There are two bills in the Legislature, from each side of the political aisle, to outlaw teacher strikes. A Senate measure is sponsored by Sen. Robert Mellow, D-Lackawanna, and one in the House is sponsored by Rep. Todd Rock, R-Waynesboro.
Mellow proposes limiting the negotiation period to eight months, but a key provision of the measure is a large drawback. If the teachers and school board can't agree within that time, the county's president judge would have to select one of either side's final offer as the contract. Do we really want to place the authority to determine salaries and benefits - and consequent tax rates - in the hands of one judge? We wonder if even the judiciary wants this kind of responsibility.
Rock's bill would require four negotiating sessions a month if no agreement is reached by June 16. More importantly, it would make the process more open to the taxpayers, who ultimately pay the cost of any settlement and are currently shut out. All contract offers would have to be made public, and negotiators for both sides would have to hold periodic public meetings to explain their positions.
Admittedly, many years ago teachers were virtually forced to unionize out of economic necessity. They were poorly paid, and it wasn't until the passage of a law in 1970 allowing them to strike that the situation in Pennsylvania improved. But their salaries today are quite good, and their benefits far exceed what is available in the private sector.
In 1992, Act 88 tightened the negotiation process to force nonbinding arbitration and required that teachers give 48 hours notice before striking. This outlawed a particularly odious practice called "selective strikes," by which teachers could stay off the job on a day-by-day basis. They would wait until the morning of a walkout to announce it, leaving many families hard-pressed to make alternative plans for child care.
Act 88 also required that striking teachers return to work in time to ensure students 180 days of instruction. But as we saw last year in Beth-Center and the previous year in Washington, teachers unions are able to force schedule changes that impose huge inconveniences on students and their families by sending them to class on what usually are holidays.
As in "selective strikes," the children and their parents are used as hostages to the unions' demands.
According to the Commonwealth Foundation, there have been 137 school strikes in Pennsylvania since 2000, and this is one of only 13 states in which such strikes are legal. (Some of the other 37, however, have loopholes unions can use to get around the ban.)
Parents' patience is running thin, and they are getting the attention of some legislators, even though they don't have the financial resources of the teachers unions. If the unions lose the right to strike, they have only themselves to blame.