I haven’t had a chance to report on a meeting I attended Wednesday night with IEA Executive Director Audrey Soglin.
I got somewhat distracted by Ben “The Stalker” Velderman.
Soglin presented the IEA’s legislative reform package at a breakout session of a Region membership meeting. The IEA leadership is promoting this package as an alternative to the anti-union Performance Counts bill backed by Stand for Children, The Civic Committee of the Commercial Club and Advance Illinois.
The IEA package is also supported by the IFT and the Chicago Teachers Union.
I have discussed frequently the two proposals and why I am concerned about the concessions on tenure, seniority, RIFs and evaluations that our union leadership is making.
But I found something very troubling in Soglin’s presentation.
On slide six of her power point, Soglin presented the self-described highlights of a member poll, conducted by a paid polling company of 400 IEA members with a 4.9% margin of error.
According to the poll 70% favor a process that would speed up firing teachers. 67% favor doing away with using seniority as the sole criteria when RIFs are made. 69% favor revoking certification of teachers for chronically unsatisfactory rankings. 86% oppose taking away our right to strike.
Do you find these results fantastically absurd? Me too.
Aside from the failure to pass the laugh test, this whole polling thing is an assault on our Association’s democratic process.
Our legislative platform is determined by elected delegates to the yearly Representative Assembly. And while it is a broad platform which cannot predetermine every legislative issue that may arise between RA’s, it does address these current issues.
That the leadership would substitute a poll for the rules and procedures of our Association is pretty bad.
It is all too typical of the reign of IEA President Ken Swanson.
Fred Klonsky 
I don’t believe numbers like that for one minute . Who the heck did they poll, Michelle Rhee and her ever growing band of merry men? Many of us have seen incompetency in the classroom, but realize there’s a process that has to be followed to get rid of a teacher. Union members who give up these rights including seniority, are helping to destroy everything that has been gained over the years (and themselves).
Without seniority there is anarchy, nepotism and a subjectivity component (also known as I don’t like you, you have to go). In Philadelphia we have site select process coupled with seniority, BUT schools that are taken over are automatically full site select schools (a prospective teacher has to be interviewed like in the private sector). For regular schools, each building has an option each year, to vote for or against full site select, and many are voting FOR it. Your principal may put on the pressure, but it’s up to the faculty to school their own people
. “Tenure” if I remember, used to be reserved for college professors, whereas teachers get permanently certified. Let’s stop mixing up the freakin’ terminology and giviing the public the impression that firing can’t be done.
Addendum: site select was something we had to give in to, in exchange for somethng else, or to keep something in the contract. What they are doing is working around the contract by taking over schools and doing whatever the heck they want. We’re very watchful, but we have a new governor and a gung ho superintendent 😦
Different angle: unions should not poll members.
What?
Yup. We are membership organizations. Our strength derives from our collective voice and our collective action. We should use membership meetings (big or small, at the school or at the district) to move information from the base to the leadership. We can also use local leaders to transmit information/questions/sentiment towards the center.
A union that polls is a union that with a serious weakness that should be addressed.
Jonathan