State teachers’ union to vote on strike campaign

Associated Press

SPOKANE — Members of the state’s largest teachers union plan to take votes this week that would make it easier to strike for more pay.

Members of the Washington Education Association will vote on whether they should lay the groundwork for a strike, and whether they should increase their dues to raise $4.5 million to spend on a campaign for more pay.

"The target is to make sure that in the next five years we are among the top five states in the U.S." in teacher pay, WEA President Charles Hasse said Thursday as the union prepared to open its annual convention.

Washington is losing teachers to other states that pay better, Hasse said, calling the situation a crisis.

"The public understands this to a much greater extent than the Legislature," Hasse said.

Beginning teachers in California have starting salaries of at least $40,000, while Washington state pays its beginning educators $27,400, the WEA said.

Washington teachers recently received a 3.6 percent cost-of-living increase, as required by Initiative 732 in 2000, despite the state’s economic woes. Other state workers didn’t get pay increases.

The average Washington teacher salary — $42,137 — is 18th-highest in the country, according to a National Education Association report.

Teachers must still decide how much of a pay raise to pursue, Hasse said.

Any strike would actually have to be authorized by each local, leaving the possibility that teachers may strike in some school districts and not others, WEA spokesman Rich Wood said.

The 1,000 WEA delegates also will vote on a dues increase of $3 a month for the next two years. Each of the 74,000 WEA members pays about $680 a year in dues. If approved by two-thirds of the representatives, annual dues would go up by another $36.

The money would pay for media campaigns and research aimed at improving teacher pay, Hasse said.

On Wednesday, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation sent e-mails to teachers throughout the state, criticizing the union and the proposed dues increase.

The Olympia-based foundation objects to the union’s use of money for politics, communications director Marsha Richards said. The WEA contends the foundation seeks to starve public schools.

The two organizations spent the past week attacking each other with ad campaigns.

On Monday, the union bought newspaper ads showing a pouting man in a dunce cap, and denouncing the foundation as "extremists with dumb, dangerous ideas."

On Wednesday, the foundation paid for an ad featuring a smiling girl in front of a blackboard that detailed some of the group’s "ideas that work."