United Teachers of New Orleans - Merger and Collective Bargaining

Merger and Collective Bargaining

In 1972, the AFT and NEA affiliates in New Orleans agreed to merge and form the United Teachers of New Orleans. The union became the first integrated education union in the South. Since the NEA did not permit dual-affiliated locals at the time, the merged union had its charter withdrawn by the NEA. Nat LaCour, a black teacher, was elected to succeed Hill as president of the local. He was elected an AFT vice president in 1974.

In 1978, the union struck again to win collective bargaining, and this time was successful. With white teachers finally participating in the strike, nearly 3,500 of the school district's 5,000 educators walked out, and two-thirds of the city's children were affected. UTNO had prepared for the strike by working closely with parents and community activists this time, and soon parents began joining the picket line and protesting as well. The strike lasted 12 days before the district agreed to recognize the union and sign a collective bargaining agreement, giving the union a 7 percent pay hike and better health insurance. UTNO became the first teachers' union in the Deep South to win a contract without the protection of a state public employee collective bargaining law.

UTNO did not strike again until 1990. Once more, the issue was pay. And, once more, two-thirds of the city's teachers walked off the job. The strike lasted three weeks, and again the union was successful in winning substantial pay increases.

In 1998, LaCour was elected executive vice president of the AFT, and he retired as UTNO president. Brenda Mitchell was elected to succeed him.

Over the years, UTNO organized a wide variety of school workers in addition to teachers. Custodians, bus drivers, cafeteria workers and school nurses all belonged to the union. The union's membership stood at over 7,500 members in August 2005, making UTNO the largest union in the city and the state. The union's political power was so great that it could often make or break political careers not only in New Orleans but in many parts of the state.

The biggest issue facing the union in the 1990s and early 2000s was the quality of education. The dropout rate in city schools was very high, particularly among African American children, and few minority public school graduates went on to higher education. New Orleans students also tested very low on a number of reading, math, science and other measures. UTNO argued that New Orleans students suffered from severe poverty, malnutrition, poor health care and domestic violence, all of which significantly impaired their ability to learn. The school district was chronically underfunded and financially mismanaged, and leadership turnover was high (with nine interim or permanent superintendents in 10 years). The solution, the union argued, was for significantly higher levels of funding for the schools and other public social services agencies. Critics, however, said that the union was a significant part of the problem. The union's collective bargaining agreement protected incompetent teachers; made it difficult to adopt an innovative curriculum; failed to reward good teaching; established onerous work rules; and generated large amounts of paperwork, which took clerical staff and aides out of the classroom.

In 2003, the Louisiana State Legislature created the Recovery School District (RSD). The legislation established a School Performance Score (SPS). The SPS was a composite evaluation based on the scores of one of three student performance exams, the school's dropout rate, and the school's attendance rate. A school was labeled "academically unacceptable" (AU) if it failed to achieve a minimum SPS score of 45. (In 2004, the legislature raised the minimum SPS score to 60.) Any school designated as AU for four consecutive years was classified as "failing" and eligible for state takeover. However, a failing school could be transferred to the RSD only if a private organization agreed to assume management of the school and turn it into a charter school.

After two years, only five New Orleans public schools had been transferred to the RSD.