Voices From 1975: The Strike (Part 4)
Despite its contentious birth, the 1973-1975 Master Agreement between the Columbus Education Association and the Board of Education was a landmark achievement in the history of CEA. Since 1968, the Board and the Association had only been able to agree to a series of single-year contracts, prompting the negotiations process to begin anew, providing for little substantial change from one agreement to the next. The 1973-1975 Master Agreement marked the first multi-year contract in the Association’s history.
The Master Agreement between CEA and the Columbus Board of Education is a living document– just like the Constitution of the United States, it changes over time. Much of the exact language of the 1973 contract still resides in the current Master Agreement, but many additions have been negotiated in since then. The contract at that time only numbered 48 pages; the current Master Agreement is 156 pages in length.
Separated by a span of over thirty years, the most recent Master Agreement and the 1973-1975 contract are peppered with differences in both what is written and what isn’t written. Some of the differences between the two contracts reside in a variation in numbers. For example, teachers would be reimbursed for work-related travel at the rate of 11 cents per mile in 1974, compared with the 49 cents per mile today. A total of $2,500 in term life insurance was available only for full time employees in 1974; today the amount paid out is $50,000, and half as much is available to teachers employed less than full time.
Other differences had simply to do with different names being used within key functions of the Master Agreement. The Association Building Council was called the Principal’s Advisory Council (PAC) in the contract. The roles, responsibilities and functions of the PAC were virtually identical to the ABC of the present day, save for referring teachers to PAR, which did not exist at the time. Faculty Representatives were called Building Representatives, but their responsibilities remained the same. The further into the 1973-1975 contract one reads, the more the astounding differences become apparent.
The Master Agreement of the time provided hospital, surgical and major medical insurance to CEA members, but the Board would only pay half of the premiums for the dependents of Association members. There was no mention of vision, dental or disability insurance to be found anywhere in the entire contract. The idea of an Employee Assistance Program or a Sick Leave Bank had not even been thought of yet, much less brought to the negotiations table.
Columbus Public School psychologists were mandated to work four weeks longer than any other teacher in the district and were compensated by being paid a fixed amount tied to the salary schedule. Today, school psychologists can decide for themselves whether or not they want to work those additional four weeks and still receive a supplemental contract for the additional time spent.
Teachers were given both sick leave and personal days in 1974. Sick leave still accrued at the rate of 15 days per year, but teachers were only permitted to accumulate a maximum of 200 sick days for the 1974-1974 school year. There is unlimited sick day accrual in effect in today’s Master Agreement.
Teachers were restricted to using their personal days only for “emergency personal reasons”. While this description remained vague, teachers were informed in no uncertain terms the reasons for which they could not use personal days. Teachers were forbidden to use them for “recreational purposes, applying for another job, moving from one home to another, purchasing an automobile or major electrical appliance or accompanying a husband or wife on a business trip”. Currently the contract only stipulates teachers cannot use personal days for gainful employment or to conduct their own job action (such as a strike or sickout against the district).
Some of the differences between the two contracts were rooted in what can now be viewed as little else than sex discrimination. 1972 witnessed the passage of Title IX legislation by Congress in an effort to prevent discrimination in educational programs on the basis of sex. This wording was later applied to extracurricular activities; in a short time, girls would be able to participate in virtually all of the same sports that boys were currently engaged in.
Despite this progress at the Federal level, it wasn’t until the summer of 1974 that a Memorandum of Agreement was reached between CEA and the Board to officially establish paid coaching positions for girls’ sports. Until that time, no girls’ activity coach positions existed in the 1973 contract except for one—cheerleading. The Senior Cheerleading advisor was paid less than the Senior Debate Coach and received half as much as the lowest-paid boy’s coach.
Maternity leave for expectant mothers was available in 1974, yet the conditions under which a female teacher could request it were somewhat different. For one, maternity leave only applied to married women teachers who were pregnant. The Board reserved the right to have “verification…of the diagnosis …by the School Physician” just in case that married female teacher really wasn’t pregnant. Furthermore, a postpartum married female teacher could only return from maternity leave once they were “physically and emotionally capable of performing the duties of their position”. Needless to say, that language has been removed from current master agreement.
Nurses were singularly referred to as “female” or “she” within the language of the 1973-1975 contract. For bargaining purposes, nurses were considered to be “teachers” under the contract but were given a separate salary schedule from classroom teachers. With their Bachelor’s Degree and an RN license, a nurse in the Columbus Public School district could expect to make between $6,600 and $10,500 in 1974, based on their years of experience. Following the teacher salary schedule, an educator with their Bachelor’s (but no RN license) during that same time period could make between $7,900 and $13,683 depending on their experience. Today, school nurses continue to be part of the regular bargaining unit and follow the same salary schedule that all other full-time certificated members follow.
The assignment and transfer of teachers was briefly touched upon in the 1973 contract. One full page was given to the issues mentioned in that version of the master agreement. Teachers interested in a different assignment had to consult a vacancy list and send their application in to the building principal or supervisor. There would be no interview– the administrator would simply inform them at a later date as to whether they had been hired. Article 211 in today’s contract spans 7 pages and provides for open interviews without applications; interviewees are simply required to submit a cover letter and resume to the administrator of the program they wish to interview for. Some of the most striking differences arise from the simple fact that many important provisions of today’s contract didn’t exist in any form in 1973.
The school system ran on a 6 week grading period and started after Labor Day. At the beginning of the school year, teachers were mandated to attend professional meetings on their first day back in their building and then immediately return to their classrooms the very next day to welcome students for the first day of school. Catastrophic illness leave was nonexistent, as was assault leave. Corporal punishment was still legal in the state of Ohio, and could be used on students to “preserve discipline”. Teachers were also permitted to smoke in their school’s teachers’ lounges.
Not a single word in the contract dealt with how to lay teachers off; now the current contract has 7 pages dealing with the issue. No language existed that protected teachers from arbitrary decisions by administrators about what they considered to be professional dress. Indeed, female teachers were generally not allowed to wear pants by administrators of the day– today the Master Agreement simply stipulates that teachers dress professionally removing all possibilities of capriciousness by an overzealous administrator.
The original term of the contract’s non-economic issues covered the time period from September 1st, 1973 through August 31st, 1975. Situated in the contract was a “reopener clause” that allowed CEA and the Board of Education to begin to renegotiate economic issues in November of 1974. Contract items that dealt with economic issues such as salary schedules for teachers and nurses, hourly pay rates for certified and full-time hourly employees, annuity programs and medical insurance for members would expire on December 31st, 1974—it was up to the Professional Negotiations team to get the board to make an offer acceptable to the membership, no easy task given what lay ahead.