LA Times 6/23/06: Villaraigosa's ties to teachers' unions pay off--for who?

[Rich Gibson <rgibson@pipeline.com>]

When your boss, the Mayor, and your union leaders are all in the same boat,
time to sink the boat

best
r




> <http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-union23jun23,1,7863297.story?coll=la-headlines-politics>http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-union23jun23,1,7863297.story?coll=la-headlines-politics
> From the Los Angeles Times
>
>
> Villaraigosa's Ties to Teachers Unions Pay Off
>
>
>
> By Joe Mathews
> Times Staff Writer
>
> June 23, 2006
>
> When Los Angeles teachers staged a strike in the spring of 1989, Joshua 
> Pechthalt and Joel Jordan helped set up picket lines at schools and 
> rallies in Exposition Park. During the nine-day walkout, the two teachers 
> grew close to a young United Teachers Los Angeles organizer named Antonio 
> Villaraigosa.
>
> This week, Pechthalt and Jordan, now among the union's leaders, helped 
> reach an agreement with their old friend, now L.A. mayor, that would give 
> him some power over the Los Angeles Unified School District.
>
> With the powerful California Teachers Assn. joining the talks, 
> Villaraigosa and the teachers produced a deal that, if adopted by the 
> Legislature, would give the union a long-sought goal: more control over 
> curriculum.
>
> "It's always easier to work out arrangements and have a dialogue with 
> someone you know from a previous life," said UTLA President A.J. Duffy, 
> who has also been friendly with the mayor for years.
>
> The agreement has put a spotlight on UTLA, which represents 47,000 
> teachers, and the 335,000-member CTA. UTLA is an affiliate of both CTA and 
> the California Federation of Teachers, an unusual arrangement because most 
> local teachers unions affiliate with one or the other.
>
> In addition to Villaraigosa's work as a UTLA organizer more than a decade 
> ago, he had a consulting contract with CTA as recently as 2001. As he 
> struggled this week to make a deal and avert a high-profile defeat of his 
> school takeover plan, the mayor in one sense went home again.
>
> "Both Joel and I spent a lot of time back in the day gabbing with 
> Antonio," said Pechthalt, who recalled how Villaraigosa handled his 
> grievance in the early 1990s after the teacher staged a mini-strike at 
> Manual Arts High School. "The things we were advocating 20-some years ago, 
> we're still organizing around."
>
> The close relationship between the mayor and the teachers unions has 
> quickly become a point of criticism.
>
> "My shock and dismay is that L.A. Unified's teachers union, UTLA, joined 
> hips with Antonio," school board member Julie Korenstein, who herself has 
> received campaign donations from UTLA, said angrily at a news conference 
> Wednesday. Asked if she had changed her mind Thursday, she said: "Actually 
> I'm more angry. This is one of the biggest back-door deals we've seen."
>
> As big institutions that represent dues-paying members of a popular 
> profession, UTLA and CTA are powerful politically, but with different 
> personalities.
>
> A recent meeting of the UTLA governing body was a freewheeling nighttime 
> session that saw loud denunciations of the North American Free Trade 
> Agreement, Wal-Mart and the Republican Party. The weekend-long meeting of 
> CTA's elected leadership council was more businesslike, with teachers 
> methodically discussing and dissecting educational legislation.
>
> CTA is known for its pragmatism, willingness to negotiate with friend or 
> foe, and political sophistication. Though the union is considered the most 
> important Democratic interest group in California, it has employed a 
> Republican pollster whose clients include President Bush. CTA has donated 
> hundreds of thousands of dollars to Villaraigosa's political career, but 
> opposed his mayoral takeover plan. Without CTA's backing, Villaraigosa's 
> effort had little chance in the Legislature.
>
> "CTA is the only entity that could have forced Villaraigosa's hand," said 
> Dan Schnur, a Republican political consultant and commentator. "They also 
> were the only people who could have saved him by making a deal. There's no 
> other organization or individual in the state that could have brought this 
> to a close."
>
> UTLA, which was forged out of a strike and a merger of rival groups 
> representing L.A. Unified employees in 1970, has a more militant past and 
> present. Last year, the membership voted in a new slate of leaders, many 
> of them dissidents within the union, who pledged to aggressively pursue 
> community organizing and progressive politics.
>
> Both CTA and UTLA have resisted the federal No Child Left Behind Act and 
> complained about the proliferation of standardized testing and state 
> standards. The unions also made a priority of securing for teachers more 
> power to choose their own curricula, textbooks and professional development.
>
> UTLA's leadership has adopted principles for school reform that demand 
> "more school-level control over budgets, school schedules, curriculum and 
> assessments." But the union's new leadership has spent its first year in 
> office meeting with teachers, preparing for contract negotiations and 
> cutting $1 million from the union budget. CTA sponsored legislation in 
> 2002 to make curriculum a subject of collective bargaining, but the bill 
> went nowhere after it came under intense public criticism.
>
> The deal with Villaraigosa has revived the unions' hopes that teachers 
> will win more autonomy and relief from standards and testing.
>
> "In 2002, the idea was radioactive for Democrats in the Legislature," said 
> Mike Antonucci, a Sacramento-based union watchdog who is sharply critical 
> of the deal and of the unions' push for more teacher autonomy. "Now with 
> this deal, because it's part of a restructuring, legislators have cover to 
> support it. It's unbelievable that the unions pulled this off."
>
> After fighting off a state ballot initiative to establish school vouchers 
> six years ago, CTA dispatched one of its most seasoned staffers, Don 
> Attore, to set up a community outreach office inside UTLA. Attore proved a 
> key player in promoting closer cooperation between the unions.
>
> During negotiations in recent weeks, officials of the statewide union 
> encouraged Villaraigosa and UTLA to focus on where their goals matched: 
> streamlining bureaucracy and putting more power in the hands of schools 
> and teachers. The talks were eased at times by Villaraigosa's telling 
> stories about the 1989 strike, his work as a UTLA organizer and his old 
> friends Pechthalt and Jordan.
>
> "Everybody likes to talk about history, particularly dramatic history like 
> the '89 history," said CTA President Barbara Kerr, who marveled at how 
> long the mayor and UTLA officials had known each other. "I was born in Los 
> Angeles and never really lived there. It's such a small town in its own way."
>
> The talks gathered momentum Monday when Villaraigosa and UTLA leaders flew 
> to Sacramento. The deal was sealed in a 90-minute meeting Wednesday 
> morning in the Capitol. There, they compared proposals again and worked 
> out details on the demonstration project that would give the mayor 
> authority over three low-performing high schools and the middle and 
> elementary schools that feed them.
>
> Said Duffy: "It just became clear that we were standing on the same piece 
> of ground."