The NEA puts out a regular bulletin about
ESP's engaged in living wage campaigns with their employers and communities. Here's the latest of what's shaking with our colleagues around the country:
- The Iowa State Education Association changed its school code to read: “It is the goal of this state that every employee of a public school corporation be provided with a competitive living wage.” How about it!
- The Washington Education Association has taken the 'lighthouse' strategy for implementing living wage campaigns. The idea is to prepare these locals for a prolonged campaign and then use those experiences to help other locals who are similarly situated. It's also harkens to the common bargaining strategy of pattern bargaining, where locals with common concerns craft common solutions and then try to move them forward together.
- The Poconos Mountain ESP Association is going to the community, with big plans to collect thousands of signatures to support their drive to lift 90% of their members out of the poverty wages they earn. Their contract expires next year.
- In Tennessee, school employees don't have actual legal rights that let them bargain. In Memphis (
The site of the historic 1968 sanitation strike made famous by the slaying of Dr. King) they bargained anyway. And they won big, finalizing an agreement that set the new minimum wage for teaching assistants at $10 an hour and reduced the number of 'steps' on the salary schedule from nine to four. The local estimates that this means increases of from 30-40% for some members. They bargained paid professional development, pay equity with surrounding districts, and cost of living raises on top of the living wage wins. Kudos to them on their hard-won fight.
In other living wage news, Silicon Valley custodians struck Apple, Cisco Systems, Google and other high-tech firms and
won wage increases of 22% over four years. They expanded access to health care for working families and even got job ladders that will move senior custodians to higher-paying jobs inside those high tech companies (rather than the cleaning subcontractors for whom the janitors actually work).
All in all, a good win for those hardworking folks.
In other good news, the
Supreme Court ruled this week that employer retaliation against employees who file age, race and gender discrimination claims is discrimination (and they therefore shouldn't do it). This is definitely a nice step in the right direction.
Finally, the verdict is in.
For low-wage workers the union difference is monumental--read this study for the details. The bottom line is that low-wage workers with union representation do far better than their non-union counterparts.