For information about the law that provided for collective bargaining in K-12 and community colleges in California in 1976, as well as a description of the San Francisco Community College District at that time, you can take a look at Part 1 of this series, The Beginning of Collective Bargaining in my College District in California.
As for me, I had no union background when I was hired by the Unified School District in 1969. I think I joined the AFT for the insurance (which was a funny thing I later found out, since most people joined the rival CTA for the insurance, but how was I to know?) By 1975, I had been active in my faculty council, and was urged to run for the Union's Executive Board. I became Union Secretary when the previous Secretary left in the middle of his term, and I later served as Executive Vice-President for a couple years as well as Union President for four years during the heady days of the collective bargaining election and the first contract.
In our district in 1976, as I explained in Part 1, there was a natural division between the faculty in the Credit Division, who taught at the main City College Campus, and the faculty in the Centers (non-credit) Division, who taught in the community in Unified School District buildings (some of which had been transferred to the College District), churches, community centers, and so on. In fact, the two groups had separate Academic Senates (the official body that handled the academic interests of the faculty, such as course approval, accreditation, etc.). There was also a natural divide between the full- and part-time faculty in the credit division. Credit part-time faculty were not members of the Academic Senate, were generally allowed to teach no more than nine hours per week (often less), and were frequently forced to teach in several districts in order to make enough money to support themselves. They were the infamous "freeway flyers" who still exist today.
The part-timers in the Centers Division, however, were able to teach up to 15 hours a week, thereby almost making enough money to just get by. They were a part of the Faculty Senate (the name of the academic senate for non-credit) and participated fully in the deliberations, in running for office, and in making decisions.
As explained in California School Law by Frank Kemerer and Peter Sansom on page 135,
EERA [the new collective bargaining law] does not impose collective bargaining on school districts. It leaves the decision to form and join a union to employees and the process of negotiating a contract to the union and the school district. But it does provide the legal framework within which collective bargaining occurs.
In order to trigger a bargaining election, we were required to get the signatures of 50% plus 1 of the members of the bargaining unit. Of course, the bargaining unit had not yet been decided, so defining the unit was part of the process. At that time, the SFHEA (the California Teachers Association and National Education Association affiliate in our district) was primarily active on the City College (credit) campus, while AFT 2121 (the San Francisco Community College District Federation of Teachers, an affiliate of the California Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers) was heavily active in the non-credit division, and had some very active credit faculty as well.
The biggest problem with the advent of collective bargaining was that neither the district nor the union knew what the hell they were doing. None of us had ever been through the process before. The district was afraid of losing power and didn't want to do anything wrong. The union requested assistance from the CFT, which sent an organizer to help out. The district, in 1977, hired a new Chanceller from New York, whom I personally believe they chose in part because they thought he would be tough in collective bargaining.
Lloyd (I'm just using first names here), the organizer sent to assist us, must have been beside himself when he first arrived. Some of our faculty taught in far flung locations--little out of the way places in the community with one or two classes in a church library or basement. In order to get signatures of 50% plus 1 of the bargaining unit we needed a good list of who would be included. Unfortunately, this was the pre-computer database era (at least in our district) and there was no complete listing of faculty. The lists the district gave us always excluded some faculty we knew were working, and included people who had retired, quit, or were deceased. We weren't very organized in the beginning, and in exasperation one Friday, Lloyd exploded and said if we didn't have a better system in place by the following Monday, he was going to leave. After the shock wore off, I, a teacher in the non-credit division, and my friend and colleague Rosalie, a teacher in the credit division, decided to spend the weekend organizing the faculty lists and getting contacts in as many areas as we could. When Lloyd came back the following Monday, he was amazed at the work we had done.
The new law provided that before an election could take place, there had to be agreement on what constituted the "bargaining unit". Certificated (teaching), classified (support staff) and supervisory staff were to be in different bargaining units. Our Union decided that we would go for a bargaining unit that contained every faculty employee, credit and non-credit, part-time and full-time, except department chairs, who had decided to go for a supervisory unit, and whose efforts we supported.
The Union started collecting signatures to trigger an election in May, 1976. In June, 1976, the Union filed a "Petition for Recognition" with the District and with the Education Employment Relations Board (EERB). The District did all it could to stall a decision on the bargaining unit and an election. In December, the District gave the EERB a list of employees who had been working as of June 15, but only 1334 names appeared in a unit of about 1800. Subsequent lists were also incorrect.
Finally in March, 1977, the Union filed an unfair labor practice charge again the District, contending that the District had interfered with the process of verifying the petition of majority support by turning in incorrect lists and that AFT 2121 had been denied its right to an election.
In April, the District agreed the Union had obtained enough signatures to trigger an election and dropped its challenge. However, the CTA (who got enough signatures to intervene and appear on the ballot) and the District wouldn't agree to the Union's definition of the bargaining unit and there was nothing to do but wait for the EERB to rule on the issue. Finally, on December 12, 1977, the decision was made that the unit would be made up of all full-timers and those part-timers who had taught at least 3 of the previous 6 semesters. The department chairs were declared supervisory and left out of the unit.
In January, 1978, the Public Employment Relations Board (formerly EERB) met with representatives of CTA, AFT, and the District to determine the election dates and polling places. The election was set for March 13, 14, and 15. The Union's election campaign officially started in February, 1978. In an effort to appeal to those teachers who were concerned that "professional" and "union" didn't necessarily go together, we made a series of flyers called "For your Professional Dignity", explaining how unions were "professional". We worked hard to reach all of the possible voters and make sure they voted. In March, 1978, after almost two years, the results of the election were AFT 779, CTA 195, No Representation 44.
We were very happy to have won the election in such a resounding fashion, but the hard work was just beginning. I'll talk about what happened next in Part 3.