Building Full Capacity Locals
'MEA was with us every step of the way'
 |
| Shepherd EA negotiations team (from left) Carol McCaul, UniServ director Kathy Tucker, Sandy Pulaski, EA President Dee Brock and Jay Gross. Not pictured: Donna Brackemyre, Dabney Curtiss, Cathy Church and Linda Barrand. |
More than 100 MEA local leaders zeroed in on strategies that will help them navigate the rough waters of crisis bargaining during a daylong training in March.
Donna Brackemyre and Dee Brock know those choppy waters well.
As presidents of the Shepherd EA, both steered the 103-member local through a bargaining crisis that lasted two years.
Brackemyre was president when the EA contract expired in June 2004 and stepped down in 2005. Brock, the vice president then, took over the top leadership post.
“It took us a while to realize that our bargaining was in a crisis mode,” said Brock, who participated in last month’s training sponsored by MEA’s Building Full Capacity Locals program.
“We soon learned that MEA was with us every step of the way, giving us the expertise that helped us reach a settlement. We’re a small local, and we couldn’t have done it without MEA’s help.”
BFCL program coordinator Teri Battaglieri said every MEA local should have a crisis campaign plan in place before negotiations start.
“Crisis planning should begin at the same time a local begins planning for bargaining,” Battaglieri said.
A well-planned crisis campaign gives support to your bargaining team and unifies your members to work toward a positive contract settlement, Battaglieri said.
When their contract expired in 2004, Shepherd teachers didn’t expect to go two years without a settlement. For more than a decade, they had bargained with administrators and the school board in a collaborative, nonadversarial manner.
But as bargaining stretched out over months, “everything became more contentious, a huge departure from the relationship we had developed in the past,” Brock said.
Negotiations finally reached the point where Shepherd teachers marshaled the wide range of support services offered by MEA that extends beyond the hard work of UniServ directors.
“It was clear we needed more help from MEA,” Brock said.
A public relations campaign—developed with the help of the MEA Communications Department—resulted in overwhelming parent and community support for Shepherd EA members.
Brock said teachers received a major morale boost when then MEA President Lu Battaglieri came to Shepherd to address them at the start of the 2005-06 school year.
“Lu told us to have faith in the bargaining process, and it will work,” Brock said. “It was the message we needed to hear. We got another boost when [MEA Vice President] Steve Cook and local leaders from around mid-Michigan joined us in informational picketing [in February 2006].”
Finally, the two sides settled last June on the same day fact-finding was to begin.
“We didn’t get everything we wanted, neither side ever does, but I think we can move forward from here,” Brock said. “We can’t thank MEA enough for all the help. We learned so much, and this is what every local should know: MEA offers a vast array of services to help members—all members—and will go anywhere in the state to help, regardless of whether your local is large or small.”