People Are Now Recognizing the QEO as a Failure
WEAC President Stan Johnson meets with local and UniServ negotiators and
presidents from south-central and southwest Wisconsin. "We are not
going to be taken for granted anymore," he said.
WEAC members and negotiators are finally succeeding in getting out the message
that Wisconsin's teacher bargaining law is broken, WEAC President Stan Johnson
said Wednesday night (February 20, 2002) in a meeting with south-central
and southwest negotiators and local association presidents.
With more than 300 local teacher association contracts
still unsettled for 2001-03, people are beginning to understand that the
Qualified Economic Offer law is hurting schools and communities and needs
to be changed.
"As long as we settled contracts, this law was
deemed to be working," Johnson said. "Now it is obvious that
this law is not working."
Johnson applauded local negotiators and WEAC members
for standing firm and refusing to accept contract offers that would continue
to cause their salaries to decline in relation to inflation.
Several local association representatives echoed that
sentiment.
| "If we stick together
and don't settle, we have a lot more power than if we are sitting
out there by ourselves."
------------------
Jamie Domini
Verona |
When members are presented with an offer that may seem
attractive, relative to the extremely poor contract offers of recent years,
they have to think about the larger and long-term impact of accepting
that offer, said Jamie Domini, who is on the Verona Education Association
Crisis Committee.
"I think we also need to look statewide. If we
stick together and don't settle, we have a lot more power than if we are
sitting out there by ourselves," she said. "It won't be pretty,
and it won't be easy, but nothing worth doing is ever pretty or easy."
"I have never seen these people so united,"
said Jay Deremo, co-negotiator for the Whitewater Education Association.
His colleague, Dennis Hare, added that poor teacher
pay is beginning to undermine the school system.
"We do have great schools, but something smells
bad, and it's because we're eroding from underneath," he said.
Johnson said members need to fight through the battles
and keep their focus on "the war," which is over repeal of school
district revenue controls and the QEO law, a fair system of bargaining,
and the provision of resources that will keep Wisconsin public schools
great.
"We are not going to be taken for granted anymore,"
he said.
The meeting at Madison's Concourse Hotel was one in
a series of regional sessions for local association and UniServ negotiators
and presidents. Johnson is emphasizing several key messages in these meetings
and in other meetings he is having with members throughout the state.
Other comments Johnson made include:
- WEAC has not made "a deal" with the governor over K-12 education
funding. Media reports have suggested that the governor protected K-12
funding from cuts in his budget adjustment proposal in return for WEAC's
support, or lack of aggressive opposition, in next fall's election.
That is absolutely not true, Johnson said. He pointed out that WEAC
has a strict, democratic, member-driven process for determining which
candidates to recommend. (Related story - Rep. Olsen
says 'There was no deal')
- WEAC has been supporting the K-12 portion of the governor's budget
plan because it is the only plan so far that protects education from
funding cuts.
- WEAC is fighting against proposed funding cuts for the Wisconsin Technical
College System and for state agencies in which WEAC members work.
- WEAC has applauded Attorney General James Doyle for saying that, if
elected governor, he would protect education funding from cuts. Johnson
said WEAC's strong stance against cuts in education funding is having
an impact on all gubernatorial candidates.
Mike McNett, WEAC's director of collective bargaining, said that over
the last nine years, legislators had no reason to want to change the QEO
law because teacher associations were signing contracts.
"We did that as long as we could stomach it," he said. "And
now we're saying no. At some point you have to say no.
"None of us got into education to become rich," he said. "But
we didn't get into education to become poor either."
The fight against the QEO and school district revenue controls is about
much more than teacher pay, he said.
"It's about the viability of the entire institution of public education."
Resource page on the QEO law
Resource page on the
2002 state budget crisis
Posted February 21, 2002