In a mass mailing, the staff of the Zürichberg school district received the voting recommendation from the VPOD trade union for the day school. What has happened there?
The Zurich electorate can decide on two variants of the day school.
How much political influence can the school take? Actually, the answer is clear: none at all. The law states that the school must be politically and denominationally neutral. But in the city of Zurich, where red-green clearly has the majority, this question comes up regularly.
The most recent example is an e-mail to vote on the controversial day school that was circulating in schools in Zurich. The content: voting propaganda by the VPOD, the trade union for public sector employees. The e-mail was sent by a supervisor who works in the Zürichberg school district. She used her school email address and sent the message in bulk. The NZZ has received the email.
A lot of money is at stake in the vote for the day school on September 25th. The city council presents a variant for 75 million francs a year, a centre-left alliance prefers the more expensive variant for 126 million francs worked out by the city parliament. The vote is also about the principle of what childcare should look like in school. SP, AL, Greens, GLP and EVP support the municipal council variant in the key question; FDP, SVP and the center that of the city council.
The VPOD supports the variant of the municipal council. In the e-mail message sent by the caregiver, the union calls for posters to be hung up in the team room, for conversations to be sought with colleagues at work, or for the VPOD flyer to be shared with as many friends and acquaintances as possible via e-mail -mail to share.
“Nothing lost in school”
A supervisor who uses her school e-mail account to mass mail voting recommendations from a trade union: This is unacceptable for the FDP local councilor Yasmine Bourgeois, who works as a school principal. In effect, this gave unions access to internal school e-mail addresses, she says.
“Outside of the job, of course, everyone can express their opinion,” says Bourgeois. “But political messages have no place within the school system.” Due to the mass mailing and because the person used their professional email account instead of their private ones, the impression was created that school staff, authorities and staff associations unanimously supported the variant of the municipal council. “But that’s not the case,” says Bourgeois.
Roger Curchod, President of the Zürichberg district school authority, is aware of the mass mailing – and is annoyed by it. “It doesn’t work like that,” he says. “The municipal e-mail regulations clearly state that private bulk mailings are not allowed.” Curchod emphasizes that this is an isolated case. “In my four years on the district school board, nothing like this has ever happened.” The incident will be discussed internally.
Distributing flyers is allowed
The union itself does not understand the excitement. From the point of view of the VPOD Zurich, it is not a problem if teachers or supervisors pass on the union’s voting recommendation within the school and address it. Martina Flühmann, the responsible trade union secretary, says it is even desirable, especially for the opinion-forming process in a direct democracy. “Especially when it comes to a topic, like the day school, that directly affects the school staff.”
The municipal personnel law explicitly allows the distribution of flyers from the personnel associations. This has nothing to do with political influence, including on school children, says Flühmann. “The discussions don’t take place in class.” In fact, it says in personnel law: “The staff associations are also entitled to have their shop stewards collect the membership fees and distribute leaflets during working hours, provided that this does not disrupt service operations.”
This distinction is indeed important: political influence within school staff is apparently permitted, albeit delicate, as the current example shows. In the classroom, on the other hand, propaganda is taboo.
However, red-green in the city of Zurich does have political influence in the classroom – through legislation.
It was only in July that the left-wing majority in parliament passed a motion by the Greens with the demand to anchor the city’s climate goals, which have therefore been worked out by parliament, in the classroom.
In the teaching material “Societies in Transition” for secondary school, the positions of the Unia trade union were acknowledged: “It is committed to fair wages and fair working conditions,” it says. Thus, the VPOD cause should not have been the last discussion about political influence in schools.