AFT President Randi Weingarten on NLRB Decision in Hyde

WASHINGTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten on today’s decision of the National Labor Relations Board to assert jurisdiction in the Hyde Leadership Charter School case:

“The Hyde decision reaffirms that educators, regardless of where they work, are employees entitled to a voice at work and the right to organize and collectively bargain for fairness and respect.

“Charter schools—which market themselves as public schools and receive substantial amounts of public money under a New York state law that also treats their employees as public—brought this case, we believe, to try to deny their educators that voice.

“This is unfortunately part of an ongoing pattern of some charters doing what they can to avoid accountability to the public. The NLRB made it clear that charter school educators should have the right to organize. And one of the best ways to avoid the charter failures we so often see is to ensure educators have a real say over their work lives by encouraging them to form a union.

“The fight continues, and the AFT will keep using any recognition mechanism available to us—whether public, private or voluntary—to enable charter school educators to achieve the dignity they deserve by protecting their right to raise their collective voice.”