Longview teachers bargain for better pay and benefits
Tuesday, July 1, 2003 8:35 AM PDT
By Amy M. E. Fischer
Printable version
E-mail this articleLongview teachers are bargaining with the district for higher pay and lower health insurance costs to make up for not getting their state-funded cost-of-living raises, but the district says it's already paying teachers as much as it can.
"Teachers are already working more than they're getting paid for," said Washington Education Association spokesman Rich Woods of Federal Way. Teachers want to be paid extra for time they devote to their jobs not included in their 182-day contracts, said Longview Education Association president Dick Storts. They also want the district to absorb a larger portion of teacher's escalating health insurance premiums, he said.
The teachers' goals would cost the district in the ballpark of $1 million, Storts said. District officials, however, calculate the price of the union's demands to be $2.5 million, and that doesn't include the health insurance portion of the deal, said Gary Goreth, executive director of finance and technology.
"We are giving them as much as we can afford to give them, based upon the needs of the district," Goreth said.
Despite the district's $1 million budget gap from last year, the district has the money, Storts insisted.
"Even if they're a million dollars short, they can come up with the money to support their people," said Storts, pointing to the district's $3.9 million carry over from last year. "This is not a matter of us beating up a poor district. They have enough money to handle what we're asking for. It's just a matter of prioritizing where they're going to spend those funds."
Nearly all of the district's reserve money is already designated for things such as building maintenance, curriculum adoption, electronic equipment and payroll, Goreth said.
Negotiations for the three-year collective bargaining agreement are in early stages, and the union hasn't put a proposal on the table. The union expects an answer from the district on July 7, and the next negotiating session will be July 29, Storts said.
Before the bargaining session began, the LEA polled almost all of its certificated employees to see where they stood on issues, Storts said. The advisory board then voted "no contract, no work" to show the bargaining team they had teachers' support, he said.
"That was ... to guide our own bargaining team," Storts said. "Certainly at some future time if we came to an impasse with the board, we'd talk about a strike vote, but we're not anywhere near that."
Woods of the teachers' union said that while decreased state funding impacted local budgets, it's up to the school board to decide how district levy money should be spent, and teachers should be a local budget priority.
Teachers can't negotiate their base salary, which is set by the state. But one way teachers can earn a bigger paycheck is to bargain with districts for money from local levy funds to compensate for the unpaid after-hours work they do, he said.
Even if the cost-of-living raises that voters approved with Initiative 732 hadn't been put on hold by the Legislature, the union would be negotiating for that additional money as a matter of course, Woods said.
Out of the 23 similarly sized school districts in Washington, Longview ranks third from the bottom in total salary because teachers are paid for only seven additional days -- four of which the district directs teachers how to use -- whereas some districts pay for more than 20, Storts said. Higher salaries are needed to attract teachers to the area, he said.
"They're going where there's more money, they're going where there's more respect, they're going where their medical benefits are being contributed to at a higher level," Storts said.
Five years ago, school employees paid nothing out-of-pocket for medical benefits, but due to skyrocketing health insurance costs, teachers now pay as much as $700 to $800 a month for their portion of insurance premiums, Woods said.
"With a zero percent (pay) raise, it doesn't take much math to figure out we're taking home less money yet," Storts said.
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