UNION DID STATE TEACHERS NO FAVOR IN RECENT NEGOTIATIONS

There are lessons to be learned from the recent Hawaii State Teachers
Association negotiations and ratification of its latest contract.

When the teachers pick people to be on the contract negotiation team,
they should make sure that they pick teachers who understand what
collective bargaining means. It's obvious that the team that
negotiated the latest contract was naive beyond belief in their
efforts at negotiation.

When voting on the ratification of a contract, do not allow absentee
balloting to take place after the voting has concluded. Making
comments that the vote was too close to call before all voting has
concluded invalidates the whole procedure.

Do not allow the state, in violation of your constitutional rights,
to increasingly intrude into your private lives. If educated people
acquiesce to the loss of constitutional rights, who then will oppose
that abuse?

Don't allow the state to put a guilt trip on you because a half a
dozen or so teachers have been caught abusing drugs. There are 13,500
teachers. Given the times we live in, it's remarkable so few teachers
have gone bad. Marching teachers down to the health room to pee in a
cup is not being done to ensure student safety, it is being done to
humiliate teachers.

Humiliation is a state-sponsored psychological technique to control
its employees. Random testing of all teachers to protect students is
like dropping a 1,000-pound bomb to get rid of a mosquito.

Tom Hansen

Lahaina