US school teachers are on strike in Washington state, defying a strike ban.
Pasco Association of Educators have been on strike for two weeks. The first day of school was cancelled when contract negotiations broke down and PAE have been on strike ever since – even after a county judge told them to get back to work or risk fines to the union of up to $1,400 per day.
The Pasco teachers union was fined $8,000 on Friday for its continued strike against the school district, with thousands of dollars more in penalties possible and fines for individual union leaders if they don’t get teachers back to work this week. Franklin County Superior Court Judge Alex Ekstrom ordered the Pasco Association of Educators to pay $2,000 each day the strike continues, retroactive to September 8th.
He also ordered daily $250 fines for union president Greg Olson and two other union officials, Andre Wren and Debbie Kibling. But their fines were stayed until a hearing on September 15th. The school board has scheduled a special meeting at 5.30pm on Monday to vote on suspending teacher pay and benefits. The district’s 21 schools, in addition to Delta High School, never opened on September 1st for the new school year because a new contract has not been reached.
Meanwhile in Seattle, contract negotiations between Seattle Public Schools and the city’s teachers union resumed on Saturday following the third day of a strike that could extend into this week. Both sides agreed on Friday afternoon to continue talks for the first time since the strike began last Wednesday.
The union said it had been waiting for new ideas and concepts from the district, and got those on Friday, said Washington Education Association spokesman Rich Wood. The schools district was yet to announce whether classes for its 53,000 students would be cancelled today (Monday 14th) for a fourth day.
In Seattle, teachers are worried about fair pay, but that’s not the only sticking point in either town.
Pasco union president Greg Olson said that in Pasco it’s also the curriculum – textbooks and lesson plans that are incomplete or out of date. The district has agreed to review what’s being taught at all grade levels in Pasco, but the timeline and funding for that aren’t set in stone. One defiant Pasco striker, Beth Cameron, said on Saturday: ‘I’m sitting here crying and wondering why I work for a school district that cares so little for its students, parents, community, and teachers.
‘Everything the district has done illustrates its contempt for those that matter and utter arrogance toward the people they are supposed to serve. My heart is breaking for the children and families.
‘But, we, the teachers, are the only advocates many of these kids have. East side parents don’t necessarily know how to advocate for the kids, that’s where we come in.
‘We have to stand up for Pasco kids because they do matter! They deserve every opportunity for success just the same as kids in other districts. So, I will keep fighting for them, I may still cry in frustration but I will continue to fight!’
• The largest federal employee union says it does not do what Governor Scott Walker claims it does – give dues money to political candidates. The Republican presidential candidate and Wisconsin Governor made a name for himself battling public-sector unions, and now he wants to take that fight to the federal level. Walker hit on the subject last Thursday when he spoke to 150 people at Ronald Reagan’s alma mater, Eureka College in Illinois.
The Republican Walker says that on Day One of his presidency, he’ll ‘stop the government from taking money out of the paychecks of federal employees for political union dues.’ Walker says workers should not have to pay to help candidates they don’t support. American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) President J David Cox says his union’s dues are only used to negotiate better working conditions and protect workers from things like retaliation. Cox also calls Walker’s plan a ‘blatant political attack on federal employees and an attempt to wipe labour unions off the map’.
Federal employees must choose to pay union dues, unlike state workers before Act 10. Walker says he’ll announce more details of his union plans on Tuesday, in Las Vegas, to require the unions to disclose exactly what percentage of union dues are spent on political activity, and ban the automatic deduction from feds’ paychecks in a corresponding amount.
Walker said his plan was part of an effort to ‘wreak havoc on Washington’ by transferring ‘power from the big government union bosses to the hardworking taxpayer’. However, while federal employees in unions are obligated to pay dues, their memberships are entirely voluntary. Unlike at the state and local level, federal unions cannot require collective bargaining units join the union by paying dues.
Federal employee unions are allowed to maintain some members who collect a federal salary and work in federal offices while spending at least part of their work days conducting union business – a practice known as official time – because they must represent non-union members in negotiations.
The Supreme Court will in its next session hear a case challenging any public sector union’s ability to mandate dues payment.
‘Union dues are used for negotiating with management on better working conditions, protecting employees from discrimination and retaliation in the workplace, and educating lawmakers and congressional staff from both sides of the aisle on issues of vital importance to employees,’ AFGE President Cox stressed.
He added it was ‘no surprise’ Walker would launch an attack on federal unions, given his history. National Treasury Employees Union President Tony Reardon similarly called Walker’s plan unnecessary. Membership in federal employee unions is totally voluntary,’ Reardon said. ‘There is no requirement for federal workers to join a union.’
Walker’s proposal does not go as far as measures put forward in the last Congress by Senator Tim Scott, Republican-South Carolina, and Representative Mark Meadows, Republican-North Carolina, which would have prohibited automatic deductions for union fees altogether. Cox said at the time that if enacted, those bills would severely disrupt AFGE’s primary source of funding. Walker made his proposal after dropping in recent weeks from frontrunner status to far below the top tier of contenders, according to recent polls.
• The New Orleans Mayor narrowly avoided being placed under house arrest after the Louisiana Supreme Court granted a stay late Friday on a court order that would have sanctioned him for the city’s failure to come up with a plan to pay New Orleans firefighters $75 million in back pay.
The state’s highest court lifted a lower court judge’s house arrest order for Mayor Mitch Landrieu but did not make immediately clear what the next steps in the case might be. In a statement, the court granted the mayor’s request for a stay minutes before the order was to go into effect. The bench cited technical and procedural reasons given by a dissenting judge in a 2-to-1 ruling by the Louisiana Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that denied Landrieu’s request earlier in the day.
The mayor’s weekend of home confinement had been scheduled to begin at 5.00pm on Friday. After the ruling, the unrepentent Landrieu held a brief news conference at which he criticised the firefighters’ union and the house-arrest order by Judge Kern A Reese of Orleans Parish Civil District Court. He told reporters: ‘I have to say that I never imagined in my wildest dreams when I became your mayor that I could lose my freedom for doing my job and fighting hard to protect the taxpayers of the city.’
But Nicholas G Felton, the president of the local firefighters union, said that the reprieve was only temporary and that the mayor was still obligated to come up with a payment plan. Felton said: ‘This is a temporary stay. All the issues are alive and well before us.’
The legal manoeuvering on Friday came a week after Judge Reese warned the mayor that he would be confined to his home if his administration and the union did not quickly reach an agreement to pay millions of dollars owed to the firefighters in back pay and benefits.
Judge Reese had said: ‘If not, you, Mr Mayor will be on house arrest every weekend from 5.00pm on Friday until 5.00pm on Sunday until this issue is resolved. And if you have an emergency, you cannot attend without the express written consent of this court.’
The judge issued the order after a top aide to the mayor, Andrew Kopplin, acknowledged at an August 6th hearing that the city had not paid any of the $75 million judgment it agreed to give firefighters a year ago, aside from $133,525 for on-duty injury claims.
