QEO: The End of Labor Peace
By Terry Craney
WEAC President
From 1978 to 1997, not one child in Wisconsin missed a day of school
due to a teacher contract dispute. Education flourished in this positive
environment, and Wisconsin students consistently recorded some of the
best scores in the nation on standardized tests.
This school year, children have been shut out of their schools in Madison
and Racine, many extracurricular activities have been canceled in districts
throughout the state, angry teachers and school boards are in open conflict,
and education and children are suffering. Eight months after previous
teacher contracts in the state expired, 167 districts still do not have
new ones.
Why this remarkable deterioration in our school environment?
The source of this disarray was the passage of two laws by the governor
and state Legislature in 1993.
One - referred to as state revenue controls -imposes strict limits
on the amount of money school districts can raise to operate their schools.
The other - called the Qualified Economic Offer law - severely limits
the ability of teachers to bargain a fair salary increase.
The QEO law effectively caps teacher salary increases at a rate below
inflation. Teachers are the only profession subjected to this unfair
law. It originally was scheduled to expire in 1996, but the Legislature
has since made the law permanent, thereby capping teacher salaries indefinitely.
The 1993 laws were passed in the name of property tax relief. But instead
of replacing property tax revenue with adequate and fair state taxes
to operate schools, the Legislature and governor decided that teachers
and their families would carry the burden of financing property tax
relief.
In return for years of dedicated service to children and communities,
teachers and their families are being slapped with laws that rob them
of inflationary salary increases for the foreseeable future. At the
same time, the state continues to provide property tax breaks to large
manufacturers and businesses.
The QEO law eliminated the arbitration process that was responsible
for the long period of peace in our schools. Under that law, a neutral
third-party arbitrator resolved contract disputes. Arbitration awards
were about evenly split between teachers and school boards. Teacher
salaries rose at a modest rate, in line with teacher salary increases
in neighboring states.
When the governor and Legislature effectively eliminated arbitration
in 1993, they wrote the script that is being played out today. It is
wrong to blame teachers for the growing conflicts in our schools this
year. WEAC is not orchestrating these conflicts. They are the natural
outcome of the 1993 laws.
Meanwhile, the long-term impact is building. Revenue controls and the
QEO continue to chip away at the quality of our schools.
These laws not only are tearing our communities apart, they are combining
to gradually dismantle our previously thriving state school system.
And unless these laws are changed, problems are sure to escalate in
years to come.
This column is running as a paid editorial in newspapers throughout
the state.
Posted February 24, 1998