Labor Spotlight
Taylor Law reform: UFT seeks level playing field
Jun 9, 2005 3:27 PM
Taylor Law reform is high on the UFT’s lobbying agenda this year. Union officials argue that the law provides no incentive for a public employer to negotiate timely contracts. The current delay of two years — and counting — in reaching a new teachers’ contract is Exhibit A.
Under the union’s legislative proposal, if no agreement is reached within 180 days of the expiration of a contract, PERB would automatically grant a request from either side for impasse and initiate expedited impasse proceedings. The UFT is also pressing for PERB to be empowered to assess escalating fines on either party for delaying the process.
The UFT formulated a more modest reform proposal after its efforts to repeal the strike ban met with no success in Albany.
The Taylor Law has already been amended several times over its 37-year history.
In 1969, in addition to increasing the strike penalties, state lawmakers decided that the legislative body — the school board in the case of teachers — should make the final judgment when fact-finding recommendations are rejected and the impasse continues.
Five years later, Albany granted compulsory arbitration for police and firefighters when mediation failed to break a contract deadlock. Lawmakers cut the legislative body out of impasse proceedings for teachers as well, but made no final provision for their contract disputes when a fact-finding report does not bridge the gap.
“Giving legislative authority to school boards provoked teacher strikes. It was a red flag to have the school board making the final determination,” said Al Viani, a veteran arbitrator. “But now the Taylor Law does not provide any finality for teachers.”
The legislature revised the Taylor Law again in 1977 to require that public employees who do not want to join a union must pay an agency shop fee equivalent to union dues.
The law was amended yet one more time in 1982 to incorporate a decade-old PERB ruling requiring all terms of an expired contract to continue until a new agreement is reached. Teachers in other cities are sometimes forced to strike as soon as their contracts run out because they don’t have that guarantee.
This so-called Triborough or status quo doctrine has been invaluable to the UFT in its current contract dispute, since it safeguards workplace rights that Chancellor Joel Klein wants to abolish. In a strike, though, the union would forfeit that protection.
