The New York City teach­ers who vot­ed to union­ize in 2012 were the first Kaplan employ­ees in the Unit­ed States to do so. Paul Hla­va, an Eng­lish teacher at KIC’s Soho cam­pus, says this quick­ly pro­duced a rip­ple effect: Kaplan ESL instruc­tors across the coun­try received rais­es in what the union believes was an attempt to dis­suade oth­er schools from orga­niz­ing. Mean­while, says Hla­va, the New York teach­ers were ​“stonewalled” as they fought for these same improve­ments for themselves.

In a state­ment sent to In These Times via e‑mail, a Kaplan spokesper­son said: ​“We believe that the two-year agree­ment rat­i­fied yes­ter­day by the New York News­pa­per Guild, cov­er­ing approx­i­mate­ly 65 teach­ers work­ing at Kaplan’s three New York City ESL schools, is bal­anced and rea­son­able. It offers wage and ben­e­fit improve­ments to the teach­ers in New York. And it pro­vides these Kaplan Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ters with the con­tin­ued flex­i­bil­i­ty to oper­ate their busi­ness in a way that best serves the inter­ests of its stu­dents and will enable KIC to con­tin­ue to pro­vide jobs in the com­pet­i­tive New York ESL marketplace.”

For-prof­it edu­ca­tion ​“is an indus­try that’s noto­ri­ous for low pay and no or few ben­e­fits,” says Bill O’Meara, pres­i­dent of the News­pa­per Guild of New York, which rep­re­sents the New York Kaplan teach­ers. ​“This ini­tial con­tract is an impor­tant achieve­ment in their work­ing lives.”

Teach­ers at three Man­hat­tan-based Eng­lish lan­guage schools run by Kaplan, Inc. have won their first union con­tract with the cor­po­ra­tion, break­ing new ground in efforts to orga­nize the boom­ing for-prof­it edu­ca­tion sec­tor. In 2012, teach­ers at the three Kaplan Inter­na­tion­al Cen­ter New York (KIC­NY) facil­i­ties became the first employ­ees of pri­vate Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage (ESL) schools in the Unit­ed States to union­ize, but they have strug­gled since to set­tle a col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ment. On Wednes­day, they vot­ed to adopt a con­tract that includes wage increas­es and greater work­place protections.

In response, Kaplan teach­ers esca­lat­ed their fight, reach­ing out to stu­dents and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers for sup­port and riff­ing on the corporation’s brand-con­scious image. For the last few years, Kaplan has sought to step up mar­ket­ing of its ESL cours­es — which are sep­a­rate from the corporation’s high­er edu­ca­tion divi­sion, but part of the larg­er cor­po­ra­tion owned by Gra­ham Hold­ings Co., the suc­ces­sor to the Wash­ing­ton Post Co. — with a social media cam­paign focused around the slo­gan ​“the Kaplan Expe­ri­ence,” includ­ing a ​“Kaplan Expe­ri­ence Jour­nal” that encour­ages stu­dents to fill the pages with smil­ing pho­tos and hap­py mem­o­ries of their time spent at Kaplan. Teach­ers struck back by cre­at­ing a video enti­tled ​“the Real Kaplan Expe­ri­ence,” which details their low wages and work­ing conditions.

Accord­ing to the video, though Kaplan reaped $49 mil­lion in prof­its in 2012, it keeps more than 90 per­cent of teach­ers at part-time sta­tus; the aver­age Kaplan ESL teacher makes $25,000 a year. Teach­ers also say they lack access to ben­e­fits: Hla­va notes that in his four years of work­ing at Kaplan, he’s seen a doc­tor only once, and once taught class­es while he had strep throat because he couldn’t afford to take days off with­out pay.

Through their new union con­tract, Kaplan teach­ers have won rais­es that include an increase in wages for time spent prepar­ing class­es from $8 an hour to $12 an hour, as well as a com­pa­ny-paid sub­sidy toward the cost of health insur­ance. The con­tract also man­dates paid hol­i­days and per­son­al days for ​“senior part-time teach­ers” and pro­tec­tions for all part-timers against sub­con­tract­ing work to non-union ​“teach­ing contractors.”

Kaplan teach­ers see affin­i­ty between their own strug­gle and those of oth­er low-wage work­ers — par­tic­u­lar­ly adjunct pro­fes­sors, whose strug­gle for bet­ter pay and work­ing con­di­tions has been dri­ving a wave of labor actions at uni­ver­si­ties of late, and whose ranks are often espe­cial­ly pop­u­lous at for-prof­it col­leges. Hla­va, a grad­u­ate of NYU who holds a master’s degree in writ­ing and a teach­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, has also spent time as an adjunct pro­fes­sor and sees many sim­i­lar­i­ties between the two posi­tions. Like adjuncts, he says, Kaplan teach­ers’ wages sim­ply don’t match the lev­el of debt they’ve often assumed to obtain pro­fes­sion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions. As a con­se­quence, they fre­quent­ly fall fur­ther and fur­ther behind on stu­dent loan pay­ments even while they work mul­ti­ple ​“pro­fes­sion­al” jobs.

Though Kaplan ESL schools are dis­tinct from the company’s high­er edu­ca­tion divi­sion, they have the same par­ent cor­po­ra­tion, and labor and edu­ca­tion activists hope that the ESL teach­ers’ vic­to­ry could help make inroads with orga­niz­ing at for-prof­it col­leges as well.

In recent years, many pol­i­cy­mak­ers and edu­ca­tion advo­cates have urged stricter fed­er­al reg­u­la­tions to pro­tect stu­dents scammed by expen­sive degrees that have lit­tle prac­ti­cal val­ue. Labor activists have also mulled union­iz­ing for-prof­it edu­ca­tion, which they believe could pro­tect both stu­dents and workers.

But only two for-prof­it col­leges — Art Insti­tute schools in New York and Philadel­phia — have union­ized to date. Orga­niz­ing efforts are often met with fierce resis­tance: A bid to union­ize the Art Insti­tute of Seat­tle in 2010 failed after the school report­ed­ly hired a union-bust­ing con­sul­tant, held manda­to­ry anti-union meet­ings and made mul­ti­ple dai­ly phone calls to faculty.

For this rea­son, labor and edu­ca­tion activists are heart­ened by the Kaplan teach­ers’ progress. A 2012 arti­cle by activists Joe Berry and Hele­na Worthen cites union­iza­tion at Kaplan as evi­dence of ​“stir­rings of orga­ni­za­tion” in the for-prof­it edu­ca­tion sec­tor, and out­lines the neces­si­ty of greater sup­port for union­iza­tion at for-prof­it col­leges: ​“In the rapid­ly expand­ing world of for-prof­it high­er edu­ca­tion, there are no fac­ul­ty unions. It has been pre­dict­ed that there nev­er will be. These insti­tu­tions stand ruth­less­ly by the pol­i­cy of stay­ing union-free. … The spir­it of this orga­niz­ing is not opti­mistic, but it is determined.”

Hla­va also hopes that the con­tract vic­to­ry will ​“send a mes­sage” to teach­ers at oth­er for-prof­it schools. ​“It’s real­ly a tragedy that many peo­ple in white-col­lar jobs think they don’t need unions,” he says, ​“There’s prob­a­bly a direct cor­re­la­tion between that and why so many white-col­lar jobs have become so bad.”

O’Meara believes that the new con­tract will help set a wage floor for teach­ers at com­peti­tor schools. ​“Kaplan is one of the biggest com­pa­nies of its kind in the Unit­ed States and in the world,” he says. ​“When they were try­ing to do things like con­stant­ly low­er­ing their start­ing pay … They were lead­ing a race to the bot­tom. I hope that oth­er schools will now see that they can’t get away with this.”

Full dis­clo­sure: CWA is a web­site spon­sor of In These Times. Spon­sors have no role in edi­to­r­i­al con­tent. This author is a mem­ber of the News­pa­per Guild.