Dive Brief:

• The National Labor Relations Board decided cases involving charter schools in New York and Pennsylvania last week, concluding both are private entities for the purposes of labor law.
• The Washington Post reports Hyde Leadership Charter School in Brooklyn and the Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School are like government contractors in that they run with taxpayer dollars, but are actually private corporations rather than public schools.
• While both cases were narrow decisions applying to these two schools only, dissenting NLRB member Philip Miscimarra wrote in the Pennsylvania case that the ruling would create uncertainty nationwide over what laws actually regulate working conditions of charter school teachers.

Dive Insight:

Public school union members are limited by laws that vary from state to state about how and whether teachers can strike, among other things. Collective bargaining attempts among private sector workers are under the purview of the National Labor Relations Board and governed by federal law. Already, charter schools have lower unionization rates than public schools and these rulings may make it harder for teachers to work together to fight for their own labor rights. It could certainly make existing unions less likely to try to organize neighboring charters. In the New York case, the local teacher union helped argue charters are public, while the charter school operators argued they were private— opposite arguments to those each side more commonly makes.

The NLRB’s decisions on these two charter schools joins a more sweeping one that clears the way for graduate studentsto unionize at private universities across the country.

Recommended Reading

The Washington Post: National Labor Relations Board decides charter schools are private ...