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It’s one thing to set starting salary targets of $40,000 for every teacher and a living wage for every ESP, initial goals of NEA’s national Salary Campaign. But how can a state affiliate reach those goals?

For valuable clues, look at the Pennsylvania State Education Association’s comprehensive teacher and ESP pay initiatives, which push local affiliates toward (and above) the “40K” and living wage floors through a range of researched, field-tested tactics—starting with intensive bargainer focus on “best practices” for salary schedule development.

The bottom line: It’s working for PSEA, which faces the same rural, urban, and fiscal challenges as any other NEA affiliate. Currently, 210 PSEA teacher locals have contracts with starting pay of 40K or above, and 123 contracts actually pay teachers at that level now. More impressively, PSEA has three locals with contracts providing 50K minimums, one in a low-wealth former coal mining community, and has launched a “pilot” living wage campaign in one ESP affiliate—with another on the way.

Driving this momentum is a state affiliate that grasps the connection between higher pay and hard, focused union work. PSEA’s comprehensive 2005-08 Professional Compensation Strategy stresses that “Implementation of the plan will require broad-based commitment from PSEA governance, staff, and members through increased salary training, utilization of technology, public awareness, and increased coordinated bargaining among local associations.”  

That doesn’t tell half the story. When pressed, Pennsylvania strategists cite these factors behind PSEA’s salary progress:

*Local member and leader buy-in. PSEA works to drive the “compensation awareness” element of its program, focused on five best practices for teacher pay scales and three for ESP schedules, beyond bargaining teams, local officers, and regional events—to meetings of members and Association reps. Across the state, teachers and ESPs alike are learning the career earnings advantage of short, strong schedules with decent minimums (that increase as much as maximum rates), uniform steps/increments, and as many extra columns/lanes as possible to reward professional development.

*Staff technical ability and IT support. PSEA has long known that trained UniServ reps “capable of constructing and educating about salary schedules” have a bargaining advantage. Besides teaching front-line negotiators these skills, PSEA is working to place two pay experts in each of its 11 regions, a “Compensation Think Tank” with in-depth knowledge of salary theory and PSEA-created software—for uses such as costing, turnover savings computation, and individualized bargaining presentations. PSEA’s ultimate goal: a staff that “spends more time strategizing and analyzing, and less time crunching numbers.”

*Setting bold goals and measuring success. PSEA thinks big. It encourages successful “40K” locals to push next for a 50K floor. And it recommends that ESP affiliates shoot for “a minimum of at least the local living wage” and more, by bargaining scales based on three best practices (and five “sub-best practices”) and working where possible towards schedules compacted to a single rate. PSEA’s advice for moving ahead: Set long-range local salary goals, develop strategies for reaching those goals, and then measure progress at the conclusion of bargaining. Towards that end, PSEA is currently designing a computer program to analyze teacher schedules, using quantitative measures based on the five best practices.

  *Use of staff turnover savings. One side benefit of Pennsylvania’s initiative: PSEA’s IT and Research divisions have developed a software tool that enables each local to compare the actual cost of a settlement with projected costs over the prior 15 years. In almost all cases, actual salary expenditures are substantially less, enabling local bargainers to challenge districts’ cost projections and devise creative ways to capture staff turnover savings, or “breakage.”

* Creation of a salary “buzz.” Beyond promoting salary goals and best practices through coordinated bargaining councils, PSEA has moved the compensation message directly to members through a variety of outlets. Teachers constantly see and hear about their “Strive for Five” campaign (named in a member contest!) at statewide and regional conferences, on local web sites linked to the PSEA compensation site, and in PSEA publications.

Moreover, the state affiliate is now creating a five-star rating system for salary schedules. PSEA, which has honored its “40K” locals, will next recognize local schedules incorporating best practices, through both its media and bargaining awards. The whole idea: Celebrate locals that join in and support the statewide salary campaign, rather than punish affiliates that break with organizational goals and adopt lower standards.

Professional, competitive pay is indeed the Pennsylvania Priority.

--Dave Winans

Posted April 2008

A 35-member New Jersey affiliate mobilized members, the community, and state Association resources to win $40,000-plus starting teacher pay.

You'd never expect big salary news from the little Chesterfield Township (New Jersey) Education Association. As CTEA's 35 teacher members entered contract bargaining in 2005, the one-building school district enjoyed neither "extra" cash nor an exemption from tight state budget restrictions. Yet in 2007 members signed a contract offering a starting teacher salary of $44,809, which will progress to $48,011 in 2009-10.

And you'd never expect this bit of a local affiliate to resist school board demands for massive health benefit concessions. But CTEA members did just that and then some. In July 2007, they ratified a four-year agreement that preserves quality health benefits and provides salary increases of 5 percent in each of the first three years and 4.75 percent in the fourth year.

To add another layer to the cake, CTEA shortened its salary schedule from 16 to 13 steps (a smart way to maximize career earnings), gained a $350 stipend for members responsible for scheduling parent-teacher conferences, and won inclusion of paraprofessionals into the bargaining unit.

And to ice that cake, the New Jersey Education Association  bestowed its 2007 Jim George Collective Bargaining Award on CTEA for its creativity and tenacity. "CTEA's success," notes NJEA Vice President Barbara Keshishian, "results from its organized and strategic approach to bargaining."

Not to a mention a push from NJEA's strong statewide salary campaign, which will boost starting teacher pay to $40,000 or more in at least 521 of New Jersey's 593 school districts by 2008-09, and to $50,000 or more in 17 districts by 2009-10.

What's happening in the Garden State? Quite simply, "We set salary goals, educate the members, and bargain hard," explains NJEA researcher Bob Willoughby.

On the front lines in Chesterfield Township, "bargaining hard" translates into:

1. Member organizing and engagement. As it headed to the bargaining table in October 2005, CTEA ensured that its bargaining team had the support of all members, tenured and non-tenured. "As a small local," explains Keshishian, "it would be pretty obvious if even a small group of members chose not to support a job action or Association activity. So day after day, the local planned shows of solidarity."

Local president Gwendolyn McCreary, an elementary general music and band teacher, says that CTEA's bargaining success was "due to almost 100 percent participation" in workplace actions. Each morning, members met outside at the flagpole to enter the school building as a group. They also sported orange shirts and union buttons, wore black on Fridays, displayed lime-green signs in car windshields, and engaged in sign-making campaigns.

And they just kept at it, "working the clock," gathering for workshops and union meetings, and camping out during mediation sessions. Collective bargaining was a great membership organizing tool, McCreary says. "We now have new officers, future leaders. And younger, newer members are now more involved in the Association."

2. Parent/community outreach. CTEA members went beyond member mobilization to community organizing for a fair and equitable contract settlement.

They attended school board meetings and notified the community of their plight, while encouraging parents to attend board meetings, ask questions, and call for a contract settlement. And CTEA developed a Parent Action Team, which spoke to neighbors, printed and distributed flyers, and persuaded community residents to display pro-settlement lawn signs.

A big factor in CTEA's success at the table was parental support at board meetings, letter writing, and meetings outside of school.

"The parents of our students carried the torch for us," McCreary points out.  "They really went to bat, and made many points in the community. Parents stood up at board meetings and said, 'Pay these teachers want they want.'"

3. Coordinated bargaining. Chesterfield Township members derive much of their clout from the NJEA institution of coordinated bargaining. That's a collaborative process through which neighboring locals in a region set common goals, share "real-time" information (on local bargaining progress, salary/benefit settlement trends, statistical data, and legislative developments), study bargaining "best practices," and dissuade individual locals from signing substandard agreements.

Members of CTEA's bargaining team routinely attend meetings of NJEA's Region 5 (Burlington County) Coordinated Bargaining Council (CBC), which meets frequently -- with high attendance, a set routine, and a stimulating mix of local leaders and NJEA staff. At these meetings, "we receive statistical data and info from other districts in our county," notes McCreary. "That information is invaluable. We share it with our school board at the table; they try to negate the data or say they are 'not interested' in other districts, but they are!"

The CBC meetings encourage locals to stand firm on important bargaining issues, the CTEA president adds, "especially since we all know that if one Association gives in on something, all the other districts will be expected to give in as well."

NJEA affiliates in every county "coordinate bargaining to some degree," notes researcher Willoughby. "Through that process, our locals get good, strong agreements and leapfrog off one another."

Just look at Burlington County. "Despite budget caps, new legislation that limits increases in property tax revenues, and ever-increasing health insurance premiums," says UniServ rep Steve Swetsky, "our Region 5 local Associations continue to achieve annual salary increases of about 5 percent. All of our locals have achieved a $40,000-plus starting teacher salary and we have two locals that have achieved NJEA's statewide goal of a $50,000 starting salary (with more to come). Plus, our locals continue to bring in settlements in which the school boards pay 100 percent of health insurance premiums."

4. Support from the NEA state affiliate. Locals can't do it alone at the table, Swetsky says, which is why NJEA staffers work with them from the very beginning to the very end of the bargaining process. The NJEA regional office's assistance "gives us an opportunity to assist locals with member and community organizing early in the bargaining process," he adds, an upfront investment that later helps maintain a consistency in the Burlington County settlement pattern.

From day one, NJEA provides aid through a team approach involving full-time UniServ reps and part-time UniServ consultants, joined, as needed, by NJEA research and communications specialists.

"A side benefit to this kind of cross-divisional utilization," Swetsky concludes, "is that members get to see their dues dollars in action when they need assistance."

5. Hard, hard work. The final decisive factor in the CTEA and NJEA salary campaigns: a work ethic and a deep devotion to students. "We are always bargaining," says McCreary. "Even when we are working with a contract in place, we must put ourselves out there in the community, next to the parents and our students. We need to show the community that we are available and that we are advocates for our children."

This NEA local leader encourages her members to attend PTA meetings and activities, school board meetings, and other community events. "We cannot just show up when we want support for a new agreement/contract, asking for parental support; we need to show up all the time, for everything, in order to gain public support," McCreary concludes. "It isn't easy, and is time consuming, but that's what needs to be done."

-- Dave Winans, November 2007