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I am sure these recipients would be happy to give you more information regarding their grants. The next grant cycle will be in the fall. Your CVEA Building Rep will have information for you in September.
Since April 7 the CVEA has signed up nearly 70 new members to WEA/PAC. We now have 212 members and have met the WEA goal of 25% membership in the organization. We are currently at 26.5% and I am expecting a few more forms to come in. Thanks to everyone for your commitment to the profession and especially to our CVEA building reps who spearheaded this spring drive. kr
During this period the organization was successful in raising teacher standards and certification requirements. They also were successful in spear heading an income tax initiative to fund local schools but it was ruled unconstitutional by the State Supreme Court. The organization supported passage of a state funded teacher pension plan that paid retired teachers $100 per month and in 1957, won passage of a statewide sick leave for teachers provision.
Joe Chandler had been the long time executive secretary from 1940 until his retirement in 1965. With Chandler’s retirement, change was in the air – a movement was gaining strength that it was time for teachers to run the organization. Many believed it was time to move the WEA from a professional organization to a teacher’s union.
This movement was in part influenced by the emergence of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and its president, Al Shanker. Shanker had led a teacher’s strike in 1962 in New York City and the AFT’s aggressive union tactics appealed to many urban teachers.
In 1965, a teacher in Puyallup, Frank “Buster” Brouillet was elected President of WEA. In 1965, no school district in Washington had collective bargaining rights. Brouillet and new executive secretary, Cecil Hannan, believed that needed to change. They lobbied the state legislature for a new Professional Negotiations Act, but found little support among lawmakers.
The Seattle Education Association, with help from the NEA took up the banner. Led by SEA President, Wes Ruff, they pressured the Seattle School Board to negotiate, but the Board dug in their heels. At a meeting addressing Ruff and the SEA team, the school board president, Frances Owen said, “Now Mr. Ruff, we have been talking to each other and we have a suggestion. We think you should get a very large trunk and then take this whole concept and all your notes and all your discussions and all your promises and all your visions and put them in the bottom of the trunk and close the trunk and put it in storage and go about your job of teaching.”
There was still a long hill to climb and local associations could not make it up that hill alone. They needed help from WEA and coalitions with other districts. The King County Coordinating Council was formed which included Bellevue, Issaquah, and other neighboring districts. These groups began to put pressure on WEA to take up the cause. With additional help from NEA, the Professional Negotiations Act was passed during the 1965 legislative session.
The Professional Negotiations law was a big step in teacher involvement in school district policy. It was not a traditional collective bargaining law, but it gave teachers the potential to exert influence in working conditions issues for the first time.
By the 1970’s, teacher militancy was growing, highlighted by the first teacher strike in Edmonds in 1973. This strike helped to expose the weaknesses of the Professional Negotiations Act. Its major drawbacks were that it included district administrators in the bargaining unit, had no requirement of a contract, and no method to settle disputes or impasses.
Most district school boards within a few years of its passage, realized the Professional Negotiations Act had no teeth and simply stonewalled local associations’ attempts to bargain improvements.
By the mid 1970’s, the movement to pass a stronger collective bargaining bill was increasing. WEA led the fight for a new law. Led by the WEA chief lobbyist, a new collective bargaining bill was introduced in the 1974 legislative session. When it was weakened by numerous amendments, it was withdrawn.
Throughout the summer and fall of 1974, the WEA worked hard to gain support for the bill the following year. The cause was strengthened by new strikes in the fall of 1974, which exposed the weaknesses of the PNA in settling these disputes. With the support of Governor Dan Evans, the new law, entitled the Educational Employment Relations Act, was passed by the Legislature during the 1975 session and signed into law by the governor. With the governor’s support, the legislature also passed the Public Employee Relations Commission. (PERC).
The new laws defined bargaining units as teacher only organizations, defined the focus of bargaining as “wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment,” required good faith negotiations and a contract as the final product of negotiations. The law also banned unfair labor practices and gave PERC the power to administer the law and provide mediators to help settle disputes.
The law had so sooner passed when local associations began to prepare to bargain when the law went into effect on January 1, 1976.
When school opened in the Central Valley School District in September 1976, the district and the CVEA had successfully bargained their first collective bargaining agreement.
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