THERE has been a general decline of unionism in the country over the past few decades. The number of card-carrying union members would probably be just around 10 percent of the country’s work force today. The number of collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) registered with the labor department is not any more encouraging.
However, it is good to know that there are still some sectors where unionism is very strong and employers are respecting their workers’ right to self-organization.
One of these employers, it is heartening to know, is the government itself, particularly the Department of Education (DepED), where there are now two contending unions offering their services to represent teachers, at least in the National Capital Region (NCR).
Around 3,000 teachers from the NCR recently announced their dissociation from the Alliance of Concerned Teachers-NCR (ACT-NCR), forming their own union, called the DepED Teachers Union-NCR-NLU (DTU-NCR-NLU).
ACT-NCR has been the sole and exclusive collective negotiating agent representing all teaching or academic personnel of DepED-NCR. It had entered into a collective negotiation agreement (CNA, similar to the CBA in the private sector) with the DepEd on May 26, 2015, which would expire on May 26, 2018.
According to this CNA, there is now a so-called freedom period of 60 days before the agreement expires, during which another union could challenge ACT-NCR for the right to represent teachers and DepEd workers in the region.
The DTU-NCR-NLU has filed a petition for certification election to dislodge ACT-NCR as the sole bargaining agent of teachers. It needs to have the support of at least 10 percent or 6,600 of the 66,000 public-school teachers in the NCR in order to do so. The new union has gathered 3,100 signatures so far.
ACT-NCR claims the formation of a new union is “an attack on genuine progressive, militant, pro-people unionism.”
On the other hand, the leaders of DTU-NCR-NLU said thousands of teachers bolted ACT-NCR to establish their own union simply because the latter has failed to deliver on its promises and has not satisfactorily represented and fought for teachers’ rights.
Cynthia Ibale Villarin, DTU-NCR-NLU president, noted for instance how ACT’s proposed CNA contained only dental benefits, subject to the availability of funds, which is well short of teachers’ expectations.
Villarin said the DTU-NCR-NLU wants to help solve teachers’ real problems, such as their long-delayed but promised salary increase, the overdue release of their Performance-Based Bonus back in 2016, the lack of medical assistance for teachers, which is mandated by the Magna Carta for Public School Teachers or Republic Act 4670, and their perennial personal finance problems that often lead them buried in debt.
“A teachers’ union should look after teachers’ concerns and their welfare first and foremost,” Villarin said. “This is what our union stands for. We want to genuinely enhance the social and economic well-being of public-school teachers in the region and in the country, in the interests not only of the teaching profession but also good education.”
Who gets to represent NCR public-school teachers in the end? This is up to the teachers themselves. But this “freedom period” can only be good for teachers, because it allows them to choose who will represent them, who will negotiate the best terms that represent their needs.
This choice can only improve a union’s accountability and its incentives to represent teachers’ interests well at the bargaining table. It is also the same basic right to join, or refuse to join, and the freedom of association accorded to all workers under the Constitution.
It is up to these contending unions to give teachers a reason to join them. They must go beyond generic rhetoric and offer real solutions to real problems, to help make public-school teachers’ lives better.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano