Setting the QEO Record Straight

The QEO is a complex law that is easily misunderstood. Here are some facts to set the record straight.

The Wisconsin Legislature enacted the Qualified Economic Offer (QEO) law in 1993. The QEO and the revenue controls law that restricts the amount of money school districts can raise, were enacted in order to limit school spending.

Under the QEO, school boards have the option of unilaterally limiting pay and benefits for K-12 teachers so long as the combined increase is 3.8 percent. The law allows school districts to avoid true collective bargaining regarding compensation and important school quality issues.

1. Boards are never required to impose a QEO.

• The QEO is an option for boards to use to dodge the binding arbitration process. School boards may or may not elect to use it.
  
• Employers thus have their choice of weapons. Resource-rich districts can impose a QEO to avoid cost-of-living pay increases for teachers. Resource-poor districts can select arbitration and pursue a contract below the QEO, which may include diminished benefits. School boards have options, but teachers have no right to pursue arbitration unless employers volunteer to do so.
  
• Until it is eliminated, districts can always threaten to impose a QEO-with its negative salary implications-in order to coerce teachers to make concessions on contract provisions, something they couldn't do with a fair bargaining law.

2. Benefits are not protected under current law.

• Security is an illusion under the QEO. Benefits and other contractual provisions are already being attacked under present law.
  
• When school boards choose not to impose a QEO, they can still take a local to arbitration and propose reductions in benefits, retirement packages, and even salary.
  
• Some school boards are in fact now using binding arbitration to roll back benefits for teachers and even to prevent support staff from obtaining health insurance altogether.

3. The QEO does not protect all contract provisions.

• The Dodgeland School District eliminated prep time and increased the class load for teachers, and the local demanded to bargain this economic impact. Although opposed by WEAC, a majority of the Supreme Court found that imposition of the QEO settled the matter-the district successfully increased workload while providing no additional compensation. Had the union had access to binding arbitration, it could have made and arbitrated an "impact proposal" that would have required the district to pay employees for the added work. Even when imposed, the QEO does not protect contract language for items the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission has determined to be "permissive."

4. QEO arbitration criteria are slanted against employees.

• Under current law, the "greatest weight" in determining a school district's ability to pay is given to state-imposed revenue restrictions. Property value increases within school districts, rates of taxation, and gains in local income-all traditional measures of a school district's ability to pay-are no longer given proper credence.
  
• A new bargaining law will restore the reasonable expectation that a school district's ability to pay is based in part on local criteria, including increases in the property values and incomes within its jurisdiction.

5. Great schools depend upon innovation and staff ability to bargain issues such as new teacher licensure and ESEA-related initiatives.

• Teachers must have an equal voice at the table to negotiate the best language possible for new teacher licensure (PI 34), the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), and other school quality issues.
  
• Great schools are only realized when teachers fully participate in the educational process and receive equal treatment under the law.

6. The QEO law has seriously damaged the economic status of Wisconsin's teaching profession.

• Teacher salaries have lost 11 percent to inflation since imposition of the QEO in 1993. Teacher salaries fell to just 93% of the national average, the lowest point in 40 years, with the state’s ranking plummeting from 15 th to 22 nd nationally.

• Wisconsin’s per capita income—which measures gains for all wage earners—and household median income both rose at twice the rate of teacher salaries last decade.

7. The QEO does not produce pay raises of 3.8 percent.

• Salaries have increased an average of only 1.8 percent annually under the QEO.

• The QEO can force pay reductions when health costs go up. In 2001-03, for example, 14 percent of school districts either froze or rolled back their salary schedules due to this onerous legislation.
• The QEO “cast-forward” method of costing includes in the 3.8 percent figure the cost of highly paid teachers employed during the previous year even if they’ve left the district. Such costing erodes earnings because remaining employees never receive the difference in pay when less experienced teachers—or no new teachers at all—are hired the following year.

8. Low salaries harm our great schools by increasing teacher turnover.

• In statewide surveys, more than one-third of teachers cited low pay as the primary reason for leaving the profession, and 60 percent of superintendents reported that capped funding has a negative effect on their district’s ability to attract quality staff.

• Today, about 50% of teachers leave the profession within the first 5-years. As the economic status of the teaching profession continues to erode in Wisconsin, the ability to retain quality teachers will become more difficult with resulting effects on education.

9. There is no better time than now to repeal the QEO.

• The QEO continues to reduce the standard of living for teachers every year while allowing employers, under threat of imposing a QEO, to demand unilateral changes in contracts. Such problematic working conditions are an on-going threat to the quality of Wisconsin's great schools.
  
• Governor Doyle's budget includes repeal of the QEO. We have looked for this opportunity for a decade and nobody knows if it will ever come again. The QEO must go now.

Updated March 21, 2007