At Issue
On the road fighting privatization
Dick Slagter fills new MEA position helping members whose jobs are threatened by outsourcing
 |
| Dick Slagter |
Since taking on a new assignment at MEA last August, Dick Slagter’s spent most days on the road.
He’s been to Garden City and Saline, Fenton and Buchanen. Midland, Mancelona and Manton. Livingston County, Monroe city and Jackson County.
He’s averaging more than 4,000 miles a month, traveling to towns all across Michigan to help members whose jobs have been threatened by privatization. Though based at MEA’s East Lansing headquarters, Slagter, a former special education teacher, is rarely in the office.
“It’s been hectic,” he says, matter-of-factly.
Indeed.
Slagter was hired last summer to fight privatization. He previously worked as a UniServ director, serving members in Three Rivers, Traverse City and Muskegon County.
New job, old problem
Slagter’s assignment is to help members whose jobs may be outsourced to private companies. His position is a new one at MEA, created in 2006 because of the increased demand from members in need of such help. Fighting privatization isn’t new for Slagter, though.
“I was involved in one of the first privatization efforts in Michigan when the White Pigeon school district wanted to privatize the transportation employees back in 1995- 96,” Slagter says.
Just a decade ago, few districts considered privatizing school employees’ jobs. Now, school boards are threatening privatization as part of a bargaining strategy to win concessions from employee groups or in a misguided attempt to save money.
Educating members
Too often, school employees don’t know
about privatization attempts until it’s too
late, Slagter said. One of the chief reasons for this is that administrators and school
board members lay the groundwork
secretly, investigating private companies
and even soliciting bids without any
public discussion. Another reason is that
school employees often don’t attend public
school board meetings when privatization
is discussed, or the employees don’t take
such discussions seriously.
“The biggest challenge that we face in fighting privatization is raising our members’ awareness and getting them to react in a timely manner,” Slagter said.
Part of Slagter’s job is to do just that— help inform and educate members about what they can do and then to help take appropriate action.
Whenever possible, Slagter encourages members to be proactive—to attend school board meetings or to market members’ expertise—even before privatization is considered.
Prior to his MEA employment, Slagter was a special education teacher in Kelloggsville in Kent County, where he spent 14 years working with students with learning disabilities and emotional impairments. He was active in his local association, too, serving as a chief negotiator and association president. He also served on the executive board of the Kent County Education Association.
A Michigan native, Slagter is a graduate of Kelloggsville High School and Grand Valley State University. He served in the U.S. Navy for more than 10 years, working as a hospital corpsman and field medic in Bethesda, Md., aboard a hospital ship, and in Vietnam and Japan. He and his wife, Janice, live in Fremont. They have two daughters and a late son.