NEA: NEA Today: 'Professionals Deserve Respect' -- November 2002

Educators in Scituate, Rhode Island, are as good as they come. Their students outscored peers in every other district in recent state tests, and all five of their schools have been designated by the state as "high performing."

Not surprisingly, the 150-member Scituate Teachers Association (STA) has state and nationally recognized practitioners in its ranks, from winners of the Milken Family Foundation National Educator Award to Rhode Island's 2002 Teacher of the Year.

But as proficient as its teachers and education support professionals are, this affluent district has been slow to recognize its richest assets.

Scituate's failure to offer a competitive teacher salary or any health care package upon retirement--standard in neighboring districts--prompted one Milken Award winner to leave. And its dismal paraeducator pay (until recently, just $6.54 per hour to start) forced a teacher assistant to quit for more money at a Barnes & Noble bookstore.

This staff neglect, compounded by the Scituate School Committee's use of a labor-unfriendly attorney to slow down contract bargaining, put this rural Rhode Island district in the news at the beginning of the school year.

STA members struck for nine days, with the full support of teacher assistants and custodial/maintenance workers in two other NEA local affiliates in Scituate.

Friction points in this standoff--including lagging pay and benefits and employer demands for a 20 percent health insurance co-pay--resembled those in other beginning-of-the-year contract disputes across the nation.

The overwhelming majority of these conflicts were settled peacefully with new, signed contracts. But NEA members in some 20 local affiliates--in Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Washington--were forced to walk off the job by press time.

"Ask educators forced out on strike what they'd rather be doing, and they'll tell you they'd rather be working with young people," stresses NEA President Reg Weaver. "But too often, teachers and ESPs are asked to do an important job, but not given pay and support to come into and stay in the profession.

"Many times, a strike brings members closer together," Weaver adds. "And in most instances, it's community support that enables them to stand firm to offer the best education to children."

Parent Support Makes a Difference
Community backing is precisely what helped Scituate teachers and ESPs reach contract settlements.

Scituate parents were keenly aware of the value of their kids' educators and angry over the snail's pace of contract bargaining. Some said at a school committee meeting that they'd even swallow a tax hike to give assistants a raise.

When teachers finally hit the bricks, "many parents extended support to us through phone calls and e-mails, and some even sent food and coffee to the picket line," says STA President Ken Abrams, an eighth-grade social studies teacher at Scituate Middle School.

When they were totally fed up, parents staged their own march from a park to the town administration building, where they merged with a column of picketing teachers and ESPs. Two parents even charged inside to pose tough questions to the superintendent.

If that weren't pressure enough, the state judge who issued a back-to-work order to teachers also ordered the school committee to bargain in person--without its legal hired gun.

Teachers negotiated a new contract by the time they returned to work, and bargaining quickly moved to ESP issues.

Among other gains, teachers won the mean state salary, with an additional $400, $500, and $650 over the next three years. While STA failed to win retirement health care, it did gain a $3,000 "retirement stipend" in each of those three years for teachers with 30 years or more in the district.

STA also headed off demands for a health premium co-pay of 20 percent--it will be capped at 7.75 percent.

In ESP bargaining, custodial/maintenance workers actually rejected a tentative agreement and improved the final offer--a rare occurrence. They won a two-year, concession-free contract with raises of 4.9 percent and 4 percent.

And, after more than 15 months of bargaining, low-paid teacher assistants negotiated one- and three-year pacts that will boost pay by 25 to 45 percent over four years and provide a 50-cent-per-hour stipend for special ed duties.

Assistants won these, their first contracts, "because of collective pressure by our three locals on the school committee, our public outreach, and the parent march," points out UniServ Director John Leidecker.

And Now the Bad News. . .
Good bargaining news, however welcome, can't mask the fact that NEA local negotiators face ever-tougher challenges at the table. Some of the big ones:

Educator pay keeps falling further behind. The gap between the pay of teachers and other college-educated workers is at a 60-year high (see 'Facts and Figures'), forcing Association bargainers to roll up their sleeves.
Among other gimmicks, school board negotiators "try to save money by lengthening the number of years it takes to reach the top step of the salary schedule," notes Pennsylvania State Education Association staffer Ted MacArthur. In response, he says, PSEA "tries to maintain the integrity of the schedule" by opposing addition of new steps or increments, redistributing savings from retirements of higher paid staff back through the schedule, and winning percentage increases that "give hope" to staffers with less seniority.

Health care costs are going through the roof. NEA state affiliates in both Pennsylvania and Indiana report average health care cost increases of 20 percent-plus per year, which can make a mess of salary bargaining.
For the first time since 1975, NEA members in deficit-wracked Indiana are bargaining average annual pay hikes of less than 3 percent. On top of that, they face growing employer demands for "benefit design" changes--through higher co-pays and deductibles, including emergency room deductibles.
"In our state, a number of districts face premium increases by as much as 100 percent," says Indiana State Teachers' Association staffer Wally Cantrell. "That translates into a direct pay cut."

Respect is still in short supply. The "last straw" in educator contract disputes isn't always a money issue. It can be a school board's refusal to meet face-to-face with teachers or ESPs, or a board demand that administrators be given unilateral authority to assign cafeteria duties to teachers.
Too often, educators are "treated as kids, not adults," laments Scituate local leader Ken Abrams. "We need to seize our own professional status. It's difficult, but not impossible."

--Dave Winans

Five Steps to a Living Wage

Following a tough, 18-month campaign, the 220-member Ithaca (New York) Paraprofessionals Association has made ESP bargaining history. Last summer, IPA members ratified a three-year agreement that gives paras on the low end of the pay scale an immediate 38 percent increase, and raises starting pay by 50 percent by the end of the contract. A teacher's aide who made $6.72 an hour went to $9.36 on July 1, and will earn $10.01 in 2004.

This NEA local affiliate's successful drive for a living wage can be replicated, insists IPA President Debbie Minnick, a 17-year paraeducator. Here, Minnick says, is how other struggling education support professionals--and teachers--can start the ball rolling in their communities:

1. Do some research. "First, learn what a living wage is--it's not a federal or state minimum wage. A living wage is what it takes for you to live in your community and pay your bills, without having to sacrifice your family life to second or third jobs. Collect data from different community sources. We took an Ithaca-area living wage estimate calculated by a local credit union, and then prorated it for our 10-month work schedule."

2. Devise a bargaining strategy. "Decide how you're going to propose that your district pay a living wage. You're going to have to back up whatever you ask for. Figure out your arguments ahead of time; play it all out. Role-play an actual bargaining session. Have somebody with a good knowledge of the living wage issue play the devil's advocate--and have your answers ready."

3. Organize a living wage coalition. "You can start in your community by pulling in other employees, parents, community groups, and churches. Fortunately, we already had such a coalition in Ithaca, which we expanded when bargaining heated up. We could not have accomplished what we did without the coalition building we did with groups like the Midstate Labor Coalition, AFL-CIO; the Tompkins County Living Wage Coalition; the Labor-Religious Task Force; parents; and Cornell University students."

4. Stay united and committed. "We won because our members were committed to the cause; they would not give in. We kept communications open with them, kept them up to date, and kept them involved."

5. Get Association back-up. "You need to rely heavily on your NEA state affiliate and NEA itself for resources and materials. We had lots of assistance from NEA/New York officers and staff."

For more advice on starting a living wage campaign, contact Debbie Minnick at Debbieipa@aol.com. For background on Ithaca paras' poverty pay, go to www.nea.org/neatoday/0111/news1.html.

News -- Facts and Figures
Economic Facts of Life for Educators

NEA Research has compared the average earnings of all non-teachers with a college degree against the average earnings of all K-12 teachers with a college degree. Adjusting for inflation, the pay gap was 11.2 percent in 1940, 18.4 percent in 1950, 36 percent in 1960, 52.3 percent in 1970, 45.2 percent in 1980, 40.7 percent in 1990, and 50.6 percent in 2000--and not in teachers' favor.

And according to the 2002 Annual Employer Health Benefits Survey released by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust (at www.kff.org), all workers are paying more for health insurance while benefits erode. Some disturbing findings include:

Single premiums are now, on average, $3,060 for single coverage and $7,954 for family coverage.
For single coverage, employees now pay an average of $454 per year--a 27 percent or $95 increase from last year. The employee share of premiums for family coverage averaged $2,084 per year--a 16 percent or $283 increase from last year.
Deductibles for preferred provider organization (PPO) in-network providers rose 37 percent to $276 in 2002, up from $201 last year.