Educators Seeking Respect & Dignity at Bargaining Table

WEAC Collective Bargaining Director Mike McNett rolls out a list of the 372 teacher locals still without a settled contract for 2001-03.

WEAC members are engaged in "the most important bargaining year in a decade," Collective Bargaining Director Mike McNett told local negotiators Saturday (October 6, 2001).

Saying more than 200 local associations throughout the state have made a commitment to reject school board contract offers that don't meet WEAC's statewide bargaining standards, McNett said:

"We will not be willing participants in the abuse of our members."

McNett was a main speaker and workshop presenter at the 2001 WEAC Fall Conference, October 5-7 in Eau Claire. The conference brought together local association negotiators, other local association officers, emerging leaders, technical college members, and Student WEA members from throughout the state.

Much of the focus was on the increasingly tense bargaining climate. All teacher contracts expired June 30, and only 13% have been settled for 2001-2003.

McNett said the combination of school district revenue controls and the "repressive" Qualified Economic Offer law have caused Wisconsin teacher salaries to fall behind inflation. Last year, the average salary of Wisconsin teachers fell below the national average for the first time since 1978.

This year, 211 associations have vowed not to accept any contract offer unless it provides salary increases of 3.4% per cell per year.

Wisconsin public schools are recognized as the among the best in the nation, McNett said, noting that state students have scored Number One on the ACT for nine consecutive years.

"If you were getting what you deserve, you'd be rewarded with the nation's highest salaries instead of being below the national average," he said.

Teachers who continue to accept the standard QEO settlement of a combined increase of 3.8% in salaries and benefits will continue to fall further behind. The salary component of that 3.8% is well below the rate of inflation, he said.

Since the revenue caps and QEO law were imposed on schools and teachers in 1993, teachers have been doing what they could within those extremely tight restrictions to get the best possible annual salary increases. But even the best under the QEO is inadequate, he said.

In some cases, locals would settle for 3.9% total packages, just so they could say they exceeded the QEO. But in one example McNett cited, the difference between 3.8% and 3.9% total packages comes to 17 cents per day, "and that's before taxes," he said.

"It's basically an insult," McNett said. "We deserve to be treated as professionals and with respect and dignity, and to think they could buy you off with 17 cents is not treating you with respect and dignity."

"In the past, we've been tempted to take the lesser of two evils instead of just saying no to evil," he said. "But at some point, the most patient, long-suffering and altruistic person says, 'Enough is enough and I'm not going to be treated that way anymore.' And I think this is the year that happens."

But it won't be easy, he said. School boards will continue to use "the QEO stick" to "beat you back." It will require persistence at the bargaining table and activism in educating communities.

"The alternative is to accept doughnut money and acquiescence," McNett said.

Mary Bell, a Wisconsin Rapids school library-media specialist who chairs the Statewide Teacher Bargaining Goals Committee, said that if salaries continue to fall behind inflation, "we will lose" the best and brightest college students who will choose other professions that provide higher salaries and a higher level of respect.

Ray Heideman, chair of the Statewide Educational Support Professionals Bargaining Goals Committee, said the ESP bargaining goals closely parallel those of the teachers.

"We are a union. We are one," Heideman said. "We work together. What affects one group affects the other group."

Educators must speak out, Burmaster says

Posted October 8, 2001