Nurses will be filing a new unfair labor practice charge.

The nurses have been seeking to hold meetings at the hospital so nurses can attend the negotiations during their lunch breaks. The hospital has thus far refused to conduct negotiations on site. All negotiations are cur-rently taking place at the Holiday Inn in Norwich.

“We are keeping all members up to date about the negotiations schedule,” said Hayes.

Negotiations with management are ongoing.

Experience hands-on learning at Mystic Seaport!It’s not too early to book your fall or spring field trip for next year! Mystic Seaport is an experiential education facility where students step back into history, explore science and math, and connect to litera-ture and art as they learn more about the maritime world. Mystic Seaport’s educa-tional programs emphasize authentic, hands-on, relevant learning where stu-dents are active and collaborative partici-pants in their education. They offer self-guided visits, guided tours, Planetarium shows, overnight programs, and a whole lot more! Visit www.mysticseaport.org/educators for more information.


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paiDHartforD Ctpermit # 4501

Building on the basicsSharon Palmer, AFT Connecticut President

For AFT Connecticut and our public employee unions, there was no vacation this summer. We were fully embroiled in the fight for the tentative

state agreement, which was approved in August. Your support saved more than 6,500 jobs through-

out the state and prevented the wholesale cut of services to thousands of residents who depend on us every day. Thank you.

The campaign against the forces that would have torpedoed this agreement and un-dermined our cause was consuming and sapped our strength, but we are still strong and more determined than ever to fight on your behalf.

AFT Connecticut has a full year of work ahead. We welcome it and we begin the struggle anew by building on the basics, which is why you joined a union.

What are the basics? Defending the rights of our members at the work place and working at the bar-gaining table to deliver better pay, benefits, working conditions and a say in the workplace.

We will continue to work hard to ensure that we deliver on those basics, while leveraging our strength

to give working people a voice in government, ensur-ing that lawmakers never forget that working families voted them into office.

We have taken a beating the last few years. We have seen conservative forces undermine our strength, even within our ranks. We will continue to work hard to check and then turn the tide in this campaign against unions and the public service.

The struggle will make us stronger and re-news our courage to do our best for our members, who have entrusted us with

their dreams and their future.The opportunity for you to be active and involved

never ends within the union. We are months away from municipal elections which will have a direct impact on local budgets and jobs.

Our legislative and political action committee and staff are available to help you and your local take an active role in shaping the outcome of these municipal elections.

Call our membership mobilization coordinator Teri Merisotis to find out how you can take a more active role.

”Your support saved more than 6,500 jobs throughout the state.”

Election Day 2011

On Nov. 8, voters will go to the polls to elect municipal leaders throughout the state. These newly elected members of local governments and boards of educa-tion will shape the budgets that impact your jobs.

Find out how you can take an active role in shaping the outcome of these munici-pal elections. Call Teri Merisotis at 860/257-9782 or email [email protected]

Documents

State of the Union Sept/Oct 2011