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It started with a dispute between a teacher’s union and a school district over the cost of health care.
It ended with 228 teachers in jail cells rather than classrooms.
They were members of the 1,000-strong Middletown Township Education Association, and they went on strike in November 2001 in a violation of state law.
State Superior Court Judge Clarkson S. Fisher issued a back-to-work order. Some agreed to return to work but 228 refused and ended up behind bars.
Negotiations continued as the teachers sat in jail. After a week, union leaders called off the strike and the teachers were released.
More common are walkouts that last a mere day or two.
Teachers in Franklin Lakes went on strike last year over contract negotiations. Jersey City teachers did it in 2018. Both districts resolved issues quickly, before ending up in court.
Now, as we begin the most unusual school year ever, teachers in districts across the state are expressing concern about the safety of going back into the classroom. With few options available, some have used the word “strike.”
Despite the concerns, teachers in New Jersey, by law, aren’t permitted to strike.
Public employees can organize, unionize and use collective bargaining, but they don’t have the right to strike, according to the New Jersey Employer-Employee Relations Act, which was passed in 1941 but was expanded to include teachers in 1968 after several teacher strikes.
“If an illegal work stoppage occurs, Superior Court may issue an injunction at the request of the school district, ordering the teachers back to work,” said Frank Belluscio, Deputy Executive Director of the New Jersey School Boards Association.
Still, there have been rumblings of a teacher strike in Lakewood, where the school district is opening for all in-person learning despite the coronavirus pandemic.
Teachers reported to work on Tuesday to prepare their classrooms for a full school of students, who will arrive for the first day of school on Friday. A teacher and an aide in the district quit their jobs because of the five-day-a-week reopening.
Also Tuesday, fears of a strike led New York City to push back its reopening of schools for in-person learning until Sept. 21.
Across New Jersey, teachers have been voicing concerns about some districts’ reopening plans, with local unions looking closely at their options.
The Parsippany-Troy Hills Education Association issued a vote of no confidence against the district’s superintendent, calling its reopening plan “unwise, unsafe, and uncreative.”
The Glen Rock Education Association started a petition, asking the district to begin the year remotely because of concerns over the district’s ventilation systems.
So far in New Jersey, no union has decided to strike, but it’s not out of the question, said Donna Chiera, president of AFT New Jersey, which has 30,000 members. .
“I know there are a lot of emotions going on now, but instead of calling for a national or statewide safety strike, we are looking at it district by district,” Chiera said. “If any of the locals really feel the district is not providing the procedures to keep students and staff safe, and their membership says ‘We want to go on a safety strike,’ we would support them.”
Chiera said one of the big issues is ventilation. Districts including Newark, Perth Amboy, Garfield and North Bergen have older schools, so the ventilation systems, even if they’ve been upgraded, are insufficient.
Teachers in North Bergen have returned to their classrooms today, Chiera said, and they will be reporting back to the union whether they believe safety concerns are being met.
For schools where students are working from home but the teachers are in person, there can still be safety concerns, Chiera said, noting that there are still common spaces, like bathrooms, that are shared by the staff and need to be property cleaned.
“Are there testing protocols in place where if someone tests positive, what does that mean? Is the whole school going to go remote?” Chiera said. “I’m guessing in the next week we should have a sense of whether or not people feel comfortable (with safety plans).”
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Karin Price Mueller may be reached at KPriceMueller@NJAdvanceMedia.com.
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