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Executives at the powerful WEA union promised in contract agreements not to go on strike and close schools to children. Their signed promise reads:
“ARTICLE XIII: NO-STRIKE CLAUSE 1. ...SEA [union] will not cause or encourage its members to engage in any strike or other work stoppage.”
Such no-strike promises are common in union contracts. Even so, the WEA union has already closed schools in southwest Washington with teachers strikes. Right now Evergreen Public Schools, Vancouver Public Schools and Battleground Public Schools, which were scheduled to open this week, are closed by teachers on strike, denying some 62,000 children access to a public education.
Next week the WEA union executives say they want to use strikes to close in Seattle and Tacoma, shutting out another 82,000 children.
State law says teachers should not strike:
“RCW 41.56.120 Right to strike not granted.
Nothing contained in this chapter shall permit or grant any public employee the right to strike or refuse to perform his or her official duties.”
Many teachers don’t want to strike. The Supreme Court rules that teachers can quit the union if they want to, and many likely will. In the meantime WEA union executives run the most powerful political organization in the state, and they are using it to break their own promises, and state law, to push for school strikes.
