On Your Side
Let Us Serve You in Santa Fe!

Many NEA members moonlight to survive in lovely--but pricey--Santa Fe, New Mexico. That's why they've joined a drive for a citywide "living wage."

Ah--Santa Fe! "A city whose beautiful, brown adobe architecture blends with the high desert landscape...one of America's great art and culinary capitals," purrs the Santa Fe Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Absolutely true. And when you visit this splendid destination, you'll encounter a sort of welcoming committee of fellow NEA members, ready to serve you in hotels, restaurants, stores, museums, and performing arts centers.

Ask these teachers and education support professionals (ESPs) why they work these second and third jobs--when they really ought to be relaxing, taking a course, or helping their own kids with homework--and you'll learn about an aspect of Santa Fe that doesn't appear in the tourist brochures. The city's cost of living is 18 percent above the national average, and its workers earn approximately 23 percent less than the national average.

While affluent outsiders are snapping up second homes in Santa Fe, many locals can only dream about buying a first house there (median home price: $268,000). Rents are ridiculous ($700 to start for a one-bedroom), gas is ghastly (15 cents a gallon higher than in Albuquerque), and starting pay is painful ($10,922 for an instructional assistant and $26,414 for a teacher with a Bachelor of Arts).

No surprise, then, that NEA-New Mexico and its Santa Fe affiliate have joined a thriving labor/community drive for a "living wage," sufficient to support a family without outside employment, in the city of arts and good eating. This is just one of 77 living wage campaigns currently underway in states, cities, and college campuses across the country.

Santa Fe NEA members--alongside allies from other labor, religious, and civil rights groups--won a first victory last March when the city council adopted a limited living wage ordinance that boosts the minimum hourly wage for full-time city employees, progressing from $8.50 on July 1, 2003, to $10.50 on July 1, 2005. The measure also applies to businesses that contract with the city for more than $30,000 in services.

At press time, the city council was set to debate competing proposals, drafted by a labor-business Living Wage Roundtable, to expand that ordinance to all of Santa Fe's private sector employees.

While passage of a strong, expanded ordinance promised to be an uphill battle--and school employee wages weren't even part of the package--local NEA officials spoke loudly on behalf of all hard-pressed salary earners.

Any new ordinance won't directly affect school district minimums, acknowledges Roundtable member Pat Chavez, an NEA-New Mexico UniServ consultant, but it "would create competition" in the local labor market and give NEA-Santa Fe bargaining leverage to raise sub-living wages on school campuses. And, of course, it would benefit educators who moonlight across the private sector.

--By Dave Winans,
with contributions from John O'Neil

For more on the living wage movement, go to www.livingwagecampaign.org.

Santa Fe ESPs List Four Good Reasons to Pay a Good Wage

Just before the Santa Fe City Council approved a living wage ordinance for municipal employees last March, many private and non-profit business representatives lined up to testify against extension of this measure to all Santa Fe workers.

Business folks contended that a higher wage floor would cause outside investment in this tourist mecca to wither, jobs to vanish, and--incredibly--students to drop out of school to earn a fortune at Wal-Mart, Burger King, or Taco Bell.

But NEA ESP members in Santa Fe make far more convincing arguments for raising local pay to 21st century levels. They say that:

1. People need to survive. When Bernadette L. Ortega, NEA-Santa Fe's vice president for ESPs, retired in 2000, she earned just $16,827 after working 21 years as an instructional assistant. Ortega says many of her ESP colleagues stay with the school system for the health benefits--and the love of working with kids--while working outside jobs just to "survive."
   "At one point, I had four jobs and worked every day of the week," notes Peggy Martinez, a cafeteria worker at Cesar Chavez Elementary School who now moonlights at a country club. "You just can't make it in Santa Fe. Wages are better in Albuquerque and Espanola."
2. People need to rest. It's a wonder instructional assistant Andrea Harvey has energy left after a week at Agua Fria Elementary School, where she does everything from working with kids in an inclusion setting to filing, copying, and preparing classroom materials. When school's done, this mother of three waits tables--for twice the money--another 32 hours a week at an Applebee's restaurant.
   "I could quit [the school] and go over to the restaurant," Harvey says, "but I stay here for the kids and enjoy my job. But sometimes I feel like I'm burning out working two jobs."
3. People need to improve their skills. Harvey says a living wage "would mean not having to work a second job" and an opportunity, perhaps, to earn an associate's degree.
   "Because of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act's mandate that all Title I paraeducators have an associate's degree by 2006," notes Ortega, "instructional assistants in Santa Fe's four Title I schools will have to choose between taking college courses at night to meet this mandate and going to their second job."
   The Santa Fe district will fund the paras' tuition, but the choices are painful: Take classes (to improve skills, move up the salary scale, or become a teacher), spend more time with the family, or work a second job.
   "In some cases, there is no choice," Ortega laments. "You have to put food on the table."
4. People need a chance to live in their hometown. "Some people would like a chance to stay in Santa Fe and live," says Ortega, who notes that two of her own children had to move away to earn a decent living.
   "The living wage issue will not go away," says former Santa Fe City Councilor Frank Montaño, a co-sponsor of the current living wage ordinance. "We need to start talking about making Santa Fe a place where people can afford to live and buy a home; afford to live in the city they were born, educated, and raised in; and spend time with their children on evenings and weekends."

--D.W. and J.O.
(Bernadette L. Ortega can be reached at
BravoOrtega@webtv.net.)

Tipping the Scale at Fairbanks

On a bleak Vermont evening last winter--just six hours short of calling a strike--union bargainers from Lyndon Town School arrived at their superintendent's office for one last shot at reaching a contract. At this moment, "being a negotiator was the worst thing I had ever done," recalls third-grade teacher Michelle Green.

But when the negotiating team rolled into the parking lot, they were greeted by sign-carrying supporters, including parents, grandparents, kids, Vermont-NEA members from other school districts, and members of other area unions--including Fairbanks Scales workers from United Electrical Workers (UE) Local 234 in St. Johnsbury.

School board negotiators walked this gauntlet, too, and realized this community wanted a settlement. The parties wrapped up a contract that evening, after a year and a half of fruitless negotiations.

Green was deeply moved by the support of these scale manufacturing workers. So, when she heard in November that Local 234 was on strike over company demands for a pension freeze and a big wage cut in the form of health care co-pay hikes, Green and teacher colleague June Murphy visited the Fairbanks picket line on a "horrible, cold" Friday evening and started walking and talking.

The strikers "were so thrilled," says Green. "They could not believe somebody else came; and when we got back to school, we got others to go over to the line."

Soon, supporters from seven Vermont-NEA local affiliates in the state's "Northeast Kingdom" walked the Fairbanks line, donated money, and delivered food--including a batch of turkey soup prepared by Waterford School building rep Mary Florio.

Support for Fairbanks workers from community folks, local restaurant owners, and members of area unions--working everywhere from UPS to Vermont Central Power--"was amazing," says UE District 2 President Peter Knowlton. The UE reached an acceptable agreement with Fairbanks Scales after just 16 days on the picket line.

"Even though Vermonters are very quiet and private about our beliefs, we're all very independent and definitely take a stand," says Green. "I'm 59. This is the first time I have ever done something proactive and gone somewhere as a 'support person.' And I feel really good about it.

"I went to the Fairbanks workers' picket line because they came to us when we needed help--they set a very good example," Green adds. "That kind of mutual support is the most important thing, regardless of the settlement reached. You get back more than you give."

--Dave Winans

Kudos To...

...members of the Blount County Education Association (BCEA) in Tennessee, who united with community supporters to replace a school board that hired a union-busting consultant and imposed its "best last" bargaining offer on teachers.

In two consecutive election cycles, intensive BCEA political action helped elect six of seven new board members--either former educators or relatives of educators.

The new board quickly passed a resolution to re-enter the negotiations process and to train administrators, board members, and BCEA leaders in interest-based bargaining.

The result: In October, BCEA members ratified their first contract in three years. "The approval of the contract signals a new atmosphere of cooperation between BCEA and the Blount County Board of Education," says BCEA President Lynn Eubanks. "It's long overdue."

...members of the Arkansas Education Association, whose volunteer work across the state helped elect pro-public education candidate Mark Pryor to the U.S. Senate in November and defeat an incumbent, Senator Tim Hutchinson.

Just one example of this hard work: Each afternoon and Saturday, Active and Retired members of the Little Rock Classroom Teachers Association (LRCTA) "walked every mile, every inch" of state District 36 on Pryor's behalf.

"As both a state representative and attorney general, Pryor has been very supportive of public education," says LRCTA activist Eleanor Coleman, a member of the NEA Minority Leadership Program Cadre. "We were able to tell the truth about his record and to carry every precinct in the district for him."