POLICY HIGHLIGHTER

Volume 14, Number 16-4
July 19, 2004

Marysville Teacher Strike - Lessons Learned, Part IV
WEA harms children and teachers
(Part four of a five part series)

Today, students in Marysville attended their final classes of the year. This long delay into mid-July was the result of tactics employed by WEA officials, who are proving to be the most serious obstacle to meaningful education reform in our state.

Consider the pattern that emerges in a brief consideration of current education issues.

Charter schools.
While public charter schools are serving hundreds of thousands of students in forty other states now, WEA president Charles Hasse personally filed a referendum (R-55) to revoke a new law that would have allowed a handful to open in Washington this year.

Why is the WEA so eager to defeat this successful school model? Teachers in new charter schools are not forced to join the union—they have a choice. Some charter schools even prohibit unionization for the first five years to give teachers and administrators more flexibility in deciding how the school is run.

Strikes and other WEA tactics that harm children.
Many of the recently negotiated union contracts get more money for teacher salaries through reductions in textbook purchases and teacher/student contact time. The WEA actively opposes the notion that money ought to follow the child to the classroom.

While the WEA is quick to brand anyone who disagrees with their agenda as an “enemy of public education,” they see nothing wrong with having their members conduct illegal strikes that deny children an education.

Student safety.
The WEA and its parent—the National Education Association, are turning a blind eye to abuse of students by their members. The WEA was recently caught organizing “file parties” to allow teachers to review their personnel records and remove documents related to charges of sexual misconduct. Union officials have been known to threaten school districts with lawsuits and lengthy court-battles to obtain large settlements for sexual predators, and to negotiate contracts that make it difficult for schools to track dangerous predators.

When a report commissioned by the federal Department of Education revealed that 4.5 million children nationwide have endured some form of sexual misconduct at the hands of a school employee, the WEA’s parent organization (National Education Association) immediately and defensively criticized the findings instead of looking for a way to remedy what is clearly a widespread and serious problem.

The WEA does not empower teachers.
The union doesn’t tell teachers of their immunity from lawsuits under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Instead it tries to persuade teachers they need to stay in the WEA to maintain their liability insurance. Nor does it inform teachers of the “Teacher Next Door” program, which permits teachers to buy homes in urban areas at a 50% discount from the list price. The union even bargains away class-size reduction funds.

Teacher salaries.
The teacher union’s position on salaries doesn’t benefit our best teachers. Nor does it attract our best and brightest to go into teaching. The union advocates for across-the-board increases in teacher salaries (which are forever “inadequate”), but hotly opposes higher pay for demonstrably better teachers, or for teachers in fields of greater need where scarcity exists.

It makes sense for the union. With mandatory dues often set as a percentage of teacher pay, union coffers grow fatter with across-the-board salary increases. At the same time, performance pay would mean more independence for some teachers. If excellent teachers could bargain their own salaries higher based on their proven ability to teach, they wouldn’t need the union. It also means “quality instruction” would be determined by an entity other than union officials, and this would be troubling for them.

Teacher representation.
The teachers’ union (national, state, regional and local affiliates) collects about $55 million a year from teachers in our state. After generously compensating union staff (with average salary and benefits of $103,146 a year), the WEA uses a substantial part of its revenue to maintain and operate a $9.5 million headquarters, organize and carry out illegal strikes, and influence the outcome of elections at the national, state and local level.

While the WEA does have a voluntary political action committee, only six percent of the union’s members contribute even one dollar a month. The membership decline has been steady since voters passed an initiative in 1992 requiring the WEA to get permission from teachers before deducting such contributions from their paychecks. Since then, WEA officials have tried to circumvent the law on numerous occasions, resulting in three lawsuits filed by the attorney general’s office which resulted in more than $1.3 million in fines and penalties against the union.

Unfortunately, WEA officials seem to consider such fines a cost of doing business, and they use mandatory teacher dues to pay the price for their illegal activity.

Conclusion.
The WEA does not represent the interests of teachers or students, and too often its self-serving policies are actually harmful to those interests. Marysville is only the most recent and visual example of the union’s disregard for the education profession and the academic future of students. It will not be the last unless parents, teachers, legislators and other concerned citizens call for policies that protect students and teachers by requiring meaningful union accountability.

Prepared by: Evergreen Freedom Foundation | 360-956-3482

Evergreen Freedom Foundation P.O. Box 552, Olympia, WA 98507 Phone: (360) 956-3482, Fax: (360) 352-1874 Email: effwa@effwa.org