Last October, after failing to reach an agreement on a new contract with the school board, South Burlington teachers went on strike. Schools closed. Parents had to make other arrangements for their children. After five days of that, the school board and teachers settled on a contract.
But before the strike ended, Gov. Peter Shumlin and others suggested that perhaps it was time for Vermont to outlaw teacher strikes, as many other states do.
On Tuesday, lawmakers took a first step in that direction. Over the strenuous objection of teachers, the House Education Committee voted 8-3 for a bill, H.76, that takes away the option to strike, requiring teachers and school boards to keep negotiating if they fail to reach an agreement.
“I think we’ll be doing a good thing for Vermont in ending strikes,” said Rep. Kurt Wright (R-Burlington), who sponsored the bill. “Both sides are giving up the nuclear option.”
Committee chair Dave Sharpe (D-Bristol) was among those voting against the measure. “The balance is shuffled toward the school boards,” Sharpe said.
The result, Sharpe said, will enable school boards to keep teacher wages down. “Wages in the nation and in Vermont are under attack,” he said. “The problem in schools is not the wages of individual teachers. It’s the number of teachers in the building. This bill will do nothing to address that. I think it’ll make it worse.”
Teachers agree. Martha Allen, president of the Vermont National Education Association, said there have been 26 teacher strikes in Vermont since 1969 — not enough to warrant a change in law. “When teachers go on strike it’s because the school board stops negotiating,” she said.
But the Vermont School Boards Association believes a change is needed, said Steve Dale, the group’s executive director. “They came up with a very reasonable approach to a thorny problem,” Dale said. “When you don’t have on the table the possibility of a strike, the message is you’ve got to stay with it.”
Instead of strikes, Wright’s bill would require school boards and teachers to go to the Vermont Labor Relations Board if they can’t reach an agreement within six months of a contract expiring. If after a year they’re unable to reach agreement, penalties start kicking in. Those include raising the district’s tax rate by 1 cent.
Wright said neighboring states have similar laws, and teachers there have retained strong negotiating power.
Allen said New York’s law does not increase local tax rates in the event there’s no agreement.
House Speaker Shap Smith (D-Morristown) said he’s unsure whether he supports this specific approach, but said it would be “preferable” to make some change in state law to prevent teacher strikes.
The bill goes next to the more labor-friendly House General, Housing and Military Affairs Committee. Chair Helen Head (D-South Burlington) said her committee members have been unable to find a satisfactory system for negotiations without a strike option, but will look at Wright’s version. Hailing from South Burlington, Head said she recognizes the interest in preventing teacher strikes, but she said the school board there also found the strike proved effective in forcing an agreement.
Smith said he expects the bill will survive in some form for a vote by the full House.
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I support the Teachers. School Boards have pretended to negotiate while embracing the covert strategy of using Tax Payer Discontent to influence Teacher Contract Capitulation. Today’s classroom is more volatile — economic strife, societal pressures, and less-and-less parent-to-child learning places unfair pressures on today’s teachers. Teachers need the protections of the unions and deserve the support of working families and tax payers. Mark Renkert, Mcsl – South Burlington.
Boo hiss. This kind of repressive nonsense has no place in Vermont. Teachers do the most important job there is, preparing our children to create the future, and how do we reward them? Very poorly. When school boards uniformly and routinely treat teachers with the support and respect they deserve, when communities compensate the people who educate their children in a manner commensurate with the importance and difficulty of the task, and when administrators understand that their sole function is to arrange things so as to enable teachers to do their jobs, then it might be time to forbid teachers to strike for better wages and conditions. Not before. It is a shameful act of aggression against working people to take away their last resort tool against unfairness and oppression. The legislators who voted for this should be ashamed of themselves.
I could see doing this if the bill included a requirement for binding arbitration of contract disputes.
But allowing the school boards to prolong negotiations and impose the existing contract during the process puts all the power in their hands and takes away any negotiating power the teachers might have. This bill simply encourages school boards to delay and filibuster for months instead of negotiating in good faith.
If you’re going to take away the power of teachers to strike, you need to take away the power of the school boards to impose as well.
This is just wrong. However, it is one more example that Democrats are just as good at not taxing the wealthy their fare share, taking away workers’ rights, laying off workers, and punishing the poor as any GOP government.
Kurt Wright, my favorite state representative who also voted against GMO labeling, the right for childcare workers to organize, and other sundry activities like to play on people’s fears and keep us divided. More unionization, better wages and benefits covered by very wealthy individuals who don’t pay their fair share of taxes, and less reliance on property taxes, is what both the leaders of the democrats and republicians need to realize instead of disempowering teachers and weakening support for our children.
I am usually very pro-union but after 2014 and the Teacher’s Strike and walkout at South Burlington High School, the arguements offered have lost their luster and my ability to agree with the Union and Teacher’s arguements and protests is no longer possible. I hope H.76 passes both houses rapidly and is signed into law.
Mark has this all right!! Disempowering unions is another way of making sure the poor stay poor. Workers have no say now no matter their occupation. Government allowed this right in the era gone by and have eroded that power. Look at wages across the board. We the tax payers are subsidizing to many employers that can’t pay their employees a living wage. And of course that burden falls on those that that are just getting by.
Less freedom and workers rights is good.
“The result, Sharpe said, will enable school boards to keep teacher wages down. “
This seems to be the endgame of this bill. Sadly, keeping teacher wages down will not help VT. hire and retain the best educators. Chittenden county teacher salaries are far from representative of the rest of VT.’s teacher salaries. Other states that have gone the route of depressing teacher salaries (FL, NC, TX, and more) through ALEC-inspired bills similar to H-76 have seen teachers leave for other states in large numbers. Is this what we really want to encourage as the U.S. faces a nationwide shortage of fully-certified and trained teachers, many of whom hold advanced degrees?
VT. educator salaries are about mid-range compared to the rest of the country. For mid-range salaries, VT educators have consistently delivered the # 2, 3, or 5 best education outcomes in the nation, depending upon which research study you choose to believe. Vermonters receive an excellent return on their investment in teachers.
Over nearly five decades, more than 5,000 contracts between locals and their school boards have been negotiated and settled. Over that same time, there have been 26 strikes. The system works.
This bill gives boards all the power and removes any semblance of a level playing field during the collective bargaining process. There has to be a more fair and less reactive way to avoid strikes, which no one, including teachers, like. Mediation generally is not very successful in teacher contract disputes, while binding arbitration, which H-76 removes, IS successful.