The School Board Subcommittee on Collective Bargaining and the Albemarle Education Association (AEA) have come to an agreement concerning a draft resolution that the School Board will consider in an upcoming meeting. This resolution will set the parameters and “guardrails” for the process of collective bargaining in ACPS.

When a school division in Virginia contemplates authorizing collective bargaining with employees, there is a process and timeline to follow that will look something like this:

1. The School Board adopts a resolution authorizing collective bargaining on terms set by the resolution.
2. Employee groups that wish to serve as the authorized bargaining agent collect signatures from employees on “authorization cards,” which the union will later use to petition for an election in the hopes of being certified as the employees’ exclusive bargaining representative.
3. The employer holds a “secret ballot election,” which is conducted electronically by a neutral third party vendor. In some cases, more than one union petitions for certification at the same time. Neither the vendor nor the union tells the school division how individual employees voted in the election.
4. If the election results meet the requirements of the resolution, a union is certified as the exclusive representative of employees for the purposes of negotiating wages, benefits and other terms and conditions of employment.
5. The school division and the union then begin the process of negotiating a contract (called a “collective bargaining agreement”) covering the employees in the bargaining unit for a specified period of time (usually several years).

Over the course of the next several weeks, the Albemarle County School Board will begin discussion of and potentially adopt the Resolution. During this time, employees will hear from colleagues and union representatives, and employees likely will be asked to sign authorization cards. Employees are free to discuss this process with each other, their supervisors, members of the AEA, Human Resources department representatives, or anyone else. The School Division wants everyone to participate actively in the process and to make a fully informed decision about union representation.

ACPS is working on a Frequently Asked Questions document that will help employees understand the process and answer some of the questions they may have about the process, and will work with the AEA to share information about what this process will mean. In the meantime, you should always feel free to speak with a Human Resources representative if you have questions.