Teachers across Arizona will be going on strike next week, but not to get higher wages.
Republican Gov. Doug Ducey already has promised to increase their pay by 20 percent. Rather, the labor union leading the strike, the Arizona Education Association, wants the state legislature to increase taxes. The union will lead a walkout starting Thursday to try to force the state legislature to do that. It’s not clear how many of the rank and file teachers support the effort.
AEA President Joe Thomas argued the strike is the only way to ensure that schools get necessary funding. Thomas has mocked Ducey’s “20×2020” plan — a 20 percent increase by the year 2020 — despite being part of the union’s demands, calling it unsustainable without changes to the state budget, including $1 billion more in education funding.
“Here’s the game that is played every year [at the state capitol]: Tax cut, tax cut, tax cut. A year later, there’s no money for schools. We’re tired of that game. No tax cuts passed this year! That is part of our demands. Legislators need to reinvest dollars, the billion dollars that they stole from our students and schools over the last 10 years. Let’s roll back those corporate tax cuts,” Thomas said late Thursday during the announcement of the walkout.
“Of the five demands that were laid out, there was only one that you could put a firm number on, the 20 percent increase,” said Matthew Simon, director of education policy for the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank. “The rest of it goes beyond education funding formulas … What they want is for the Republicans and Republican governor to do a tax increase.”
It is not clear how widespread the support is among teachers, however. Arizona Educators United, the larger umbrella group pushing for more education spending, said Thursday that 78 percent of the 57,000 who voted on the issue supported a walkout, but it did not say how many didn’t vote. Simon said the eligible voters included not just teachers, but other school employees.
The state data indicates it has 51,000 teachers and 105,000 total employed in the schools. The Arizona Republic reported Friday that hundreds of district and charter schools across the state did not appear to have any representatives with the AEA or AEU. At least 70 school districts, mostly representing small rural areas, had no representative. The union did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
“Teachers will be seeing a 10% raise THIS fall and a TOTAL raise of 20% by 2020. AND restoring recession-era cuts to provide funds for support staff, infrastructure, buses and supplies,” Ducey tweeted Friday in defense of his proposal. He had previously said funding didn’t exist for a pay raise but proposed the increase last week. The plan would put average teacher pay at $58,000 annually.
The governor is up for re-election this year, and the sudden proposal threw a wrench in the union’s plans for the walkout. Accepting the offer would have given him a political win heading into the election. AEA has already endorsed Democrat David Garcia, an Arizona State University professor, for governor.
The Arizona teacher vote comes following a wave of similar walkouts and protests in Oklahoma, Kentucky, and West Virginia in recent weeks over long-stagnant pay for educators. Oklahoma teachers ended a week-long strike last week after conceding that legislature was not budging on their demands for additional school spending.
