WEA members stand up to college leaders who oppose bargaining rights
Email legislators ASAP and urge them to pass SB 5993 and HB 1237.
Washington’s legislators have a choice: Give unionized community and technical college faculty equal bargaining rights, or continue siding with the college administrators who claim to value their faculty but actively fight against paying them fairly.
For years, college administrators have consistently fought giving Washington’s community and technical college faculty the right to negotiate local pay raises. Michele Johnson, chancellor at Pierce College, recently told state senators:
"We totally support our faculty...we are fully behind our faculty in having increased salaries, but to move to collective bargaining … is not the right way to go.”
Washington’s community and technical college faculty are the only public education employees in the state who are prohibited by law from bargaining locally funded salary increases. However, college administrators such as Johnson have no such prohibition barring them from negotiating pay raises. The amount that colleges paid out of local funds for presidents' salaries has increased by 25 percent since 2012. At the same time, faculty salaries were entirely frozen.
Faculty at the state’s four-year universities have had the right to bargain salaries since 2002 – and it’s working just fine.
United Faculty of Washington State President and WEA Board Director Bill Lyne told legislators, “(Collective bargaining) has worked out incredibly well for us. Not just in the way that it helps address salaries, but in the relationship between the faculty and the administration. It has created a relationship with a lot more trust between the administration and the faculty at our universities, and that in turn has been great for our students.”
Senate Bill 5993 and House Bill 1237 are a critical part of WEA’s 2018 Unity Agenda, and it’s our top policy priority for this session. The Senate bill passed out of the Labor and Commerce Committee and now goes to the Ways and Means Committee.
Support community and technical college colleagues and take a stand for fairness: Email your legislators and urge them to pass SB 5993 and HB 1237.