September 4, 2020 

Hello! My name is Sarah Gordon and this is my 15th year teaching 3rd grade at Brooklyn Friends School. I am here today as a teacher, a proud member of the BFS Union and Local 2110 of the UAW, and a member of our bargaining committee, representing my coworkers at the bargaining table. We have been meeting throughout the summer to negotiate a contract with the school, and have been making steady progress. With our union, we had a space where we could advocate for proper PPE and training for maintenance staff who had returned to the building without these things in place. I ask you also to send some good energy and thanks towards all the workers in the building right now who are going above and beyond to get us ready for this new school year.  

I am so happy to be with all of you, but I am also here with so many questions.

Why at this moment, in the middle of a pandemic with the safe reopening of schools on all of our minds, and after lay-offs left us reeling, would action be sought to remove our right to be involved in health and safety decisions and return us to at-will employees? Without a union, any and all terms and conditions of our employment can be changed at any time, for any reason and without any method for appeal.

Why would a school known for its dedication to social justice take advantage of a Trump administration decision to seek to deny us, its own workers, the union that we voted for? How do we explain this to our students? How do we tell dedicated upper school activists or our second graders who study change-makers like labor leaders Dolores Huerta and Clara Lemlich that the teachers and staff who they see every day, cannot be unionized anymore because they work in a Friends school? How can we explain to them that the Board once recognized our union but is now reversing its course and seeking to set a legal precedent that will serve to undermine other established unions in other religiously affiliated schools, including other Quaker schools?

But no matter the why’s, it is the impact that we have to face. And the impact of this effort is that our community is devastated and demoralized at a time when we most need to be united and supported. We feel that the rug has been pulled out from under us.

This petition filing, and the way that it was conducted, has only served to further clarify why we need a union. We need a union in order to hold those in power accountable for listening to our voices, for following just and transparent procedures, and for including us, as equals, in the decisions that affect our livelihoods. 

Unionizing is an act of hope. [UAW Local 2110 President] Maida Rosenstein taught me that. We formed the BFS Union because we had hope that the school could be better and we could find a new path towards equity, transparency, and protection for BFS employees. We are trying to remain hopefully.

We hope that the petition will be withdrawn. We hope that we can return to the bargaining table to finalize a contract, and that with that contract in place we can become a better school, workplace, and community.