Professional Rights Committee
Protecting Members’ Rights
As chair of the BEU’s Professional Rights Committee (PRC), I want to share some of the valuable work we do to protect members’ rights and our contract.
The role of the PRC is to investigate any possible infringement on your rights as an employee or union member, and to make sure the contract is being followed. Members come to us with a wide range of concerns—from pay or step placement to discipline or evaluation issues. When a concern arises, a committee member will investigate and explore how we can use the contract (or the law) to resolve it.
How Grievances Work
Sometimes we employ a strategy called a grievance, which is a formal process to raise concerns with management. Not all issues can be resolved this way, but when we do file a grievance it creates pressure on management to address the problem.
Grievances follow strict timelines. If management’s response is unsatisfactory, the union can escalate to the Superintendent, the School Committee, or, if necessary, to binding arbitration. Our goal is always to resolve issues at the lowest management level possible. But our success often depends on collective action: showing up in solidarity can be more powerful than any legal argument. We have recently seen how twenty members standing together sends a much stronger message than a private deal between union leadership and management.
Recent Wins for Members
This past summer was an active one for the PRC. At the end of the school year, many paraprofessionals were terminated with no reason given, or for vague “performance reasons.” Even though they were still within their probationary period, the BEU argued that all employees deserve a chance to improve before termination.
Paraprofessionals earn very low wages, perform extremely hard jobs, and often receive little or no training. It is only fair to expect management to provide feedback and a real chance to improve performance. The paraprofessional contract includes explicit guidelines for an “Improvement Plan,” as outlined in the Paraprofessional Contract section 7.7.B (page 22): “Whenever it is determined that a paraprofessional has a performance deficiency which, if not corrected or improved, could lead to dismissal during the work year, the responsible supervisor will take appropriate steps to notify the employee; where appropriate, to give positive suggestions for improvement and to give the employee a reasonable opportunity to correct such deficiency.” The contract then goes on to list the specific steps for proper implementation of an improvement plan.
In our grievances, we insisted that management should have implemented improvement plans prior to termination, and because this did not occur, the terminations were improper. In at least three cases, management agreed to reinstate the employees. Several other cases remain unresolved, but we consider the progress we have made to be a major win for worker rights in Brookline.
We also worked on other issues over the summer, including securing stipends for Lincoln teachers who had to move classrooms and making progress on resolving discrepancies in longevity pay for paraprofessionals.
Moving Forward
The PRC is committed to defending your rights and strengthening our contract. If you have questions or concerns about the contract or about how you—or others—are being treated by management, please reach out to me or any member of the Professional Rights Committee.
- Mark Goldner, Grievance Committee Chair
- Justin Brown, BEU President
- Noah Gronlund-Jacob, BEU Vice President
- David Weinstein, BEU Treasurer
- Melissa London, Elementary Grievance Rep
- Cath Heller, BHS Grievance Rep (retiree)
- Rich Gorman, BHS Grievance Rep
- Kathy Hitchcock, BHS Grievance Rep (retiree)
- Mark Wheeler, BHS Grievance Rep
- Dylan Zobel, Elementary Grievance Rep
- Megan Burdy Kaufman, Elementary Grievance Rep
- Pamela Penwarden, Elementary Grievance Rep
