WEAC Challenges QEO Rules

Background on the Qualified Economic Offer law

Various parts of the rules governing the state Qualified Economic Offer law are “irrational and unreasonable,” according to WEAC statements in a lawsuit challenging the rules.

WEAC has filed suit over rules established by the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. The two sides argued their cases in a hearing before a Dane County Circuit Court judge Friday (January 21, 2000).

WEAC is challenging rules involving the cast-forward costing method of calculating a QEO; a district’s ability to implement a QEO that is unsubstantiated; and a district’s ability to correct a defective QEO.

WEAC Legal Counsel Tony Sheehan said the cast-forward costing method, in which districts include the cost of retiring teachers in their calculations, is unreasonable.

“Under the WERC costing method, salary is given to phantoms but not to real employees in the bargaining unit,” according to Sheehan’s opening statement.

“The WERC rules at issue cause real and significant harm to real people,” according to the statement. “The issue is not, as the WERC would indicate, just one relating to mathematical calculations and the determination of which numbers to use or not to use. The issue is really the ability to engage in true, meaningful collective bargaining.”

Sheehan said the rules have “sharply cut into the hard-earned salaries of real people.”

WEAC is challenging rules allowing a district to implement a QEO that is unsubstantiated.

“It is important to remember that bargaining is a relationship, and like all relationships, there is a balance between the parties in the relationship that must be maintained or the relationship will be damaged,” Sheehan said, adding the QEO law “significantly altered the balance in the bargaining relationship between teacher bargaining units and school districts, and the WERC rules governing the QEO compound and exacerbate the harm already done to the bargaining relationship.”

Sheehan said a school district “can use a QEO as a bargaining weapon without having actual data to support its claim and the union has no recourse.”

WEAC is also challenging rules involving interest arbitration.

“Teachers are the only public sector employee group affected by the QEO,” Sheehan said. “All other unionized employee groups continue to be free to access interest arbitration.”

Posted January 24, 2000