by James A. Bacon
Welcome to the new normal. In 2020 the General Assembly enacted a law giving local school districts the right to engage in collective bargaining. Our friends at the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy warned that much mischief would ensue, an assessment I shared.
On November 2022 the Prince William County Board of Supervisors adopted a collective bargaining ordinance, allowing county employees to negotiate contracts, though not to strike. “Prince William County workers are one step closer to bargaining a historic contract that will lift up all working families,” said David Broder, President of SEIU Virginia 512, reported the DCist at the time.
Now the Prince William Education Association is demanding a 17% pay raise for teachers, which, if enacted without budget cuts, would add $364 million to the county’s $1.5 billion school budget. According to the Potomac Local News, such a pay raise would require a 73% hike in homeowner tax bills. The working families paying real property taxes might beg to disagree with Broder’s assessment.
Among other demands, the teachers union is protesting a new regulation that requires teachers to teach classes remotely when bad weather disrupts in-school instruction.
I am sympathetic to teachers whose pay has been continually eroded by inflation. Despite pay raises over the past couple of years, the rising cost of living has left teachers with less buying power, just as it has done for most Americans. But 17% seems excessive given the fact that inflation over the past two years was 12%. And the objections to teaching remotely on bad-weather days seems hypocritical for a union that in 2020 demanded to maintain virtual instruction during the COVID pandemic.
The teachers union could justify pay raises exceeding inflation if they offset their higher pay with greater productivity. Unfortunately, the union appears to have zero interest in boosting productivity.
Only time will tell if the PW teachers union comes to its senses or if the local government capitulates. Whatever the outcome, I’m confident that we’ll see a lot more conflict like this in school districts where collective bargaining is permitted. As those of us old enough to have lived through the 1970s, we know that inflation has a way of intensifying labor conflict.
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