Why “Active vs. Retired” is the wrong conversation in the BTU elections
In last week’s BTU Executive Board primary election the top seven spots were swept by retired teachers. This has generated a lot of surprise among members who don’t pay much attention to union politics, and among those in the know, mostly pitting active educators against retirees. That’s the wrong conversation.
I used to be on the Executive Board. I served three terms.
The Executive Board is the elected governing body of the union. It sets the policy and fiscal conversation for the union. There are 19 voting members of the board; 12 at-large elected seats plus the 7 full-time elected Officers and Staff.
I was an active member of the BTU, but when I served on the e-board I didn’t work every day in a school.
On several occasions, I attended meetings where there was only one person in attendance who went to work everyday in a school.
At least once, we had a meeting where nobody in the meeting worked in a school.
I became convinced, and continue to believe, that we need an e-board that reflects the broad diversity of our membership.
I stopped running for e-board because I thought holding my position as Director of Professional Learning and also serving on the e-board was power-hoarding. I thought we needed more people who worked in schools on the e-board. There were a couple of retirees who also decided to stop running for e-board that year. I don’t why they made their decisions.
In the next election, I worked really hard to get more active members elected and actively supported a diverse group of new candidates. That diversity included race and role. It was a successful campaign.
Our current e-board has nine people who work everyday in a school. It has three retired members, one of whom is also a part time union staff member. This is great! BUT…..
Of those nine people who work every day in a school, 6 are high school teachers, one is an elementary school teacher, and two are paras. If everyone is present and a vote is taken, there are nine people who work in a school everyday and ten who don’t.
If the primary results hold in the general election, there will be five people on the board who work every day in a school. Four secondary school teachers, and one para. There will be seven retirees including one of the members who stopped running in the same cycle when I did, and one who stepped down during their previous term. There are two other retirees who have decided to run for the first time (or the first time in a long while after holding other more powerful leadership roles). I don’t know why they have decided to run again.
Maybe you think this is a problem. Maybe you don’t. But at the very least it raises questions.
Over the years, I’ve had a number of conversations about this issue with a leader in the Retired Teachers Chapter, someone with decades of experience in union leadership and politics at the local, state, and national levels. She says: “This is a political problem.” She argues that if active members would vote more, they would win these elections and hold more power in the union.
She’s not wrong. BUT…..
Let’s say that happened. Let’s say every single one of the 10,000 members of the BTU voted in every election. And let’s assume, as her argument seems to….that active members would mostly vote for active members and retirees would mostly vote for retirees, and teachers would mostly vote for teachers, and paras would mostly vote for paras and ABAs would mostly vote for ABAs and on and on…..
Well, then you’d have an e-board with NO retirees, and NO paras, and NO subs and none of who knows what else…..
So….is it a political problem? I don’t think so. I think it’s a structural problem.
The e-board is presumed to be a representative body. It isn’t, and it clearly isn’t designed to be.
With only twelve at large seats, it is designed to create a power struggle within the union. The limited access to power and voice creates incentives to cultivate division. Candidates are incentivized to publicly say they are running to represent everyone, but work behind the scenes to ensure their faction holds disproportionate representation. In this sense, the divide we feel in the union is (charitably speaking) unintentionally built into the structure.
If we want an e-board that is truly representative, perhaps we need to design it so it will be.
How would we do that? After we fight out this election, THAT’s the conversation we need to have.
