From everyone at the NACST Office - 
Have a blessed Christmas and a safe and healthy New Year.

Contents:
from the President: The State of the Union 2001
SDTA Lawsuit
Report of Locals
Rev. Richard McBrien
The U.S. Bishops
Christmas the Union Way

Previous Issues

from the President

     Shortly after the tragic events of September 11th, the NACST Executive Committee made the decision to postpone our October Convention and cancel the February 2002 Leadership Conference.  This was especially unfortunate because one of the mort important functions of the National Association is to bring together Catholic Teacher Union leaders so that we can share our experiences (sometimes referred to as "war stories") and strengthen the bonds that unite us in this often precarious world of union representation for those who labor for the Church.  The Friday Night Social, the Report of Locals and the Open Forum are wonderful opportunities for some face to face union building.  Chris Ehrmann does a terrific job keeping all os us in touch through the weekly Presidents' E-Mail, but it is the Convention that puts all the pieces into place.
 Communication is the key both locally and nationally.  The members of every local union need to know what is being done by their officers to secure a better new labor agreement as well as enforce the existing one.  The leadership in the local unions need information from and through NACST to help them remain effective for their members.
     In an attempt to keep communication flowing and to try to bring the Convention to you, I am going to use this column as my State of the Union Address.  A Report of Locals has been included elsewhere in this newsletter.
     About a month after our 2000 Convention, several busloads of NACST members and their families traveled to Washington, D.C. to deliver NACST's First Annual Report Card to the U.S. Bishops.  As you may recall, there was certainly a lot of room for improvement.
     Throughout the winter and spring, negotiations for a first collective bargaining agreement continued at St. Denis Parish in Manasquan, New Jersey.  It was eighteen months and counting and still there was no settlement.  The main point at issue was the grievance procedure.  Both the parish and the diocese were adamant that the pastor must be the final decision maker for all grievances except for termination of a tenured teacher.  That was reserved to the bishop.
     In April, Mike Milz, Bill Blumenstein and I worked at the NACST Exhibit Booth at the NCEA Convention in Milwaukee where I also was asked to participate in the NCEA's 1-day symposium on School Choice.
     On May 8th, teachers at St. Rose Elementary School in Belmar, New Jersey voted to unionize.  This occurred three hours after the Superintendent of Schools had come to lunch for the sole purpose of asking the teachers to vote no and the Assistant Superintendent and the Pastor greeted each teacher as she entered the polling place.  What is it about unfair labor practices that they don't understand?  By the way, negotiations are on-going (for a probable scenario, see St. Denis above.)
     In late July, Mike Milz and I conducted a Negotiations Workshop with CHALTA Team members in Cleveland.  We then traveled to Pittsburgh and with George Rudolph met with Bishop Donald Wuerl, the Chairman of the U.S. Bishops' Education Committee.
     In October, I joined Pat Cassidy and Margo Ennis of COACE in Columbus, Ohio for the OCEA Convention where we spoke with teachers from eight dioceses in Ohio, Indiana, and West Virginia.  Mike Milz and I also participated in a very successful meeting in Buffalo with Doug Bowers and members of the SLTA Board and Sue Manzella and members of the DETA Board.
     In mid-October, the St. Denis Teachers Association filed a lawsuit in New Jersey's Superior Court against the Parish and the Diocese of Trenton "to enforce an employer's obligation to bargain in good faith and to deal fairly and lawfully with its employees and their representatives."
     Over Veteran's Day weekend, Bill Blumenstein and I held a Negotiations Workshop with COACE Team members and Fisher Catholic High School in Columbus. Ohio.
     Looking ahead to 2002: NACST is preparing its 2nd Annual Bishops' Report Card; the NCEA Convention in April will take place in Atlantic City, New Jersey and NACST will be sharing a corner booth with CTU, our Camden affiliate; at our 2002 Convention next October, Executive Committee elections will occur; and, if we can work the schedule right, we may still be able to hold our postponed 2001 Convention.
     At the end of every State of the Union Address, I urge our locals to stay strong and committed, because what happens in one local most assuredly has an impact on other locals.  To those locals facing contract talks this year, please make use of the resources of the National whether it be for information or a workshop.
     For local problems or grievances, the NACST Office in only a 1-800 call away.  In reference to grievances, the NACST Legal Defense Fund is there to assist you financially up to one-half the cost of any arbitration bills.
     NACST can also be of service if there are teachers in your diocese who do not enjoy the benefits of representation and a negotiated contract and would like to organize.
     I applaud the fine work being done in the locals and I wish you all continued good fortune in your union activities.  Please let the National Association of Catholic School Teachers know how we can be of assistance.
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SDTA Lawsuit

St. Denis Teachers Association filed a lawsuit October 18, 2001 against the parish & school and the Diocese of Trenton [NJ].

The suit was filed after teachers at the school voted September 4 to authorize the union leadership to call a strike "at a time to be determined by the Association" and an October 9 negotiation session in which the school's chief negotiator informed the union team that they were "at total impasse."

The lawsuit charges that the parish & school, and the diocese, have bargained in bad faith, violating the provisions of the state Constitution.  The complaint asks the court to enforce the employer's "obligation to bargain in good faith ... and to deal fairly and lawfully with its employees and their representatives."

The lawsuit seeks an "order compelling the Defendants ... to return to the negotiating table and ... to bargain in good faith with the objective of achieving a contract between the parties" and "an order declaring unlawful Defendant's threats that lay teachers will be permanently replaced in the event they strike or honor a picket line."

Teachers at St. Denis worked while 18 negotiation sessions between SDTA and the school were held from July 2000 through October 9, 2001.

During those sessions, the parish refused to agree to a neutral third party for the grievance procedure and the union proposed a contract without a grievance procedure.  Teachers would then maintain their right to arbitrate contract disputes over secular matters in the state court system, "it being a fundamental right that citizens may take their disputes to such fora for a just determination of those disputes."

The parish, however, continued to insist on a "process in which a final and binding determination is made by the Pastor or the Bishop of Trenton."

"Thus, the Parish and School/Diocese here insist, as the price for a collective bargaining agreement, that the teachers and their bargaining representative relinquish the fundamental right of all citizens to have a disinterested party adjudicate their disputes."

The complaint further maintains that the parish & school have committed an  unfair labor practice by inappropriately dealing with individual teachers.  The school's principal told a teacher that "she would be terminated in the event she did not report for school in the event of a strike and/or sign a contract containing substantive terms and conditions of employment."  "The employer's negotiators have stated, repeatedly, that any teacher who declines to report to work in the event os a strike by the Plaintiff will be replaced permanently." 

The complaint alleges that the school has "demonstrated its refusal to bargain in good faith with the duly elected representative of the teachers" by "combining a refusal to permit a court of competent jurisdiction to hear claims of contract breach, a refusal to consider binding neutral arbitration, ... with its direct dealing with individual teachers and its threats to terminate teachers who honor any picket line established by the SDTA."

Quoted in the Trenton diocesan newspaper, The Monitor [September 21], the diocesan superintendent claimed the union "wants the parish to exclude the pastor as the final decision-maker in non-termination cases and to exclude the bishop in cases involving termination."

In a September 26 letter to the Monitor editor, SDTA President Janne Darata responded by stating, "The teachers do not want to exclude the Bishop from the grievance process.  We have already agreed that in all matters of faith and morals, the Bishop has the final say.  However, the Parish insists that the pastor be the final decision-maker... The St. Denis Teachers Association is asking that the final decision be made by a neutral third party.  The SDTA never expected that this would be a problem since three high schools in our diocese have had just such a procedure in their contracts for thirty years.  Why are teachers at St. Denis being denied this right?"

Subsequent to the filing of the SDTA lawsuit the St. Denis pastor wrote school parents that the union is "trying to force St. Denis to agree to give outside arbitrators binding authority over how our school operates."  Claiming that the union's charge of the school not bargaining in good faith is "insulting" and a "distortion of what has transpired," the pastor stated that "the reality of the union's lawsuit is that we are now forced to divert our parish funds into a legal defense rather than in support of matters of faith and education."

The lawsuit is the second filed by a NACST affiliate in New Jersey on behalf of the organization of Catholic elementary school teachers.  Following three years of court hearings, judgments, and appeals, the state Supreme Court ruled in July 1997 that the state's constitution does guarantee the labor rights of Catholic elementary school teachers.  The court unanimously ruled in favor of the CTU [formerly SCTO] and teachers at six Catholic elementary schools in the Camden Diocese.

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Report of Locals
The following information is provided by local presidents for their union activities through October 2001.

Negotiations: YDCT elementary schools ratified a three year contract in June 2001.  SDTA reached impasse and are currently in litigation.  9 of 11 DETA elementary schools successfully concluded negotiations, one of the two remaining is in mediation over wage issues.  Eight SDACT schools completed negotiations last year, without any work stoppages.  St. Rose [Belmar NJ] teachers are currently negotiating, aides at the school will begin negotiations after the Christmas holidays.  CTU, CHALTA and Holy Cross High School [ACT] are in the final years of their contracts.  All will be negotiating this year.  CHALTA is using the Interest Based Negotiations model.

Grievances: ACT had several decisions which overturned teacher suspensions and other disciplinary actions.  One decision ordered the School System to reimburse teachers over the three years of the contract for any monies paid out for medical services which were over and above the ones negotiated by the Union.  A grievance appeal panel ruled in favor of a YDCT teacher who was refused compensation for funeral days.  The school administrator refused to pay, saying the teacher didn't attend the funeral.  Instead, she had taken care of the family's young children during the funeral services.  The panel ruled that the school must reimburse the teacher for the days.  A DETA grievance over the issue of salary overpayment since 1996 is currently in process.  The school wants to withhold teacher salaries to make up for the overpayment.  An arbitrator ruled against a non-tenured SDACT teacher over the issue of notification of non-renewal.  The arbitrator ruled that since the school took no affirmative action to notify the grievant that her contract would be renewed, she had no reasonable cause to believe it would be.

Union Elections: DETA officers in spring 2002; CHALTA in May 2002; NACST Executive Committee in October 2002

YDCT membership has increased to 349 with the addition of St. Rose Elementary School teachers.  Representation elections will be held at other schools in the diocese in January 2002.

SDACT held representation elections at an elementary school in late November 2001 [results are unavailable at press time].

DETA will begin giving out scholarships to children of elementary school teachers [DETA members] who attend Catholic high schools.  The union will use a lottery system to give the scholarships.

CTU is looking into the implications of the diocese's move to a new school administration model.  Two high schools in the diocese have adopted the President/Principal administrative model, currently used in school systems in which other NACST affiliates represent teachers.

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Rev. Richard McBrien
excerpts from a Rev. Richard McBrien September 30, 1999 column "New health care document stresses workers' rights."

 No charge against a religious institution is more cutting than the charge of hypocrisy.  It is a charge that has been leveled with increasing frequency at Catholic dioceses and parishes for the way they treat some of their lay and religious ministers, against Catholic schools for the treatment of their teachers and support staff, and against Catholic hospitals for the treatment of their nurses, technical staff, and general work force.
 "A Fair and Just Workplace: Principles and Practices for Catholic Health Care" ... is a set of reflections 'intended to help bishops, managers, union leaders and workers consider how Catholic social teaching can be applied in the workplace.'
 The document does not flinch from naming what is perhaps the major moral challenge facing Catholic health care institutions today.  There is, the paper admits, 'a gap between general principles (of Catholic social teaching) and practices at the local level.'
 Nowhere is this gap more evident than in the continued resistance to unionization and to employees' efforts to achieve a 'just and fair workplace.'
 The working paper concludes on a ringing note: 'We believe that fair wages, decent working conditions and a real sense of participation, however they are realized, are not burdens for Catholic health care, but signs of a community which is serious about its Catholic identity and mission.'
 This also applies, of course, to diocese, parishes, and schools, where the same gap between teaching and practice exists.
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The U.S. Bishops
excerpts from "A Fair and Just Workplace: Principles and Practices for Catholic Health Care", NCCB/USCC Committee for Domestic Policy, September 2, 1999

 In Catholic teaching, work is more than just a way to make a living.  It is one of the ways that people express themselves and contribute to the common good.  Work is also the ordinary way most people meet their material needs, so wages and benefits need to be adequate to sustain workers and their families.
 Providing a just and fair workplace for workers is one way that Catholic health care can affirm the dignity of each worker and make a contribution to the common good.  Among the elements of a just and fair workplace are: fair wages, adequate benefits, safe and decent working conditions, and the right to participate in decisions which affect one's work, as well as opportunities for advancement, learning, and growth.
 While both management and labor profess support for the rights of workers, one of the areas where perspectives clearly differ ... is defining the appropriate roles for management and union representatives as workers exercise their right to decide whether to join a union.
 Although it is difficult to agree on what is ideal, it may be worthwhile to specify what behaviors and tactics should be avoided during an organizing campaign:
Making false and misleading claims; threats, intimidation, or coercion of any kind; impugning the motives of others; using the law as a weapon or a means of delay, rather than as a protector of rights.
 Care should be taken to be fair and accurate in all communications and to avoid attacks on the institution and its leadership, the organizing process, the union involved or the organizers.

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Christmas the Union Way

Union-made products make great Christmas gifts.  For an extensive listing of union-made products, visit the website:  www.unionlabel.org.
The site also lists those products on union boycott lists; avoid them for the holiday.
Some union-made products, companies to consider this Christmas:
Clothing -
OSHKOSH B'GOSH
BIKE Athletic Co.
Rawling Manufacturing
APEX Leather Corp
SIMCO Leather
Gamour Glove Corp
Toys - 
TESTOR Corp.
GOLDEN Books
RADIO FLYER
DIXON TICONDEROGA
ETCH-A-SKETCH
LIONEL Trains
Candy -
Russell Stover Company
Use the unionlabel website search engine to find out if the gift you plan to give is union made. 

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