VOICEnews
Use bargaining to prepare students for tomorrow’s workforce
Educators can use collective bargaining
to help prepare students for the
workforce of the 21st century, former U.S.
Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman told
MEA members.
“The work you do as educators, preparing students to join the workforce of tomorrow, is important,” said Herman, the keynote speaker at the MEA Bargaining, Political Action and Public Relations Conference in Detroit.
That work can be aided by what’s accomplished at the bargaining table, she said. “Bargain solutions that will help you prepare tomorrow’s workforce. The power is in your hands to find solutions.”
The solutions you bargain will help prepare students to “cross the bridge to the world of tomorrow and to the economy of tomorrow, a global economy fueled by technology and powered by knowledge,” said Herman, the labor secretary under President Clinton.
Herman offered other advice on how to succeed in bargaining. You can’t succeed, she said, unless you build new partnerships and maintain old relationships during the bargaining process.
“No one ever said bargaining was pretty,” Herman said. “Learn to respect differences and search for the common good. No matter how difficult, we must work at building and maintaining these critical relationships.”