The Washington Legislature in the past has looked at how to prevent teacher strikes, but hasn’t taken action to do so. And it doesn’t appear inclined now after a two-day walkout in Tacoma.
Public employees don’t have a legal right to strike in Washington, and the courts have claimed authority to order them back to work, as a judge did Wednesday in Tacoma. But the Legislature has resisted writing an explicit ban into law.
Previous school closures have led lawmakers as diverse as Sen. Tim Sheldon, a conservative Democrat from Mason County, and Rep. Hans Dunshee, a labor-backed Democrat from Snohomish County, to try to change the law to make it illegal to strike.
Dunshee’s 2004 proposal called for arbitration by an independent panel whose decision would be legally binding – similar to what’s used for police and firefighters to make sure they stay on the job. But representatives of school districts and the state teachers’ union lined up against the idea.
“I haven’t taken the temperature recently, but since I was having both sides oppose it, it’s kind of hard to get to 50 percent votes in the Legislature,” Dunshee said.
Republican Rep. Bruce Dammeier of Puyallup said requiring binding arbitration would be a “marked departure” from how the process has been used, as a way to maintain public safety. But Dunshee said it has resulted in fair dealings for the uniformed workers and should be expanded.
In the wake of a 50-day strike by Marysville teachers in 2003, Dunshee’s proposal didn’t advance far, but it did get a hearing in a committee chaired by Steve Conway, a Tacoma Democrat who is now a state senator.
Conway, a retired United Food and Commercial Worker’s Union official, is open to the idea and says he wouldn’t support restricting public employees’ rights further without a way of resolving disputes through arbitration. Conway calls the present law on strikes “ambiguous.”
Attorney General Rob McKenna’s office maintains it’s illegal for teachers to strike. Sheldon agrees.
“I’ve always felt that they are illegal. They certainly ought to be,” the Mason County senator said. “In the past I’ve worked on legislation to clarify that they are illegal – and also to prevent the teachers from taking sick days and being paid while they’re out on strike.”
In Tacoma, school district officials have said they haven’t yet decided how pay would be handled.
Legislation backed by Sheldon in 2003 also would have called for penalties for union officials and members who strike.
Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire talked to both sides of Tacoma’s bargaining table Tuesday to urge a resolution. She isn’t taking a stance on whether teachers should have the right to strike. That issue will work its way through the courts, spokesman Cory Curtis said.
Lawmakers made teacher negotiations in Tacoma and all across Washington more difficult this year by cutting $1.8 billion from K-12 education in response to dropping state revenues. They might have to cut more after a report today on the latest plunge.
Among other cuts to school districts, lawmakers cut the amounts provided for teacher pay by 1.9 percent. In many districts, that became a subject of contract negotiations, with some districts passing it on to teachers and others absorbing it.
Dammeier didn’t like the education cuts and voted against the budget.
“It divides when we need our teachers and principals on the same side,” the former Puyallup School Board member said.
About the Tacoma impasse, he added: “I think the Legislature kind of teed up this problem.”
The teacher pay cut proposal emerged from bipartisan negotiations in the Senate. Conway said it was always supposed to be decided in negotiations between districts and teachers, including in Tacoma, where teachers maintain the district should use its reserves to make up for the cut.
“You can’t blame the Legislature,” Conway said. “This school district has the largest reserve of any school district in the state.”
The prospect of a pay cut has been a stumbling block in Tacoma negotiations – but not necessarily the main one. Both teachers and district officials say the bigger obstacle is the way teachers are transferred between schools, including the role seniority should play.
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