Let's hope the St. Paul Public Schools' contract negotiations with its teachers' union aren't the start of a new and more chaotic era in labor relations in the state.
The district and the teachers were in mediation last week after months of fruitless negotiations, with the possibility that a strike could start Tuesday. As of this writing, they were making progress but still had no deal.
But what's remarkable in this case is not the shape of negotiations but that everybody at one time was on the same side.
The teachers in St. Paul put much of the energy behind a political movement called Caucus for Change in school board elections some years ago, and they carried the day. When the votes were counted, they had in effect just elected their own "management."
These are the same people the union in January voted to walk out on.
It's a little like watching employees at a company they own through an ESOP vote to walk out because the board they put in place decided there's not enough money for raises.
"It's a great question" how teachers could have ended up so at odds with school board members they helped elect, said Joe Nathan of the Center for School Change in St. Paul. A policy analyst with a career in and around St. Paul schools, Nathan added that he saw no way to a new contract without big concessions from both sides.
There hasn't been a teacher strike in St. Paul since Harry Truman was president. In fact, traditional points to hammer out in collective bargaining, like pay or retirement benefits, weren't even top-of-the-list issues in early 2015, at the start of an election season largely shaped by the St. Paul Federation of Teachers.