Every day, there are various moving parts that are put into place to ensure a student’s experience is as comfortable and educational as possible. One of these cogs that spins in the background is the teachers union. According to French teacher Kyle Sweeny, one of the representatives of the teachers union, the union is there for protection and for giving teachers more of a place in creating policy.
“It’s like any other union. It’s basically our organization that we join. It’s voluntary to join, but it does actually serve and protect all teachers,” Sweeny said. “We, as a union, work together as a unit (to ensure) that teachers can have a voice in basically anything that goes on in the school district. St. Louis Park, in particular, is pretty good historically, including the teachers union in decision-making and policymaking.”
Social studies teacher Emma Engebretson, another representative, said the union works in tandem to solve upcoming problems.
“Another big reason why I like our union is we can work really closely with our district and with our admin teams to create better conditions for raising issues, and try to solve set issues,” Engebretson said.
According to Richard Kreyer, the human resource director at Park, even though teachers are overseen and managed by administration, admin works with the union to ensure that teachers are paid properly and treated correctly.
“The union’s primary purpose is to advocate on behalf of its members. They’re looking out for the welfare of their members — their pay, their terms and conditions of employment. If there’s a labor agreement and if the employee is expected to work six hours a day but is instead working eight hours a day, then the union and I make sure that they’re getting fairly paid for those extra hours,” Kreyer said. “If their job says that they’re supposed to be doing a certain thing, but we’re asking them to do things well outside of their job description, then the union can can advocate on behalf of an employee and have us relook at that to make sure that we’re properly working people for the for the pay they’re getting.”
Sweeny said the union works with administration to strengthen the school and remove problems that may arise concerning a contract.
“We advocate for teachers’ specific things, (such as) whatever is in our teachers’ contract. That includes how much we’re being paid and what the rules are for us (in consideration of) the teacher’s policies and expectations,” Sweeny said. “We work all that out in collaboration with the district.”
Kreyer said every few years, the teachers’ contracts to work at a school expire, and the union has the potential to work with administration to create better conditions for teachers.
“Every two years, by law, the teachers’ contracts expire. Then, the teachers union comes to us with requests. We just negotiated our last labor contract for 2023 to 2025,” Kreyer said. “There were issues about health insurance (and) issues about wages. We had discussions about preparation time and working conditions that we work through. I would say there’s been no big contentious things — just making sure that employees understand what they’re supposed to do and that they have the time to do it.”
According to Engebretson, the teachers’ contracts are vital so that teachers are put into better situations, and they allow the union to protect teachers more.
“Better contracts lead to better working conditions for teachers, which then leads to better learning conditions for students and whatnot. It’s all connected,” Engebretson said. “I think the other big thing is protecting each other and knowing that we have rights as teachers and can protect each other and aggregate for each other, make sure that our rights are being protected.”
