The OEA called off their strike when the school board agreed to some OEA demands.
Motives:
The teachers filed an unfair labor practice (ULP) involving information about the budget. The District was planning to cut jobs and positions in direct service to students including substitute teachers and for some teachers to have their salary schedule moved from 11 months to 10 months. The teachers’ union didn’t agree with these cuts and some board members of the OUSD supported the teachers in asking for alternative budget cuts. Because OUSD did not give the teachers all of this information, the union filed these unfair labor practice claims to the labor council. Then the labor council found it in their favor. Basically if the union disagrees with the board and wants to bring a claim to the board then they would give that to the PERB. PERB (Public Employees Relations Board) is a board that oversees all interactions between the union and the government employees. That’s what the teachers did and they won every time which gave the teachers the ability to go on strike.
Resolving the strike:
Once the teachers had those rights to go on strike they basically said “If you don’t give us this information and/or change these cuts we will go on strike.” OUSD did this, but they had not given all the information requested. OUSD did give good information about the cuts and an alternative to these cuts. They stopped the 11 to 10 month employee change, rescinded some of the job terminations that they were going to launch and reserved more than half of the stib-sub terminations at higher needs schools. Those high needs schools still need to be determined. They also saved 65 of the 100 subs that they were going to fire. OEA still hasn’t received all of the information but they just basically said “Ok we won’t go on strike.”
Connection to Superintendent’s Departure?:
Somewhat. The new school board members who were more friendly to the union passed the resolution to look for an alternative for the budget cuts. These board members have been supporting the teachers union. Those same board members negotiated to have the superintendent resign instead of terminating her contract. This connects because those board members are the same board members who negotiated with the teachers about the budget cuts and changed the direction that the district is heading.
The take-away:
The climax of all of this is the fact that OEA and OUSD are fighting for the district’s future involving these budget cuts.