Richard S. Davis: Illegal teacher strikes put ‘our kids’ at risk

Over the Labor Day weekend, negotiators reached tentative agreement to end the teachers’ strike in the Bethel School District. If all goes well, students should be back in classes today. While Bethel’s the only district where a strike has delayed the beginning of school, unions in several other districts raised the possibility. Strikes and strike threats have become an annual ritual around the state.

Unions gain an unfair edge by playing a card that should not be in the deck. Public employee strikes are, simply, illegal. And they rend the fragile fabric of community.

We like to think of the public school as a special place. And, usually, it is. It’s the community’s heart, where everybody shares the singular goal of providing “our kids” the best possible education. In this idealized setting, parents, teachers, students and administrators function as a team, cheered on by local boosters, businesses, service clubs and alumni.

Strikes threaten the community’s sense of shared purpose. One way to preserve it is to fix blame elsewhere. So during the short-lived strike, the Bethel superintendent wrote that “the sad thing” is that the positions of both sides have merit. It’s not our fault. “The issue remains inadequate state funding,” he concludes.

One striking teacher told the News Tribune, “We’re really doing this for the parents, and the community and the children.” It’s about money and workload, but they spin the strike as altruism. Nicely done.

Perhaps because they were all getting along so well, no one dwelled on the obvious: Teacher strikes are illegal. Regardless of everyone’s best intentions, public employees and elected officials have an obligation to follow the law. Ignoring it sets a lousy example and encourages more lawbreaking.

Last year, Attorney General Rob McKenna, in an opinion prepared for a legislator, wrote: “In Washington, state and local public employees do not have a legally protected right to strike. No such right existed at common law, and none has been granted by statute.” When administrators have sought injunctions to end strikes, they’ve generally been successful. But school officials only reluctantly go to court.

Public employees typically do not have the right to strike, for good reason. Most often, they work in a monopoly or near-monopoly environment and provide essential services. When grocery workers go on strike, customers go down the block to a competitor. The strike may inconvenience shoppers, but the action targets owners and managers by threatening profits. The strike costs the company money, creating a powerful incentive to settle. (Of course, major strikes have larger community implications, but those are spillover effects, not the primary effect.)

When firefighters, police officers, transit or sanitation workers strike, public safety and health are jeopardized. The community is vulnerable. When teachers walk out, students fall behind. Parents scramble to arrange child care. Employers and colleagues pitch in to accommodate the inevitable conflicts. The disruption is palpable and immediate. And, of course, that’s the point. The disruption ratchets up the pressure on school board members to settle with the striking teachers.

Unlike other union workers, teachers decide to strike knowing they face few consequences. To make up lost time, holidays may be shorter and the school year may stretch into midsummer, but the paychecks won’t be lighter.

McKenna’s opinion says that state laws impose no penalties on public employees who go on strike, although the courts may penalize strikers for violating an order to get back to work. Nothing prevents lawmakers from establishing such penalties, he said.

As we’re repeatedly reminded, Washington’s Constitution makes education the state’s “paramount duty.” That duty remains unfulfilled when teachers illegally stand on picket lines rather than in classrooms. For “our kids,” the state Legislature last year significantly increased education spending and proposed a constitutional amendment to make it easier to pass local levies. Lawmakers promise additional money to reduce class sizes and increase pay.

Now, those political and labor leaders who speak so eloquently of the paramount duty have another obligation. They must summon their outrage and condemn teacher strikes. And, then, the Legislature must close the door on future threats by exacting penalties on lawbreakers. Do it for the kids.