Round 2: Providence Teachers Fire Back

Round 2: Providence Teachers Fire Back

The City of Providence will in all likelihood get the financial concessions it needs from the Providence Teachers Union—even if it loses a legal battle over whether the mass firing of all the teachers violated state labor laws, according to experts who spoke with GoLocalProv yesterday.

The union yesterday took the first possible step towards what experts say could become a protracted legal battle by filing a complaint with the Rhode Island Labor Relations Board that charges the city with unfair labor practices.

One disadvantage for the city: the Labor Relations Board has a tendency to side with labor over management, according to Bob Craven, a former assistant Attorney General, and Lisa Blais, an education consultant. The board sided with labor in seven out of seven major cases between 2006 and 2009, according to analysis of its decisions by the Ocean State Policy Research Institute. Counting the minor cases, the board favored labor in 15 out of 19 total cases.

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Next stop at the court?

But no matter who wins at the labor board, Craven says the losing side—the city or the union—could simply appeal the decision to Superior Court.

Attorneys familiar with labor law said it is hard to predict who will come out on top in court. The closest precedent is East Providence, which unilaterally imposed pay cuts and increases in health care co-shares for teachers in 2009, according to Craven, who has worked as an assistant solicitor for the city. East Providence won in court, but there is one key difference between the two cases—the teachers’ contract in East Providence had expired, while the one in Providence does not expire until this August.

Does the law allow Providence to take such drastic action with a teachers’ contract in place? “It’s a question that has yet to be answered by the courts,” Craven said. Blais agreed, saying that because the mass terminations are “unprecedented” she is not sure who would prevail in court. One labor attorney told GoLocalProv that he doubts the courts would allow the city to “abolish” the seniority system for teachers by terminating all of them.

Win or lose in court, the city still has upper hand

What matters is not who wins in the courts—but who wins at the negotiating table, where the city still has the upper hand, sources say. “They have the advantage to bargain when it comes to saving the money they need to,” Craven said.

Both Craven and Blais predicted that the union will have to make concessions to help the city close an estimated $40 million deficit in the school budget—which Mayor Angel Taveras has said is the reason behind the terminations. “If the city has been bargaining with the union in good faith, I think what’s inevitable is that there will be substantial give-backs from the union,” Craven said. “How it ends up there? … That’s still, I believe, an unanswered question.”

The city has an advantage in the battle over the budget because of a state law that says school budgets must be balanced, Blais said. That law was upheld in the 2010 Superior Court decision in East Providence. “No school district can knowingly deficit spend,” Blais said. “So they’re going to have to have financial concessions to balance the budget.”

“But that does not mean that the school district does not have the obligation to negotiate those concessions, to bargain over those concessions,” Blais added.

Union attorney: terminations were ‘illegal’

That’s where the union believes the city has gone wrong. Marc Gursky, the attorney for the union, said the labor complaint accuses the city of violating collective bargaining rights by unilaterally terminating all teachers without first reaching out to the union for its input on how to save money. The complaint asks the state Labor Relations Board to order the city to enter into negotiations with the union.

Gursky claimed the terminations violate state law. “They’re illegal. It’s really an end-run around the laws which say when you don’t have enough money you do layoffs,” Gursky said. He said the terminations also run afoul of the Teacher Tenure Act, which states that in order for a teacher to be fired there has to be evidence that the teacher did something wrong.

Of course, the city has been citing another law in its defense—the one that says it has to notify teachers of any possible changes to their employment by March 1.

But that’s no excuse, Gursky said. He said the March 1 deadline “is certainly not a secret to anyone.” Even though Taveras has been in office for barely two months, Gursky said his administration still had the time to talk to the unions or least figure out how many teachers it needed to lay off. “I think they should have gotten their act together sooner,” Gursky said.

At this point, action by the Labor Relations Board not guaranteed. The board has to first decide whether the complaint even has any merit before it holds a hearing on it. Gursky is nonetheless confident the union will prevail. “I think the Mayor is going to rescind the terminations,” he said. “I think all the terminations are unproductive and they don’t really save the city any money.”

Gursky was not able to offer details on the difference in savings between terminations and layoffs. The School Department also did not respond to GoLocalProv inquiries on the difference in savings.

Union ‘will seriously look at concessions’

Once the union gets the city to the bargaining table, Gursky said the union “will seriously look at concessions,” although he said it’s too early to say what those might be.

Contacted for comment yesterday, the Mayor’s office forwarded a letter Taveras e-mailed to Providence residents Sunday night. His office declined further comment.