Labor & Employment Law

Massachusetts AFT?s Jennifer Berkshire Wins Steinbock Media Award

By James Parks

Jennifer Berkshire is the winner of the 2010 Max Steinbock Award, the highest honor given by the International Labor Communications Association (ILCA). Berkshire, who writes for the Massachusetts AFT Advocate, won for her story, ?We Wanted a Voice.?  

The award, named after a longtime ILCA president, honors the best labor story written in the previous year.

The ILCA’s annual Labor Media Awards this year includes a new prize category, social media, for those who ran campaigns with social networking tools. Other categories include print, Web, photo essay, electronic newsletter, blog and multimedia campaigns. The awards will be presented formally Nov. 19 at the annual ILCA Awards Luncheon in Washington, D.C. Click here for a list of this year?s winners.

Berkshire tells the story of the successful effort by teachers at Conservatory Lab Charter School in Brighton, Mass., to form a union. Nearly 2,000 teachers are currently employed by charter schools in Massachusetts. Unlike traditional public school teachers, educators at charter schools do not have rights and working conditions spelled out by a negotiated contract.

Fed up with job insecurity, favoritism and varying pay rates, the teachers at Conservatory Lab last fall became the first group of charter school teachers to form a union. They now have a new three-year agreement that includes a just cause that prevents administrators from arbitrarily firing teachers, a grievance arbitration procedure and a new teacher evaluation tool that teachers will have a voice in creating.    

ILCA President Steve Stallone says:

Jennifer Berkshire takes us into the first charter school in Massachusetts, where teachers challenged the education privatization scheme and successfully organized themselves into the union. Through their stories she lays out the arguments of charter school advocates and shows how they fail the schools, the teachers and the students.

You can read Berkshire?s story here.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on September 22, 2010 (boomark / email).