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Monday, January 08, 2001
By Jane Elizabeth, Post-Gazette Education Writer
WASHINGTON -- The National Substitute Teacher Alliance is truly an organization of the 21st century.
It began as a simple Web site, always under construction, updated whenever someone had a spare moment. It was a place for substitutes to "meet" and exchange e-mail messages.
But in July, about 70 subs from across the country got up from their computers and came here to the nation's capitol for a weekend conference -- a meeting that ended with the formation of the first national organization for substitute teachers.
Elected as its president was Shirley Kirsten, who only a few years ago organized the Fresno (Calif.) Area Substitute Teachers Association which immediately sought, and received, substantial pay raises for its members. The national association now has representatives in 14 states, including the newly formed Florida Alliance of Substitute Teachers, and has adopted a "bill of rights."
As a labor group, the NTSA (see www.geocities.com/nstasubs isn't focusing on the quality of substitute teachers. Primary among the goals is "respect and dignity for substitutes," said Kirsten, "but respect doesn't mean shaking our hands. We want health benefits, proper wages" and career enhancements such as access to due process and preferential treatment for full-time job openings.
"We believe collective bargaining is the way to do this. This is our focus," said Kirsten.
They're also vociferously opposed to the emerging trend of hiring subs from "temp" agencies like Kelly Services. Doug Provencio of Oakland, Calif., president of the National Education Association's Substitute Teachers Caucus, calls that practice "a blatantly anti-union move."
Kirsten's made a few more cross-country trips back here, mostly to meet with the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers, the country's two powerful teachers unions. The two organizations and their affiliates at times have regarded substitutes with attitudes ranging from lukewarm to hostile, for reasons including an already heavy workload and fear that substitutes would sponge the pay raises that might have gone to full-time teachers.
But in November, the AFT and NEA took a somewhat reserved first step toward welcoming substitutes nationally when they agreed to contribute $5,000 each to the substitute teachers alliance. Also, the NEA has asked Kirsten to speak at its national Collective Bargaining Conference in New Orleans in March.
While about 70 percent of all teachers are in unions, only an estimated 2 to 3 percent of substitutes are covered under collective bargaining. Some substitutes who weren't welcome in traditional teachers unions have joined other local, non-education unions, such as the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the Service Employees International Union.
In Pennsylvania and some other states, state labor laws make it problematic for substitutes to join unions. The sub would have to be employed by only one school district, which normally doesn't happen in a state with 501 school districts and a sub shortage in nearly every one. One way around the law is to organize regionally; for instance, by Pennsylvania's intermediate units instead of school districts. Subs in New York use this model.
The Pittsburgh chapter of the AFT does represent about 200 subs who work only in Pittsburgh schools, and recently negotiated substitute pay that will reach $117 per day in 2002.
"With substitutes being so transient, it's going to be difficult to form a union and keep a union," said Geoffrey Smith, director of the Substitute Teaching Institute at Utah State University.
And not all subs believe union affiliation is necessary. Yvonne Christensen, a substitute teacher in Oregon City and president of the Oregon Substitute Teachers Association, said her group has been approached by local teachers unions to discuss membership. "But we don't think they can do anything for us that we haven't done for ourselves," she said.
But she believes strongly that substitutes should join together to make changes in their working conditions. "Most subs who have gained any kind of equity in the marketplace," she said, "did it through organizing."