A Middlesex Superior Court judge has issued his final ruling on the Newton teachers union’s illegal 11-day strike from earlier this year, dismissing a legal motion brought against the Newton Teachers Association (NTA) by Newton parents and agreeing to split the fines against them between Newton Public Schools and the state.
The motion to intervene, which was filed on Friday on behalf of three Newton families, sought to recover unspecified damages for harm done to the families during the educators’ work stoppage over prolonged and failed contract negotiations. On Tuesday, Judge Christopher Barry-Smith closed the case against the NTA and denied the motion as moot.
The legal effort was headed by Wisconsin lawyer Daniel Suhr, who told The Boston Globe Tuesday that estimated damages to students and parents as a class “easily exceed $25 million.” The fines “do not begin to address the tremendous damage this illegal strike did to Newton as a community, and especially to our children,” he argued.
The NTA characterized Suhr as “a conservative political activist” that “has been active in other right-wing attacks on organized labor” in a Tuesday press release, pointing to a similar lawsuit led by Suhr against the Chicago teachers union for their 2022 strike.
The lawyer’s conservative bona fides also include a lawsuit against the Wisconsin Bar Association over a diversity clerkship program and serving as a policy director for former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, according to The Federalist Society.
“The national movement aimed at weakening educator unions and other public-sector unions is not welcome here, as it undermines advocacy for the public good,” the NTA said in a statement.
On Tuesday, Barry-Smith also agreed to divide the $625,000 the union owes in fines between Newton Public Schools and the state. As was stipulated in their return-to-work agreement, the union will pay $275,000 to the school district as compensatory fines and $350,000 to the state as coercive fines.
“We are at an important point now to move forward with implementing the terms of our new contract, which allows us to better meet the needs of our students,” the union said in a statement.
While the NTA’s strike is reported to be the longest strike to occur in Massachusetts since the 1990s, it is not an anomaly. In recent years, teachers’ unions in Andover, Malden, Brookline, Woburn and Haverhill in similar collective bargaining ruts have organized strikes and faced fines due to public employee strikes being illegal in Massachusetts.
Even so, the fines against the NTA are also over five times the highest dollar amount leveled against any of the other unions, according to The Boston Globe. The fines amount to more money than the union was purported to have on hand, according to court documents, but significantly less than its total assets.
The strike, which ended Feb. 2, came after over a year of failed negotiations over a new contract for Newton’s educators. The parties fought over issues such as cost of living adjustments and increased pay for educational support staff, and distrust between them hampered negotiations.
Right now, Newton students are in school to make up for days lost to the strike while most in the state are enjoying their February vacation. The 21-school, 11,700-student school district will likely also have to take away days from its April and/or summer vacations to recover the missed days, as they must do so by June 30 or request a waiver to extend the school year from the state education department.
