Bargaining Better Salaries
Garrett County teacher and ESP salaries jump from bottom of the barrel in a major bargaining victory.
If you’ve ever been to Garrett County’s Deep Creek Lake, you’ve seen the beautiful mountains, the crystal clear lake, and the most rural of Maryland’s diverse topography. It is the lake, and its thoughtful development, that has brought the county hitherto unknown prosperity, and a changing set of sensibilities and values.
The county’s coffers, always lean, have changed with the lake’s increasingly active tourist economy. As anyone who ever visited the Baltimore Harbor, Annapolis or the Eastern Shore knows, with tourists come a double-edged sword. You lose a bit of tradition, but you gain a whole new tax base—one that, properly managed, can support new levels of public service, including for public education.
A 7.5 Percent Raise!
In the case of Garrett County, lots of relationship building, background work, and skillful negotiating recently turned some of that prosperity into a badly needed boost for both teachers and support personnel.
With a healthy across-the-board salary increase of 7.5 percent for both groups in the first year of a three-year contract, forward-looking board of education members and county commissioners are showing their support for public education.
This school year, new teachers in Garrett took home $32,144, the second lowest starting salary in the state. The new first step of the schedule boosts the start to $37,204. Three important and smartly negotiated items explain the dramatic improvement:
- A 5.5 percent increase for all employees at all salary levels;
- A 1 percent increase due to a more compact schedule (eliminating steps on the schedule gets employees to higher salaries faster); and
- An additional 1 percent increase for teachers with a Master’s degree,
evening things out for veterans at the other end of the salary schedule.
40K Right Away!
Nationally, teacher salaries are falling farther and farther behind the salaries of non-teacher professionals. According to NEA, college-educated non-teachers on average now make over 50 percent more than teachers. In 1960, the gap between a college-educated non-teacher and a teacher was $1,585. Today it is more than $18,600.
NEA has turned those numbers into a national challenge: The $40K-Right Away campaign supports a $40,000 starting salary for new teachers as a goal for school districts nationwide.
“The research is clear,” said NEA President Reg Weaver. “By increasing teacher pay, we will increase teacher quality, which, in turn, will increase student achievement. Poor and minority students in particular will benefit as caring, experienced, and skilled teachers replace the revolving door faculty.”
Wanted: Chutzpah
In New Jersey, the “$40K Right Away!” campaign—begun less than five years ago and the model for NEA’s initiative—has morphed into “$50K the First Day!” now that teachers in 63 percent of the 600 school districts are on a schedule with a $40K minimum.
With a bill in the state legislature for over five years, folks at the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) realized it was more efficient to do the work at local negotiating tables than to get the state to fund increases to all the districts.
The NJEA campaign was well planned. Using advertising, stories in the news and an atmosphere of competition among school districts that pulled from the same batch of job seekers, NJEA effectively raised the bar.
“I believe attitude makes up 90 percent of how we feel and how we are perceived on the other side of the bargaining table,” said NJEA’s Bill Willoughby. “We can control our attitude and sometimes it becomes more important than the facts.”
Currently, the only county in Maryland at the $40K mark is Montgomery County.
With 7.5 percent this year and 6 percent for the next two, Garrett will make the NEA goal of a $40,000 starting salary before the contract expires. The new contract also raises Garrett from 23rd place in the statewide salary rankings to a respectable 18th next school year.
Although $40K theoretically lifts the profession to a more decent level of pay—at least one more competitive with other professions—many more counties in Maryland will have to reach that level in order for the state to recruit at the rate needed to fill positions left by retirees alone. And for many ESP, a simple living wage should be guaranteed. Garrett’s new contract offers ESP the same pay increase as well as pays for an impressive 100 percent of health insurance for retirees.
Bargaining power
In Maryland, local bargaining teams are starting to look at salary increases with an eye toward higher expectations. The success in New Jersey is attributable to a widespread positive attitude and belief that members deserve a professional level of pay.
Your Local isn’t working in a vacuum. A big part of MSTA’s advocacy
efforts is to improve the salaries, benefits, and working conditions of its members. Driven by the specific needs of their collective membership, Locals are also guided by collective bargaining goals established by MSTA’s Board of Directors.
MSTA’s three Coordinated Bargaining Councils (CBCs) are regional
networks of local leaders and staff who meet monthly during the school year to share their strategies and experiences with bargaining win-win contracts for employees and the community. The support CBCs
provide to Locals is undeniable.
“The CBCs are a place where leaders can sit and talk and develop the skills they need to be effective negotiators for their members,” said Meme Suznavick, president of Worcester County Teachers Association and a longtime member/activist.
“The exciting growth of the Eastern Shore ESP units has made our CBC more important than ever before. Being able to sit down and explore each others ideas is important.”
Many counties are still struggling with local boards that don’t realize how seriously the issue of low salary affects the attraction and retention of school employees and the appeal of an education career when so many other job markets are more lucrative and decidedly less stressful.
Shifts Happen
For Garrett County, though, the trend has shifted. “Teacher and ESP members of our bargaining team worked long and hard for this new contract. It bodes well for the future of our county and our students,” said Vonda Bryner, president of the Garrett County Education Association.
This spring Western Maryland MSTA staffer Steve Benson, a skilled negotiator and advocate, is taking the lessons of the Garrett win to Allegany County, where he and the local bargaining team hope to make a change for the state’s lowest paid education employees.
“It’s a different atmosphere every time you bargain a contract,” Benson said.
“The Garrett County Board of Education and commissioners wanted to be fair. Ten years ago the county was in the red. With the change in county finances came higher expectations of the members. The county recognizes the vital role employees play in the system and made the appropriate decisions at the table.”
