HARRISONBURG, Va. (ROCKTOWN NOW) – The Harrisonburg City School Board has adopted a resolution in support of collective bargaining in the city’s school division. 

The resolution recognizes the rights of school employees to organize, form, join or assist an employee association, as well as to engage in collective bargaining on issues related to wages, hours, benefits, safety, and other employment conditions. The action at Thursday night’s meeting follows several months of discussions on how best to establish a framework for employee representation in Harrisonburg City Public Schools more than a year after previous efforts to establish collective bargaining rules had stalled.

The school board adopted the resolution in a 5-1 vote, with board member Tom Domonoske casting the only ‘no’ vote. Domonoske said that he disagreed with language in the draft resolution regarding discussions between the school board and HCPS staff around an exclusive representative to a collective bargaining unit.

“The reason I would be against it is it runs against my idea of how much power we’re giving to the exclusive representative,” Domonoske said. “I think we would be interfering with the exclusive representative if we went around them to then say: ‘we want to know what staff thinks.’ Because I would think that the exclusive representative becomes the exclusive way by which we first hear: what does staff think?'”

Vice Chair Emma Phillips said during the meeting that, through the process of drafting a resolution for collective bargaining, she was disheartened by a persistent ‘us versus them’ narrative that she had heard from HCPS staff.

“The process of collective bargaining is going to require cooperation and compromise and grace and, if I’m being totally honest, I haven’t felt an awful lot of that through this process,” Phillips said. “Despite that, I’m absolutely ready to vote for this resolution because I know it’s the right thing to do.”

Several members of the Harrisonburg Education Association spoke during the public comment period that preceded the discussion and vote on a collective bargaining resolution. Many of those who approached the podium disagreed with a provision in the draft resolution that required a threshold 30% of employees in a bargaining unit to participate in an election in order for an employee association to be elected as an exclusive representative for HCPS staff.

HEA member Glenda Leonard, a 3rd grade teacher at Waterman Elementary, spoke against the threshold requirement.

“It should be my choice to decide to vote in an election just like in all other elections organized in Harrisonburg,” Leonard said. “If a threshold is placed in this resolution it takes away my voice and vote if that threshold is not reached.”

Murphy Johnson, an instructional assistant at Bluestone Elementary, called the threshold requirement a union busting tactic.

“I’m not name calling when I refer to these tactics as anti-democratic or union busting, I am calling a spade a spade,” Johnson said. “And if you don’t like the words that I’m using, I recommend that you go back to the garden shed and find another tool.”

Before the final vote, Board member Deb Fitzgerald stressed that it would be in the best interest of HCPS employees for the board to move forward with the resolution.

“There’s a really big cost – a cost of a year of teachers’ work for not having spent the time that we devoted to redoing the resolution to coming up with a collective bargaining,” Fitzgerald said. “It would be nice to move ahead.”