WEA union executives are threatening Washington’s school families ….again. Two months ago union executives announced they plan to call strikes if they don’t get up to 37% more money from taxpayers.

Of course strikes impose direct harm on children.  Federal data show children in Washington are more likely to face school closures and reduced educational opportunities through union action than children in any other state. The WEA union’s threats are directed toward cancelling property tax cuts scheduled for 2019, meaning higher taxes on working families, and on the poor and elderly living on fixed incomes.    

The WEA union routinely uses fear and strikes to force budget concessions and higher taxes. When schools are closed by a strike, superintendents come under tremendous pressure from parents and the public to reopen schools, whatever the cost to the community.

The latest threats come after teachers in Washington received the largest pay and benefit increases in memory. Teacher pay on average is now $71,088 in 2017-18, a 10 percent increase in just a few years.   Benefits have grown even faster, now averaging $25,690 in 2017-18, a jump of 33 percent.     

Meanwhile, average working families make about $60,000, with benefits nowhere near what government employees get.

Union executives routinely lie about strikes, solemnly promising not to close schools to children, then doing the opposite.

Here, for example, is Seattle’s supposed “no-strike” clause:

“ARTICLE XIII: NO-STRIKE CLAUSE

1. ...the SEA [union] will not cause or encourage its members to engage in any strike or other work stoppage.”

Despite promises like this, Washington school children suffer more from union strikes than children in any other state.

This budget increased state funding for schools to $22.7 billion, a 25 percent increase over the previous budget. It also increased state property taxes for schools in 2018, to $2.70 per thousand dollars of assessed value, cutting households incomes across the state.   Property tax increases are scheduled to ease up in 2019, but unions are already pressing to cancel planned tax relief.

We have seen this tactic before. The WEA union agrees to a tax cut in the future, then uses fear and strikes to push districts to overspend, and then calls for higher taxes to fund the overspending.  

For the WEA union, more money is never enough, and union executives will stop at nothing, including harming school children and their families, to get it.