Ruling Confirms Right to Organize
by Anne Silverstein
In a major decision from the NYS Public Employment Relations Board, the right of charter school administrators to join a union was upheld. An administrative law judge ruled that despite the fact that a private entity runs a New York City public school, the
NYS charter school law provides for charter school employees to be eligible for collective bargaining under the state’s Taylor Law, which governs public sector employees.
The NYS PERB, in making its decision, consolidated two cases on appeal before it.
The first was filed by CSA against the Brooklyn Excelsior Charter School in Bushwick and the organization that runs it, the National Heritage Academies (NHA). NHA is a for-profit Michiganbased company that runs 60 charter schools in eight states, including four in Brooklyn and Queens, and provides management services for Excelsior’s Board of Trustees.
The supervisors at Excelsior had been trying to organize; NHA complained to the Brooklyn PERB office, arguing that
CSA could not represent the school’s supervisors since NHA, an out-of-state employer, was not subject to the jurisdiction
of the Taylor Law. The local administrative law judge (ALJ) ruled in CSA’s favor and NHA appealed to the full PERB.
The second case was filed by NYSUT against the Buffalo United Charter School, which is also run by NHA. The employees of that school had been fighting for the right to organize. A local PERB ruling in the case had gone against NYSUT; in that case, the ALJ ruled that PERB had no jurisdiction over the situation, therefore school employees were not covered by the Taylor Law. NYSUT appealed this case to the full PERB, which then consolidated the two cases before it.
Several organizations filed amicus briefs with PERB: the Atlantic Legal Foundation and the NYC Department of Education on NHA’s side; the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association.
After extensive deliberations and hearings last summer, PERB, in a 45-page decision, held that PERB did, indeed have jurisdiction over these schools based on the NYS charter school law which says that school employees are public employees and therefore subject to the Taylor Law. PERB also rejected the NHA’s contention that because NHA is a private company, its
employees are private employees. Last, PERB ruled that these employees are eligible for collective bargaining and ordered the certification process to go forward.
In related news, Mr. Bryant said, one of the Assistant Principals at Excelsior, who was instrumental in the original litigation, had been fired by NHA; she received a substantial cash settlement based on the finding that NHA had retaliated against her for demanding union representation.
