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Dear residents –
This afternoon, 98% of the members of the Newton Teachers Association voted to go on strike beginning tomorrow morning. This was not a leadership decision, but a vote of the entire membership of nearly 2,000. They have been working without a contract all school year.
I am a Newton Public Schools graduate, a Newton City Councilor, and a member of the Council’s Finance Committee. Newton teachers made me who I am today. I’m also the son of a union nurse. I know firsthand that when a union member votes to go on strike, it is always a last resort and never taken lightly. If the teachers are outside their school buildings, it means something has gone very wrong inside City Hall. Even more so in the bitter cold of January! When a union member goes on strike, it means they have been pushed past the breaking point by bad faith negotiations and unreasonable behavior by management over a long period.
Working people today live in an era of out-of-control, day-to-day cost-of-living burdens and inflation, and the reality of personal finances today is significantly worse than even just five years ago. Some NTA members already have starting salaries below $30,000 as it is, which should be shocking to everyone, but even some of the members being offered around $70,000 would struggle to pay rent or cover their mortgage these days unless they happen to have a wealthy spouse or tons of roommates. (That’s not really a good way to plan contracts!)
Our public schools educators fully understand that a municipal government is more constrained than the private sector in terms of available revenues, and they have always been willing to compromise on that point when it comes to settling contracts. (Many private sector unions are asking for 30% or 40% raises and winning more than 20% raises right now, for contrast.) But there’s a limit to compromise, especially when it comes to negotiations with people who won’t budge, month after month and year after year.
What’s the holdup?
Any elected official in this city could tell you, even if they won’t go on the record, that this situation comes down to the total and absolute inflexibility on city finances from one person: Mayor Ruthanne Fuller.
The Mayor alone has the ability to set the allocation amount for city revenues to the Newton Public Schools, and she has refused to consider the possibility that she might have to change that number to settle a contract. (Nearly everyone else agrees the total funding is insufficient to current, often emergency, needs, even before there’s a new contract. The School Committee is reluctant to sign a deal for raises without more funding overall because of the risk of layoffs.) This is unfortunately within a broader “my way or the highway” approach to municipal finance that has shown no adjustment to the macroeconomic upheaval and new realities that began in the United States in 2020.
Mayor Fuller almost single-handedly tanked the passage of an operating tax override referendum last year to fund the schools that she herself put on the ballot. I knocked more doors in support of that override than anyone else in the city, nearly 2,000 doors myself, and with the exception of just a handful of voters whose objection was purely opposition to a tax increase, what I heard over and over and over again was no confidence from the public in the Mayor’s fiscal strategy and in the approach to bargaining with the teachers. Time and again, voters told me they were voting no to send a message of opposition to Mayor Fuller. The same came up again and again during the November municipal elections.
Meanwhile, Mayor Fuller spent the month of December calling major donors to tell them she intends to seek a third term beyond the two remaining years in office. I am sorry to say, however, that a unitary approach to governance without collaboration means that no one else is responsible when a crisis like a teachers’ strike occurs. The buck stops at one desk only.
Can we afford to do more than has been offered?
I know from my years on the Finance Committee that Newton has the resources to settle a fair contract, if the allocation were increased – and if we make some cost-saving in-sourcing moves and reduce our excessively aggressive lock-boxing of certain funds each year. (Whenever these are floated, we are told simply, “I won’t do that.”)
It’s all about priorities. We have options for fiscal flexibility that will not cannibalize key city services. The pessimism of austerity is not an immutable truth, just one point of view.
Our city’s long-term fiscal health has been built on the strength of its public schools. I agree with our front-line educators that they know better than anyone how badly our school system is struggling and how many challenges our students are facing. (That’s one reason they are asking for the hiring of more social workers and interventionists to stabilize a state of emergency.)
The Newton Teachers want to make sure our students have the staffing and programming they need to thrive. It’s also our responsibility as a community to pay a fair and livable contract to every educator in every building. It is not the responsibility of our educators to take an effective pay cut against rising costs of living in order to subsidize the level of services this community wants to provide. Being an educator is not a hobby activity, and these workers need to keep a roof over their heads and feed their families too.
Is anyone listening?
The Newton Teachers Association members, who raise, guide, and mentor the children of this city, have reached a collective decision today to go on strike and wake up the leaders of this city about the realities of what it costs to live these days. I stand in solidarity with these workers, and I call on my fellow residents to stand vocally with our educators, too!
I was disappointed that 21 of my 24 Council colleagues chose to sign a last-minute letter accusing our beloved educators of hurting our children if they voted to go on strike. We all know how difficult and unfair the experience of a strike is. But it is not the teachers and aides who have provoked this situation. Imagine how bad the morale inside our schools must be for literally 98% of our educators to vote, with great reluctance, to go on strike and face all the consequences that come with that. That strike vote alone is a desperate plea to be listened to.
After reading that letter and watching the TV news statements from Mayor Fuller, it is hard not to feel there is a real absence of viable leadership options in this city. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Strike legalities
A final, somewhat arcane but important point: Many of the emails residents have received in recent days from the Mayor and School Committee have chosen to emphasize a melodramatic claim that a strike by teachers would be “illegal.” It is perhaps unlawful or open to liability, but it is not illegal. It’s also not wrong: Even if it requires an act of civil disobedience against an out of date law, it is always the right of the worker to withdraw their labor to get a fair deal, so that they can pay their bills. The union might have to pay a fine or damages, but it’s not a criminal matter.
I am a firm supporter of S.1217/H.1845 proposed in the current Massachusetts legislature: "An Act uplifting families and securing the right to strike for certain public employees," sponsored by State Sen. Rebecca Rausch and State Reps. Mike Connolly and Erika Uyterhoeven. This bill would restore the right of Massachusetts unions representing non-public safety employees of the government, including municipalities, to undertake legally protected strike actions after 6 months of mediation.
Workers in Massachusetts have had a recognized constitutional and moral right since 1842 to assemble into organizations for directing their labor or their withholding of labor for bargaining purposes. Current state law prohibiting normal public employee unions, such as teachers unions, from striking are wrong and should be repealed through this proposal. No law can take away that fundamental right.
A strike is always a last-resort labor action anyway, and it is wrong to stack the deck in negotiations in favor of management by applying legal penalties to try to force unfair and unlivable contract settlements by taking options off the table.
It is the responsibility of any hiring entity, public or private, to pay all workers a fair wage while operating within financial means; it is not the responsibility of workers to subsidize additional services or capacity by accepting lower pay and/or being pushed to live far outside of their work area.
To paraphrase FDR, any business or government that can only operate by not paying living wages does not deserve to continue to operate – and that means it's time to rethink the operational model and cashflow.