Ind. House to discuss collective bargaining for teachers' unions

FROM IDS REPORTS

In a time of budget deficits and education reform, many states have proposed bills to strip public employees of collective bargaining abilities.

And teachers are not taking well to the measures.

Public sector employees in Wisconsin staged a seventh day of protests Monday as Republican Gov. Scott Walker refused to budge on his plans.

Similar bills are making their way through the Indiana General Assembly.

Gov. Mitch Daniels has announced his support to rein in the power of collective bargaining. In his State of the State address, Daniels suggested that Public Law 217, the law permitting collective bargaining through teachers unions, be modified.

Daniels’s suggestion has been drafted into Senate Bill 575, which would limit collective bargaining abilities to cover only wages and wage-related benefits.

The bill passed the Senate Pensions and Labor Committee 7-2 on Jan. 26 and may soon proceed to the House for consideration.

Kathleen Mills has been teaching English at Bloomington High School South for 11 years and is also the adviser of the student newspaper.

This year, she left the union after disagreements about how the union was handling things locally. Despite the disagreements, Mills said she still thinks it would be a sad thing for teachers if collective bargaining were put to an end.

“We have a climate in which a lot of middle-class jobs have been lost and benefits reduced,” Mills said. “Instead of saying how can we get middle-class people who are suffering back on par with public workers, who comparably have it pretty good, we’re saying: ‘Let’s punish teachers and other unionized workers so they’re suffering as much as the rest of the workforce’.”

The Monroe County Community School Corporation entered into a contract with the Monroe County Education Association teacher’s union June 2.

For now, the 88-page contract provides job security and wage guarantees to any member of the union.

—Michelle Sokol