On Wednesday morning, nearly 50,000 Seattle students are supposed to head back to school. Parents have arranged work schedules, child care and transportation around that promise.
Whether the school bell actually rings is a bargaining chip.
Members of the Seattle Education Association (SEA) voted 91.2% last week to authorize a strike if they don't reach a contract agreement with Seattle Public Schools. The current contract expires today.
Washington's public educators should not be threatening to withhold school from children and families to gain leverage at the bargaining table.
And Seattle isn't the only place families have reason to worry. In Tumwater, the Tumwater Association of Paraprofessionals is also in a labor dispute that could affect school operations. The district has warned families about the possibility of labor action as the school year begins.
Families should not have to develop backup plans because public employees might withhold a taxpayer-financed service children are supposed to receive.
That doesn't mean every concern educators raise is illegitimate. Class sizes matter. Special-education staffing matters. Workloads and the amount of time teachers have available to actually teach deserve serious discussion. Have those discussions. Bargain. Show up at school board meetings. Wear buttons. Call lawmakers. Make the case to taxpayers. But don't refuse to provide the taxpayer-financed public service families have been promised.
The Washington Federation of State Employees offers a timely contrast. WFSE members are unhappy with the state's position in negotiations over their next contract and today are holding a statewide “walkout” at worksites around the state.
I don't necessarily agree with their compensation demands. But here's what I respect: WFSE says the demonstrations will take place during lunch breaks or scheduled leave and vacation. Whatever the public thinks of WFSE's wage requests, drawing attention to the issue and applying pressure, without depriving taxpayers of services they are paying to receive, is a far more responsible way for public employees to express their wants.
SEA and Tumwater educators could do the same. Instead, families again face the possibility of scrambling for child care and missing work because students make useful leverage.
SEA says the dispute includes compensation along with working-condition issues such as class sizes, workloads and special-education services. Those working-condition issues deserve to be taken seriously. But compensation deserves to be considered on its own merits, too.
The salary educators are complaining about
Seattle Superintendent Ben Shuldiner provided some revealing math Sunday.
According to Shuldiner, the salary line containing the greatest number of Seattle teachers — 1,060 of them — currently provides a base wage of $118,716 for 180 days of work. Add $3,298 for five additional contractual days, $2,638 for four technology days and $17,932 in Time, Responsibility and Incentive pay, and total wages reach $142,584. That is before benefits, retirement, stipends, extra hours or other payments some teachers receive, the superintendent writes.
Shuldiner also says the district has offered SEA members a minimum cumulative 8.8% increase over three years, with the amount adjusted upward if future state inflation adjustments exceed projections.
This is happening while Seattle Public Schools confronts a severe budget problem.
Whatever one thinks appropriate teacher pay should be, compensation and legitimate classroom concerns should each have to stand on their own merits. Concerns about special education, workloads or class size do not make threatening to close schools more student-centered.
There is also an inconvenient legal reality that gets remarkably little attention during Washington's recurring back-to-school strike season. State and local public employees, including teachers, have “no legally protected right to strike,” according to a 2006 Washington Attorney General opinion that remains on the current Attorney General's website today.
The opinion also refers specifically to “unlawful public employee strikes.” State law establishes no automatic penalty for most such strikes, which helps explain why they continue to occur, but courts may issue injunctions to prevent or end them. The Attorney General's Office also concluded that lawmakers could establish penalties for unlawful public employee strikes. They should.
Public employees have many ways to advocate for themselves. Denying public services should not be one of them. Further, they can always seek new employment they believe would be better for them.
UI benefits?
A new wrinkle this year is that Washington state now allows striking workers to receive unemployment insurance benefits, a favor Democrat lawmakers delivered to unions with recent legislation. The Employment Security Department, after federal intervention, is at least requiring striking claimants to search for work like other UI recipients.
Striking workers must now complete three job-search activities each week to remain eligible, although members of qualifying referral unions can satisfy the requirement through union dispatch and referral activities.
For educators, however, UI might not be the windfall some imagine. Benefits cannot begin immediately, and workers who later receive back pay covering weeks for which they collected unemployment must report it and may face an overpayment they have to repay.
That is why I urged legislation this year requiring ESD to warn striking workers applying for benefits about potential overpayments if they later receive retroactive wages. My hope is that a clear warning will discourage workers from double-dipping in the first place.
Senate Bill 6134 thankfully passed the Senate 48-0 and the House 94-0, was signed by the governor and took effect June 11.
Seattle educators and other school employees contemplating strikes still have time to settle their disputes. They should separate their monetary demands from legitimate concerns about classroom and working conditions — and none of those demands should be enforced by withholding school from children. They can bargain and advocate without withholding the work taxpayers hired them to perform.
Shutting kids out of schools and making families scramble to find care so they can perform the jobs that provide for their children is unacceptable. Public employees have no legally protected right to strike.
The school bell is supposed to call students to class. It should never be used as leverage at the bargaining table.
