Home meetings part of Black Oak Mine win
Volume 12, Issue 7 - April 2008
By Dina Martin
The Black Oak Mine Teachers Association (BOMTA) may be small in number, but it’s mighty in strength. Following a yearlong impasse, the 93-member chapter showed the administration that it was willing to strike to obtain an increase in salary. As a result of its actions, members gained a 3.2 percent pay increase.
“More significantly, we removed eight steps from the salary schedule, which will be worth about $60,000 per member in life-time earnings,” says BOMTA President George Sheridan, a first-, second- and third-grade teacher.
During the past year, members lined the roadways with signs and banners, donned blue shirts to demonstrate their solidarity, participated in a reader’s theater performance, recruited parents to their cause, and gave up a day’s pay as they boycotted a professional development day in November.
It was the boycott of the district training that marked a turning point in their struggle.
“We signaled the district that we could organize, we signaled members that they were not alone, and we showed the community that we had done everything possible, even at a cost to ourselves,” says Sheridan.
One tactic the chapter avoided was “working to the rule,” in which teachers withhold participation in voluntary activities including coaching sports, advising student clubs and holding parent-teacher conferences.
“As a group, we tried to continue a quality program for students to make sure parents stayed on our side,” says Sheridan. Parents showed their support for the teachers’ cause by displaying banners in their windows and showing up at rallies.
BOMTA members also earned the sympathy of nearby chapters, which rallied to their side when the district announced it was going to hire strikebreakers at $325 a day, should the chapter go on strike. Not only did regular substitute teachers pledge not to work, but teachers in neighboring districts convinced their substitutes that it wasn’t in their long-term interest to help the district hold down wages.
“Teachers in Auburn and El Dorado County were ready to pull up a picket sign and join us,” says Sheridan. “We really felt we had support.”
The chapter also became stronger for its efforts. “People stepped forward who hadn’t been active before,” says Sheridan. “We have a couple dozen leaders now and close to 100 percent of our members participated in various activities.”
The teachers adopted a tactic that veteran labor organizer Sheridan learned firsthand from Cesar Chavez when he worked with him and United Farm Workers. “House meetings were the tool Cesar used to organize farm workers in the earliest days of the UFW, and they were the most important tactic we used in recruiting supporters.” In the school district, house meetings proved to be key in “mobilizing the widespread but latent support we had from parents and other community members.”
The yearlong effort by the Black Oak Mine teachers was a reminder of a lesson Sheridan learned during the UFW boycotts: “Important battles are not often won in a short time.”