LA teachers paid not to teach

Years ago, I envisioned writing a play called “Poker in the Pit.” It was about a group of musicians hired to sit in a theater basement during performances at  a union theater. They were being paid not to play. There was a time when certain theaters had contractual agreements with the unions that required producers to hire a full orchestra if they only needed a single musician onstage. That seemed crazy to me, and I always wondered what that sort of “work” does to one’s soul.

Later, I reworked the play (in my mind, anyway) and  called it “Decomposing in the Comp Room.” This probably isn’t the best time to talk about this, but one day a number of years ago, I happened to find myself in the basement of a major metropolitan newspaper. I encountered three guys sitting around smoking cigarettes and talking on the phone in the old composing room, the place where compositors used to paste together the pages of the newspaper. This was long after electronic pagination had made these jobs obsolete, but the compositors’ union contract gave these fellows lifetime job guarantees, and so they reported to “work” every day and sat around and waited for the odd ad that emerged every once in a while that had to be pasted up by hand.

Anyway, that oft-reformulated, but never-written play came to mind when I read this outrageous report in the LA Times about 160 teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District who are getting paid a full salary to do absolutely nothing. These teachers have been accused of wrongdoing ranging from sexual harrassment, theft, and drug possession. The District is stymied by union rules requiring that accused teachers be “housed” until the cases against them are resolved. They cannot even be assigned clerical work, because that would be beneath them. Instead, while their lawyers duke it out in court (sometimes for as long as seven years!), they punch the time clock, take the same breaks they would take if they were actually teaching, and sit around doing nothing. Sometimes, those who are “housed” report to non-work at district offices. Sometimes, they sit at home. This isn’t unique to LA, either. In New York, such teachers are assigned to places called “rubber rooms.”

The teachers in limbo, in most cases, are collecting a full salary. Meanwhile, dedicated teachers are being laid off because of budget constraints.

Certainly, we do have a credo in this country that folks are innocent until proven guilty. But this situation is simply unacceptable, even for card-carrying union members. I’m surprised that the LA Times article didn’t find any teachers who were appalled to see the excessive protection and long layovers that these teachers receive. The union ought to be demanding a swift and fair conclusion to cases of teachers who have been accused of wrongdoing. One teacher in the article says that he has been “housed” for 70 days without being told what he was alleged to have done. That’s equally outrageous. There is something extremely broken when the accused don’t receive full disclosure and when the alleged victims don’t see a fair trial and resolution in a reasonable period of time. I mean, seven years? The students who complained are long gone by now.

Wouldn’t it make sense for the union to leave some leeway for schools to fire teachers, then let them take their case to court? Yes, there is always the possibility that a teacher won’t get a fair hearing, but there are other options than having someone sit in a room, on the payroll, doing nothing but crosswords for years and years. The unions ought to realize that they are hurting their own credibility — and that of their members — by allowing these cases to linger for so long. They are doing a disservice to everyone, including the accused, by clinging to these rules in their contract. This being LA, there is probably a movie in this somewhere, but it’s too sad to imagine, even in my vivid imagination.