Ed Committee Kills Union-Busting Bill

The Senate Education Committee has killed legislation removing the requirement that school boards negotiate with officially recognized teachers associations.

Sponsored by committee member Rod Beck, the conservative Boise Republican, the measure was rejected on a 6-3 vote on Friday.

Beck maintained his bill would restore local control to school boards, Critics warned it would destroy the state’s 24-year-old collective bargaining law for teachers.

The measure would have left it up to school boards to decide whether they wanted to negotiate salaries and working conditions with a recognized teachers union. It could also ignore that organization and deal individually with teachers - or with no one.

Beck is also pushing legislation to extend the state’s 1986 Right-toWork law to public employees without providing them the other federal labor law protections that workers in private industry enjoy.