Teachers Association of Long Beach (TALB) directors really had no choice but to file suit against CTA to get their union back because CTA lawyers have a policy of silencing complaints against the presidents and executive directors of local affiliates, no matter how illegal their behavior is.
When the CTA-chosen executive director of the Teachers Association of Long Beach, Scott McVarish, misused funds in 2007, CTA wouldn't let the TALB board of directors fire him. Instead, CTA paid for a lawyer to defend him when he slandered one of the directors.
Finally CTA realized too much money was being lost, but instead of turning over power to the directors, it took over the union itself and gave control to ex-CTA president Barbara Kerr.
The directors have filed suit to get their union back.
This is all familiar to those of us who know about the actions of Barbara Kerr and CTA head counsel Beverly Tucker in Chula Vista Elementary School District.
Tim O'Neill, the executive director chosen by CTA for South County Teachers United (CTA), informed Chula Vista Educators member Maura Larkins in December 2002 that she was forbidden from making a complaint to her union affiliate Board of Directors or Representative Council about unethical behavior on the part of the president. Why was she forbidden? Because president Gina Boyd herself refused to allow a complaint to be made about her.
You can't expect much in the way of ethics from an organization like this.
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This is interesting, as I have had to appeal to the state CTA board of directors (with no evidence so far that they've decided to take action) to compel my local Northern California-based CTA affiliate to provide me with a copy of my association's bylaws.
My union president was refusing to represent me or respond to any communication about openly-admitted retaliation by my supervisor at the district office for seeking union representation, which the union president was witness to, but asserted there was nothing to "grieve," and along with growing incidence and frequency of retaliation, including being subjected to an unfair termination meeting that was botched when I noted the HR director misrepresented my contract as only "temporary" and in spite of a positive formal evaluation, followed by 4 involuntary administrative transfers in the course of the following 2 weeks, at which point my union prez stopped answering any email or voicemail requests to file a grievance on my behalf.
Finally, only after mention of my right to file unfair labor practices complaint with PERB against the union, the CTA regional rep had to agree to file two association-level grievances on my behalf.
At last, after bringing the jurisdiction of the AG's office to bear on the state legal requirements that corporations and in particular exempt organizations have an obligation to make available their incorporating documents (which includes the association bylaws) to members of the public and certainly to voting members at their registered corporate offices with the state (i.e., my union local & CTA offices, both which share the same facility), I was finally offered the opportunity to get a copy. Before this, I was subjected to an endless series of dead-ends and endless delays, before announcing that my next step was to file formal complaint with the AG's office.
Not an effective confidence-building experience in the union... What exactly is the deal? Is it so corporatized that it serves only the needs of its ever-growing bureaucracy at our expense?
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