Court rules multiple union representation OK in school districts

By Audrey Spalding
Show-Me Institute

The Greene County Circuit Court ruled on Sept. 10 that public school teachers can choose whether to be represented by one union, multiple unions, or none. The court’s ruling in Springfield National Education Association v. the School District of Springfield is a setback for the Missouri National Education Association (MNEA), the largest teacher union in the state. The MNEA has consistently argued against multiple union representation for teachers, saying that public school teachers should choose one exclusive bargaining representative, or none at all.

The teacher union policy at the heart of the lawsuit was a new one that district administrators and school board members had put into place to allow a two-tiered election for union representatives. The first election was for whether teachers wanted single, multiple, or no union representation. The second, if teachers chose a form of representation, was to choose which representative (or representatives) would represent the teachers.

It was the first choice, which could allow multiple representation, that caught the attention of the union.

“There can be no true collective bargaining without the recognition of a single, exclusive bargaining representative that will assume responsibility for monitoring, implementing and enforcing an agreement,” wrote the MNEA in a position statement on collective bargaining.

During the trial, SNEA attorney Sally Barker used that same issue of bargaining effectiveness as part of her argument.

“The purpose of collective bargaining is not to serve the employer by fragmenting the employees,” Barker said.

The MNEA has taken such a strong stance against multiple representation because of a 2007 state Supreme Court ruling that public school teachers have the constitutional right to bargain collectively. Specifically, Article 1, Section 29, of the Missouri Constitution, which states that “employees shall have the right to organize and to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing,” was deemed to apply to public employees.

That ruling ushered in revisions of teacher union collective bargaining agreements, and at least one other lawsuit, against the Bayless School District in St. Louis. District administrators and district teacher union presidents have said in the past that the MNEA is looking for test cases to see how far the 2007 court ruling goes in bolstering the power of exclusive teacher unions.

But circuit court Judge Michael Cordonnier rejected MNEA’s stance against multiple representation in his written opinion.

“The word ‘representatives’ in Section 29 is unambiguous, plural, and must be read to include the possibility of more than one representative,” he wrote.

Furthermore, Cordonnier also disagreed with the union’s argument that the phrase “collective bargaining” is a word so well known and used that it is implicitly understood to refer to exclusive representation. He went back to the 2007 ruling for guidance. In its decision, the high court referenced in a footnote the dictionary definition of collective bargaining, which said that the phrase can refer to an “employer or group of employers on one side and a union or a number of unions on the other.”

During the trial, Cordonnier quizzed Barker at length about that footnote, and why it would have been included if the court had considered collective bargaining a term that refers only to exclusive representation.

“Frankly,” Barker said, “because I think it was presumed.”

Apparently, that didn’t convince Cordonnier.

“None of the definitions referenced by the Supreme Court suggest the phrase ‘collective bargaining’ mandates exclusive representation,” Cordonnier wrote in his decision.

The union has not yet appealed this ruling, according to court records.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 4:07 pm. Both comments and pings are currently closed.