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By Rep. Erika Uyterhoeven

Earlier this month, Newton educators went on strike for 11 days in order to negotiate for a fair contract. This historic strike and the growing number of strikes led by educators across the state highlights why we need to protect this right for all workers. That’s why I filed H.1845 with Rep. Connolly, and Sen. Rausch, which would restore the right to strike for public sector workers, not including public safety.

It’s no secret that I am a proud supporter of unions and the organized labor movement. Labor justice isn’t merely a political stance for me, it’s personal. My mom’s first job when she immigrated to the US was as a housemaid for a wealthy family in Brookline, but everything changed for her when she got her job as a flight attendant for TWA. It is thanks to the contracts her union fought vigorously for and had to go strike for, that my single mom was able to provide all of the opportunities I had growing up. I am who I am because of organized labor.

K-12 educators, like flight attendants, do labor that is considered women’s work and as such, their labor is deeply undervalued, underpaid, and they are expected to sacrifice and do their work out of the love of their students. Yet when they stand up for themselves, they are often told they are selfish or “only doing it for the money.”

Let me be clear, what Newton educators did was incredibly courageous and admirable. They put everything on the line for the most marginalized and lowest paid educators and for their most vulnerable students in need. They stood up to the crippling and often invisible violence of budget cuts, ensured the sustainability of education as a profession, and as such they will be critical to the long term struggle to save our public schools. And for all of that, it is one of the greatest honors and joys of my life to join them and any union on the picket line.

What we’ve seen with the rise of educators going on strike is that educators’ demands are consistent and fair. There are many similarities between NTA’s demands and demands of other locals including Somerville. I’ll highlight two of them: significantly increase the abysmal wages for paraeducators and increase all educators’ wages.

Paraeducators are most often the lowest paid workers in the bargaining unit. They care for and educate the students with the highest needs (including special education and provide 1-on-1 support). They are disproportionately women and people of color, and it is highly skilled, deeply important, and essential work. While paraeducators are often belittled for doing “part-time” or “assistant” work, it’s simply not true and nearly 80% of them have a college degree.

It is truly shameful that in most districts, paraeducators are paid a meager $15K-$29K per year. In one school district, the lowest step was paid $13K a year! Following the strike in Newton, paraeducators’ starting wages increased from $28,270 to $36,778, or a 30% increase. While this is still not a living wage in Massachusetts, it’s a massive step in the right direction. You may recall that in 2020, Somerville educators also rallied for a fair contract. At the time paraeducators made a little over $20K a year, now the starting pay is $36K.

Educators overall are underpaid and their pay has decreased compared to their peers. Teachers make 26.4% less than equivalent college-educated workers, or 73.6 cents for every dollar earned by other professionals. What is striking is that teachers used to make 93.9 cents on the dollar in 1996, and in 1960, teachers used to earn a 14.7% premium (for women teachers only). If we truly cared about education, educators should absolutely be earning a premium for their labor, but they are not. Instead, they are economically penalized for it. Although Massachusetts fares better than the national average (with a 20% wage penalty), these aren’t numbers to be proud of, especially as the cost of living in Massachusetts is much higher than most of the country.

Massachusetts has over 300 school districts and the vast majority of contracts are 3 years long, as such there are on average about 100 contracts negotiated per year. Yet the vast majority of contracts are settled without students missing any class time. What made Newton different was not about the union being uniquely overzealous or unreasonable, but has more to do with management’s unwillingness to negotiate in good faith, and for stonewalling for an absurd 16 months. It’s important to contextualize these demands and I think most of us can agree that these demands are what we want all workers to have.

The most salient injustice of the current law that prohibits public sector workers from going on strike is that there is a punishment for educators going on strike (or in other words, sticking to demands to be treated with dignity and respect), but there is no punishment for bad faith negotiation practices by management.

While it is true that unions like the Newton educators make the decision to go on strike, after 16 months of stalling tactics, stonewalling, and surface bargaining, they were left with no other options, especially with their contract expired for several months. It is too simplistic and plainly wrong to lay all the blame squarely on educators, but that’s what this law does when only educators are fined exorbitantly by the courts or are blamed for students missing classes.

Even the judge who ruled on this case expressed concern that escalating fines may “undermine effective and fair collective bargaining.” and outlined in his ruling Commonwealth Employment Relations Board vs. Newton Teachers Association what is needed to bargain in good faith, in effect, urging the management to do so immediately.

At the end of the day, we all benefit from healthy labor-management relations but this requires good faith bargaining on both sides. Management in this case utilized unfair and costly stalling tactics, which often involves hiring expensive anti-union lawyers and communications consultants, rather than the decision-makers simply meeting with labor at the negotiation table. It was disgraceful how much management tried to weaponize the law, rather than negotiate. It is clear that educators would rather be in the classroom with their students, yet management left them no other option, so who is responsible?

Our bill addresses all of these issues by not only restoring the right to strike so that the law or fines can’t be weaponized to give management an unfair advantage, but it also includes a provision that the union must engage in six months of negotiations before a legal strike can take place. This will discourage unethical stonewalling tactics by management and six months after all is a very reasonable time frame to negotiate a three year contract. It is clear that a level playing field and good faith negotiations by both parties will prevent last resort measures like going on strike.