Teachers guilty, too

With all the media uproar over the Kentucky clerk’s refusal to do her duties affecting a very small population, I note a glaring failure on the part of the media to have the same attitude toward the Seattle teachers union’s illegal strike. This strike affects 25,000 families and is much more than inconvenient to those families.

Remember, in Washington strikes by schoolteachers, or any state employees, are illegal under state law. The law that authorizes collective bargaining for teachers specifically provides, “Nothing contained in this chapter shall permit or grant any public employee the right to strike or refuse to perform his or her official duties” (RCW 41.56.120).

In 2006, the state Attorney General’s Office issued an opinion on the legality of public employee strikes concluding, “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.”

The website for the State Office of Financial Management bluntly notes that state employees “are not permitted or granted the right to strike or refuse to perform their official duties.”

John Garrison

Newman Lake