Prominent Syracuse businessman John Mezzalingua successfully squelched a unionization attempt at Manlius Pebble Hill School, an elite private school, by stepping down as its board president and threatening to pull his critical funding for the school if the unionization was successful.
The teachers’ fight to unionize has been brewing for the majority of 2023 and came to a head in early November. A union vote had been scheduled for Nov. 15.
Mezzalingua, who is an MPH alum and whose family’s name is on several buildings at the school, founded JMA Wireless, a Syracuse-based company known for making 5G technology.
At a presentation by the school’s administration earlier this year, it was made clear to teachers that Mezzalingua repeatedly covered any deficit the school has run over the last several years, said Nicole Rai, a history teacher at MPH who attended the meeting. Rai has been part of the union’s organizing committee.
Mezzalingua recently covered a shortfall of up to $2 million, said several teachers who backed Rai’s account of the meeting.
His threat to pull his funding came in the days before the vote. In a letter obtained by Central Current, Mezzalingua wrote that he had stepped down from the board and made the threat while “free from the legal constraints of that role.”
“In light of these considerations, my resignation also carries with it the withdrawal of my financial support to the school should it pursue a path towards unionization,” Mezzalingua wrote in the letter. “It is my conviction that such a move would erode the culture of excellence and personalized education that we have worked so hard to establish and maintain.”
Ultimately, organizers canceled the vote.
Mezzalingua has become the darling of Syracuse’s emerging tech scene. Last year, JMA Wireless purchased the naming rights to the former Carrier Dome. Gov. Kathy Hochul visited Syracuse in 2022 to celebrate the completion of the first part of JMA’s expansion into the city’s South Side. On Tuesday, the Syracuse Industrial Development Agency granted JMA Wireless nearly $4 million in tax breaks for its next phase of development.
Before Mezzalingua sent his letter, three teachers familiar with the unionization effort said that more than 70% of teachers had expressed support for the union. After a campaign began to end the unionization effort, only about 55% of the unit signed union cards. Mezzalingua’s letter sparked fear that a unionization vote could sink the school, according to the teachers.
While some organizers believed Mezzalingua’s threat to be a bluff, the teachers determined the threat had slimmed the vote’s margin and would have made the bargaining process tougher.
Mezzalingua did not reply to multiple phone calls or attempts to reach him via email.
Evan Dreyfuss, a portfolio manager who lives in Skaneateles, has taken over as the board’s interim president. Dreyfuss did not return a call made to his home phone or a request to comment sent Monday to his email.
Head of school Jim Foley wrote in response to a list of questions that the school has “fulfilled all of our legal responsibilities under the National Labor Relations Act.
“Consistent with school policy, we do not publicly disseminate information about school operations,” Foley wrote.
‘Systemic flaws’
The teachers’ efforts to organize began in the late spring of 2023, according to Rai and multiple teachers with knowledge of the organizing effort. (Central Current granted teachers anonymity because they expressed fear of retaliation for speaking out.)
But it wasn’t the first time teachers at the school have tried to organize. At least one teacher said there were two previous efforts to organize teachers, including in 2015 after layoffs at the school.
“There are systemic flaws at the school that a union — and at this point only a union — can address,” the teacher said. “It’s not personal, it’s not about our head of school, it’s not about our school leadership.”
This time, teachers had varied reasons for trying to unionize. Among other reasons, they named:
- A sidelined diversity, equity and inclusion effort
- Staff turnover (at least 10 teachers left MPH last year, according to organizers)
- Pay inequities
Last year, Rai, who is Mexican-American, took over the DEI committee with hopes of establishing the school’s diversity statement. The committee of 10 teachers crafted a statement that was workshopped by other teachers at a professional development day.
Rai presented the statement, which included working toward a goal of being “anti-racist,” to the board, she said. But the board seemed uncomfortable with the language and never voted on the statement, according to Rai.
The committee, she said, also began to try to tackle pay inequities at the school but was stymied.
One teacher who spoke on the condition of anonymity said she discovered a pay gap of her own near the start of her time at MPH. She had significantly more experience than a male colleague and an equal degree but was paid less. Three other teachers backed her account.
Rai conducted an anonymous survey of teachers that suggested the school had pay inequities across genders, teachers in different schools and those with different certifications, she said.
She requested deidentified lists of salaries for teachers at the school. After asking for the list for several months, school administrators told her that salaries fell outside the DEI committee’s scope, she said. The committee’s goal was to establish a pay scale based on experience and education, according to Rai.
When teachers arrived back at the school this fall, administrators told the teachers that recommendations from last year’s iteration of the DEI committee would not be used by the school’s board or administration, according to Rai. The board would take up drafting a statement and would handle any pay scale issues, Rai said.
Together, the issues pushed teachers to unionize, they said. The union received backing from a number of elected politicians, including the area’s entire delegation to the New York State assembly and senate. It also received a letter of support from the Christian Brothers Academy’s teacher union.
On Oct. 18, the MPH teachers filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board signaling a readiness for a vote. They then filed an election notice on Nov. 6.
An anonymous email account whips up backlash
As the election drew closer, the attempt drew backlash from school administration.
About a week before the scheduled vote, in early November, the administration called an unmandated all-staff open forum about the union. For well over an hour, pro-union teachers, anti-union teachers and administration went back and forth, teachers said.
One administrator said they believed relationships between administration and teachers had already changed, according to a teacher who attended the meeting.
“It was clear that people had very much made up their minds by that point,” one teacher said of the meeting. “No one really left that in any different position than where they began.”
The backlash was not limited to the school’s administration.
On Nov. 11, just before 8 a.m., an anonymous email account called “MPH concerned parents” began emailing the entire list of parents who send their kids to MPH. Attached to the first email was Mezzalingua’s letter, which he had shared with an MPH lower school teacher.
The account claimed to speak for a diverse group of parents whose children attend the school. The emails it sent drew on anti-union sentiment. It did not name anyone involved with the account.
A letter from the account laid out a number of claims:
- Legal fees from collective bargaining would “signal a poor investment climate to MPH donors” and increase the school’s shortfall (MPH hired Fox Rotschild LLP, a firm that represents management in labor disputes)
- Prospective students and their parents wouldn’t be able to differentiate MPH from unionized public schools (private school Christian Brothers Academy has unionized teachers)
- Unionization would make prospective parents weary of MPH’s financial sustainability
On Nov. 13, the “MPH concerned parents” account sent out an email with a letter from teachers and staff at MPH’s lower school, some of whom would not have qualified for the potential union, who did not support the union.
“We believe that we can come together to examine and dive into problem solving as a united community without a union,” the letter read. “We do not support the push to unionize MPH.”
While the email account percolated anti-union sentiment, other parents chimed in with some level of support, according to emails obtained by Central Current.
“I will take advantage of this list to say that both historically and in our contemporary moment, union busting efforts are regularly followed by retaliation,” one parent responded. “I hope that our shared concern for our teachers extends to protecting those who bravely signed their names to this letter.”
Another parent chimed in to second the email’s sentiment.
“I think everybody’s coming from a very well-meaning, heartfelt ‘we want to protect what we have’ place, but I think we’re all looking at it from very different perspectives,” Rai said. “I think it’s certainly drawn lines within the faculty.”
Where the teachers go from here
The wheels had been greased for Mezzalingua’s threat.
Over the last year, the school had made clear it relies on Mezzalingua. In the September all-staff meeting, administration outlined how it has leaned on Mezzalingua to cover its deficits, the teachers said.
“It was said verbally many times,” Rai said of the meeting.
It made louder a whisper among teachers. Rai said many had wondered how Mezzalingua’s support for the school might change once his last child graduates from the school, and his threat gave them a glimpse.
Because the organizers rescinded their petition from the NLRB, the union vote will be on hold for at least six months, teachers said. Each of the four teachers who spoke to Central Current all expressed some hesitancy about their futures at the school.
One said they are already looking for work elsewhere. Another said they’d consider staying if the school voluntarily attempts to publish a pay scale and listens to the union’s concerns.
Rai is still considering her options.
“I’m not entirely sure that the way MPH is run or, at least the way I perceive MPH to run,” Rai said, “fits well with me.”
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