What is the process for Unionizing?
California public school educators unionize by demonstrating that a majority of their colleagues support unionization by signing a union support petition. Hundreds of thousands of educators across California have unionized over the years in this democratic and legally protected fashion. This unionization process is overseen by the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) which is a California state agency. The California state law that protects our rights to unionize is the Educational Employment Relations Act (EERA).
Here in Clovis, once a strong majority of our eligible colleagues sign our union support petition, we will submit our petitions to PERB. Though the minimum support legally necessary to unionize is 50% +1 of eligible educators, our goal for ACE is to have stronger majority support. PERB will then verify whether majority support exists. Following PERB’s verification, our union will be certified and we will begin the process of our union contract negotiations. EERA Sections 3544a, 3544b describe this how this process works. Under no circumstances will administration see who signed our union support petitions.
Building a strong union requires more than just building majority support. It also requires having a dedicated leadership team of respected educators who guide the unionization process. Here in Clovis, many of our colleagues have stepped up to be part of our ACE organizing committee. This group is deciding strategy, growing participation, getting input from our colleagues about areas we want to improve, and letting Clovis educators know how they can best support this exciting effort. For a list of current ACE organizing committee members, please see our ACE Letter to Our Community.
Unfortunately, there have been some recent reports of a few administrators and other individuals suggesting that the unionization process requires 30% support to initiate an election. That is simply not accurate. Furthermore, some of these same people have implied that administration will verify the union support petition signatures. That is also categorically false.