Member-Only Benefits - Not Available to Fair Share

Here are a few of the benefits that are provided only to members. These are benefits that teachers who are fair share don't receive.

* Full members receive up to $1 million in professional liability insurance through NEA. If a student was injured in your classroom, and the parents sued, you are covered by the professional liability insurance. Non-members have to purchase their own professional liability insurance or rely entirely on the district to protect them in cases of work-related suits.

* Full members have access to Education Minnesota legal services in situations where a student and/or parent make accusations against a teacher (Example: A student claims you grabbed his arm and left a bruise.) The district is obligated to investigate all such claims, even though the charge may be false. Legal fees of full members are covered in these cases. Fairshare teachers are on their own.

* Full members have access to the Education Minnesota Crisis Fund if the local goes on strike. When our local was on strike several years ago, the Education Minnesota Crisis Fund paid the health insurance of all full members. Fairshare teachers had to pay their own health insurance during the period of the strike.

* Full members have access to a wide range of savings for home and auto insurance, travel, hotels, auto rentals, and other benefits to which fairshare teachers are not entitled.

Your Union Working For You

A few recent examples of your union's activities at the National (NEA/AFT), State (Education Minnesota) and local (AHEM) level.

NEA/AFT

* The original NCLB (No Child Left Behind) legislation from the Bush administration would have allowed parents of children in schools not making AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) to receive private school vouchers, draining scarce resources from our public schools. Through the efforts of NEA/AFT, private school vouchers were removed from NCLB.

* Currently, NEA and AFT are leading the fight to fix and fund NCLB.

Education Minnesota

* Education Minnesota, working with other unions, stopped the proposal in the legislature to freeze our salaries and benefits for two years. If this legislation had passed, we would not have been able to bargain pay raises in the last round of negotiations.

* One legislator's bill would have allowed school boards to determine how much they could afford for salaries and benefits, and then teachers would only be allowed to bargain up to this predetermined amount, making collective bargaining almost meaningless. Education Minnesota, working with other unions, turned back these legislative attacks on our collective bargaining rights.

* Education Minnesota has been the leading advocate for increased legislative funding for public education.

* Education Minnesota's Political Action Fund provided funds to help pass our 2002 levy. If our local levy had not passed, 350 teacher jobs would have been cut in Anoka Hennepin.

* Education Minnesota maintains a staff of six attorneys. Attorneys from the Education Minnesota legal department have provided our members with excellent legal representation in recent grievance arbitration hearings.

Anoka Hennepin Education Minnesota (AHEM)

* AHEM has bargained starting salaries for teachers that are among the best in the state of Minnesota.

* AHEM has raised teacher salaries at the top of the salary schedule, so that they now meet metro averages.

* AHEM vigorously defends our members' rights under the contract. Over the last two years, we have brought five grievances to arbitration. In an arbitration hearing, the member's grievance is heard by an outside neutral arbitrator. AHEM has prevailed on behalf of our members in all five of these recent cases.

* Three of the 5 arbitrations that AHEM won were filed on behalf of younger members. Two of the arbitrations were on behalf of young women taking maternity leaves. In one of these cases, the district told two non-tenured teachers that their maternity leaves represented a "break in service." The district then set back each woman's seniority to the date she returned from her maternity leave. Further, the district told the women that they could not use their accumulated sick leave while on the maternity leave. AHEM brought a grievance to arbitration on behalf of these young women. The neutral arbitrator found on behalf of AHEM. The district was ordered to restore their original seniority dates and to allow them to use their accumulated sick days for their maternity leaves.

* AHEM helped spearhead the effort to pass the 2002 levy, saving 350 teacher jobs.

* In 2003, AHEM bargained the earliest settlement in the history of the local union. The settlement was completed before school began.