“Hearing scheduled for Cambridge's Longy School of Music labor dispute” |
| Hearing scheduled for Cambridge's Longy School of Music labor dispute Posted: 25 Oct 2010 02:23 PM PDT The National Labor Relations Board has found it has reasonable cause to hold a hearing on whether Cambridge-based Longy School of Music failed to negotiate with its employees union before it terminated staffers and changed the job descriptions of others. In March, 46 employees of the Longy School of Music received letters from their employer. For 36 of those employees, the letters said that some responsibilities or a title was being dropped from their job description. The other eight were told that their jobs had been terminated. "Generally speaking the large majority of the faculty has taught in all divisions of the school," Longy Faculty president Clay Hoener said. "However unilaterally the administration decided after the union was formed that certain people were moved from one division to another. They were told, 'You may no longer teach in this division of the school, you may only teach in this division of the school.'" According to the faculty union, these changes were a violation of labor law because they were not made as a result of negotiations with the newly formed union. "Once the union is formed there should be no unilateral changes whatsoever without collective bargaining," Hoener said. "They made many of them and caused a lot of misery among members of the faculty and the students and the community." The union has also charged that the changes were made in retribution for the union being formed. Hoener said that many of the people who saw their positions changed were active in the union. A violin instructor himself, he was reassigned to a new position at the school. "Some of the retaliatory things (done by the school) would be taking away of classes, the taking away of students, moving people from one part of the school to another," he said. "Things of that nature that affect people's livelihood." According to the school's chief of staff, Kalen Ratzlaff, however, the changes were part of a strategic plan aimed at putting Longy in a position to become the graduate school conservatory for Bard College. According to Ratzlaff, the plan was approved by the school's board of directors in January of 2009, a full year before the union existed. "It's clear that the union believes this to be true, we know this not to be true," Ratzlaff said of the union's charges. After examining the two sides of the case, the NLRB found it had reasonable cause to hold a hearing on whether the school changed the employee job descriptions — including the firing of employees — without first negotiating with their employee's union. The board is also considering whether it has similar cause to investigate the charges that the job description changes were retribution for the employees' decision to unionize. The charges were filed with the board Aug. 9 by the American Federation of Teachers. In the complaint, the union charged that after the employees voted, in January, to form a union, the school rejected calls to bargain and unilaterally changed the terms and conditions for a number of employees. "They don't have to get the union to agree to what they want to do, as long as they bargain in good faith," said Ron Cohen, the regional attorney for the NLRB. "We're alleging that the employers didn't bargain with the union at all." The Complaint and Notice of Hearing was filed by the NLRB Oct. 14. The school has until Oct. 28 to file an answer to the charges. A hearing is scheduled for Dec. 13 in Boston. According to Cohen, the NLRB is going to request that the school undo the changes so that they can be the subject of collective bargaining. "We want them to put the genie back in the bottle so they can go back and bargain with the union," he said. The NCLB is also weighing whether to file an injunction in District Court to undo the job description changes. According to Cohen, the board can file for an injunction when the changes were made in the first year of the union's existence and therefore could "totally undercut the union's status with the employees." The union also alleged that at a March 5 all-faculty meeting, Longy president and CEO Karen Zorn implied to employees that it would be futile for them to continue to support the union and they would face unspecified reprisals if they supported the union. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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