It's About Time

Earlier this year, educators in the Association of Salem Keizer Education Support Professionals (ASK-ESP) and the Salem Keizer Education Association (SKEA) voted to ratify new contracts that included major wins on a number of issues like workplace safety, professional respect, and compensation and benefits. Moreover, both locals saw increases in their membership density over the course of their bargaining campaigns with new educators signing up and getting involved - over the course of a single year, ASK-ESP grew from 64 to 72 percent active membership, and SKEA membership grew from 85 to an impressive 91 percent density in 23-24.

How were these two locals able to achieve all of this? They employed a tried and tested organizing practice: open bargaining.

What is open bargaining? It’s simple. Instead of negotiation sessions between the union and district bargaining teams taking place behind closed doors, the process is open to employees and the public to observe.

“People didn’t trust what we were doing,” said ASK-ESP Vice President Jeff Jabin about past bargaining campaigns where open bargaining wasn’t used.

SKEA President Tyler Scialo-Lakeberg echoed that sentiment. “People really weren’t trusting the process," said Scialo-Lakeberg.  “When there’s a lack of transparency and a lack of communication, rumors and paranoia really start to grow.”

In Oregon, the Public Employee Collective Bargaining Act (PECBA) states that open public bargaining sessions are the default setting for contract negotiations unless both parties agree to a closed-door process.

But just refusing the district’s offer to make bargaining sessions private wasn’t enough for educators in Salem. “When bargaining started, we negotiated with the district to have an online option for members and the public to watch the bargaining session, in addition to keeping the doors open for in-person observers,” said Jabin. “Between the two ways to watch, we’d have hundreds of union members and community members watching these bargaining sessions and seeing how the district was behaving.”

The result of opening up the process meant that members from both locals were able to directly observe bargaining sessions. This direct exposure allowed members to gain a much stronger understanding of what a contract negotiation looks like at the bargaining table, and all of the work the union bargaining team was doing on behalf of the members.

“Open bargaining really helped draw our members into the process,” said Sandy Sandoval, an ASK-ESP bargaining team member and the union’s Secretary. “It really made people more aware of, and more interested in, the work their union was doing. People really started to feel like they could do something about the problems we were having in the district.”

It wasn’t just opening the door to bargaining sessions that helped members feel so empowered, explained Scialo-Lakeberg. It was making a concerted effort to increase transparency and communication for members across the board, ensuring that every educator in the unit felt like they had a voice and a say in what negotiations would look like.

“What we really wanted was for every member to feel like they are as much a part of the bargaining process as the bargaining team itself,” she said. “Because at the end of the day, it’s all of our contract, and all our members should see themselves represented in it.”

That type of intentional communication and trust building took different forms in the two locals, but the combined results meant that every educator in the district was intentionally being involved in their union’s bargaining process.

“We didn’t just want to open up the actual bargaining sessions, we wanted this to be a member-informed bargain from the ground up,” shared Scialo-Lakeberg. “We had member work groups charged with looking at article language, surveying members, reviewing language from other locals, and more to figure out what our language should be and how we could get there. Those groups actually ended up writing our proposals. It was beautiful.”

“When you organize, you have to pair that with communication,” explained Jabin. “We did informational campaigns, we organized rallies during school board meetings and in front of the district office, and we made sure that after every bargaining session the whole bargaining team sat down and got a message with key updates out to our members.”

By engaging their members and communicating more about what was happening at the bargaining table, the two locals were able to create a stronger sense  of momentum and leverage for their bargaining teams. “As a bargaining team member, I found it really empowering, because it felt like we were bargaining with our members versus doing something on our own and reporting it out to our members,” said Kelsey Miller, teacher at EDGE Middle School, and a member of the SKEA bargaining team.

The open bargaining process and thoughtful communication strategies also allowed the locals to capitalize on the district’s own poor proposals and disrespectful behavior, like when district leaders opened the bargaining campaign with an insultingly low wage proposal for classified staff.

“In our first open bargaining session, with hundreds of members watching, the district offered us 1 percent raises. This is in a year where management gave themselves raises upwards of 17 percent,” said Jabin. “In a later session they came back and offered us 2 percent and told us it was generous. Can you imagine? Our members got to see that with their own eyes. They got to hear it for themselves right from the district. Because they were a part of the process, they knew how undervalued they were by the district, and they were ready to be in our corner.”

Not only did members hear and understand how the district was behaving, but so did students and families living in Salem. Both locals worked hard to build strong relationships with their communities, and to make sure that their updates about bargaining were making it out to parents and their families. Because the community knew what was actually happening at the bargaining table, they didn’t buy into the misinformation that was being pushed by district leaders.

“Because the process was so open everybody knew what was really happening,” said Miller. “Our community, our members, parents and their kids - they knew what we were fighting for, and they saw the terrible proposals the district was making. It really helped force the district’s hand on some of our key issues.”

The transparency, the trust, and the energy helped both union bargaining teams hold their ground until the district really came to the table and bargained in good faith, resulting in contracts that made real investments for students and educators. The result was not only fair contracts, but a membership that felt empowered about the impact their union could have on their working conditions and on student learning conditions.

“People were energized to get involved, that’s the difference. The motivation is different. The excitement in the buildings is different,” said Sandoval.

And the impact doesn’t end with a ratified contract.

“The difference between closed bargaining and open bargaining was night and day,” said Scialo-Lakeberg. “We went from a team bargaining in a vacuum to a team with more than 250 members participating in every bargaining session. Not only did that help us secure some big wins at the table, but it meant immediately after ratification we had hundreds of members who really knew and understood their contract and who were ready to fight to uphold it when the district tried to back out of their agreements.”