Legislature(2003 - 2004)
04/03/2003 01:35 PM Senate L&C
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* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
SB 95-72-HOUR NOTICE OF TEACHER STRIKE
CHAIR BUNDE announced SB 95 to be up for consideration.
SENATOR GREEN, sponsor of SB 95, said this measure would require
notification to a school district 72-hours prior to a walk-out
resulting from a labor action. SB 95 was requested by school
districts that have recurring fears that students will either be
left at bus stops or at empty schools. Without proper
notification, districts will be unable to inform parents of
either a change in the schedule or the arrangements for the
school day.
CHAIR BUNDE asked if the bill should contain language saying
that districts should notify parents as well.
SENATOR GREEN said she hadn't considered that but the onus would
be on school districts to complete notification, as they would
normally do in the course of business.
CHAIR BUNDE asked if a district would be required to provide 72-
hour notice if it chose to lock out teachers.
SENATOR GREEN replied that isn't covered in this legislation and
that Legislative Legal and Research Services could not come up
with language that would work.
SENATOR FRENCH asked if she had the chart of cooling-off
periods. She indicated that she did. He asked if they are
talking about a required notice.
SENATOR GREEN replied that all of the steps had been undertaken
at this point. This was an actual decision by a group of public
employees who serve that district to strike and walk out.
MS. KIM FLOYD, Mat-Su Borough parent, said she is the parent of
two school age children and is a public information specialist
for the Mat-Su Borough School District. She strongly supports SB
95, which would require education bargaining groups to provide
72-hours advance notice of a strike. She stated:
From my position, this bill is about our children's
safety. It's not about contracts. It's not about the
adults. It's not about the unions or the balance of
power. It is about, again, children and their safety.
She pointed out that about 40 percent of the Valley workforce
commutes to Anchorage on a daily basis. Many people leave home
by 6:00 a.m., which is well before students report to bus stops
for school. It is her responsibility to communicate full closure
information to parents, which is a challenge because her
district covers a 25,000 square mile area, roughly the size of
West Virginia. She noted:
Currently, the media is the only resource we have to
notify parents of a change in the school day. When our
district does close a school, which has only happened
two days in the past seven years, the decision is made
at approximately 4:00 a.m. This leaves little more
than an hour to alert media and ask for assistance in
announcing the closure. While we have a local radio
station, it only serves the greater Palmer and Wasilla
areas. Anchorage media [is] helpful, but they do not
begin reporting until 6:00 a.m., well after many
commuters leave for work. On poor weather days,
parents and caregivers are more likely to tune into
broadcast media for school closure reports. On normal
winter or spring weather days, it is highly unlikely
that the community would consider school closures a
possibility.
Therefore, many people would be left unaware of any
changes to the school day and, in the event school is
to be cancelled at the last minute due to an
unannounced employee strike, children will be placed
at risk. Without adequate notice, children may be left
unattended at bus stops and at home or arrive in the
cold without adequate staffing and supervision.
Parents send their children to school with the
reasonable expectation that they will be cared for and
supervised. It is our professional and moral
obligation to provide for a safe learning environment.
Our ability to do so in the event of a strike is
minimal. Parents at work or on their way to work may
be in a position where they can't return home to
supervise their children. If they're not tuned into
the news, they may never hear of a school closure. If
and when they are alerted to this situation, home may
be more than an hour away. There will be no [indisc.]
if they can't leave their work and children may be
left without supervision.
Again, a failure to give notice puts our children at
risk; it is not acceptable. For these reasons, again,
I strongly support this legislation. The 72-hour time
frame is necessary to cover the Friday to Monday
weekend period. Communicating closures over that
timeframe is even more challenging as many of our
Valley residents are outdoors or elsewhere. Again, I
believe this bill is about children's safety and first
and foremost, we should do all that we can to protect
them. As a parent and a professional communicator for
our school district, I respectfully ask you to
strongly consider this bill as a school safety effort
and as a means to protect our children from
unnecessary harm, because I do believe that one small
child left unattended is one too many.
CHAIR BUNDE asked if there isn't a lengthy procedure to go
through before a strike can be declared.
MS. FLOYD replied that those regulations had been rescinded.
There is no oversight of a strike notice or a requirement to
notify the district of a strike vote.
CHAIR BUNDE said he was referring to the negotiating process and
asked if it is lengthy and covered in the media.
MS. FLOYD said her district had never reached the point where a
strike occurred.
CHAIR BUNDE asked if a precipitous strike had been called
anywhere in Alaska.
MS. FLOYD replied there was one in the Anchorage School
District. The district requested 24-hour notice of a strike and
the union sent a letter back refusing to do so.
MR. TOM HARVEY, Executive Director, National Education
Association of Alaska (NEAA), said SB 95 is a solution looking
for a problem, however the NEAA is not in opposition to it. He
does not believe that acrimonious actions leading to a strike
are unknown by anybody. The referenced community clearly had
become knowledgeable about the circumstances and it has been
NEAA's practice to provide notice to the community in advance of
going on strike. An extended process must be undertaken before
reaching an impasse situation in order to be able to go on
strike. He said the 72-hour notice is fine, but he didn't know
why it wouldn't be 24 or 48-hours notice. He suggested finding a
different solution to eliminate strikes by public school
employees in Alaska if this issue is really one of safety for
children. He indicates:
But we want you to be assured and the committee
members to be assured that we do in fact, in every
circumstance take the safety of the children and the
notification of the community into consideration in
every circumstance that we have been engaged in in the
state of Alaska in the history of the bargaining law.
CHAIR BUNDE asked what he meant by processes in other states.
MR. HARVEY replied that there is a process that has become
useful in other states called binding arbitration, last best
offer, issue by issue. It has led to far less arbitration
because the parties get to the position of becoming reasonable.
If one party is not, the arbitrator doesn't have a choice, as in
normal binding arbitration, but to award the party that is
closest to being reasonable. Therefore, neither party wants to
take the risk of being unreasonable when they get to settlement,
which should be the preference of both parties.
CHAIR BUNDE asked if a precipitous strike had ever been called
from his bargaining unit.
MR. HARVEY replied that the NEAA has never gone on strike in
Alaska without the community and the school district knowing
that they were going to strike.
CHAIR BUNDE asked what strike Ms. Floyd was referring to.
MR. HARVEY replied that Ms. Floyd could speak to that, but he
knew of a strike that did not provide a 72-hour notice in the
Anchorage school district. It was by a local bargaining unit,
called Totem, who was not affiliated with any state or national
organization. It represents about 1,200 public school employees:
secretaries, teacher aides, etc. Everyone in the community knew
of the potential of a strike. The exact time it would take place
was announced by the chief spokesperson for Totem and that
person at the time was a school board member in the Mat-Su area.
MR. BOB DOYLE, Chief School Administrator, Mat-Su School
District, said he represents over 14,000 children. He noted he
served on the Alaska Labor Relations Agency for over nine years
and is thoroughly familiar with labor relations law in Alaska.
He said this bill is totally about student safety and that Totem
was a union and its actions affected school children. Special
education children in Anchorage, due to the precipitous strike,
had their individual education plans (IEP) violated. That is a
serious concern to him as a school administrator even if it's
not of concern to NEAA.
In his bargaining units he has gone the extra mile through all
processes. In the last negotiations he accepted the arbitration
results. The association rejected those. When he asked for
notice to be given, the association refused. He told member:
I have a major concern about the safety for our
children, as Kim mentioned before, due to the fact
that we have 40% of our commuters going to Anchorage
every day. Seventy-two-hours notice won't affect the
balance of power, but it will enable parents and
children to be safely supervised during a strike if it
ever came to be.
CHAIR BUNDE asked if advanced notification could be crafted in
the event that a district wanted to do a lock-out.
MR. DOYLE said he didn't think that would be a problem.
CHAIR BUNDE thanked participants for their testimony and said he
would hold the bill for further consideration.
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