Can teachers have both job security and decent wages?
Ron Penner-Ash is right in his insistence that there are forces in Oregon which are highly antagonistic to the teachers’union, the Oregon Education Association (Teachers need to refocus energy on quality ,The Oregonian, 7/23/99). This antagonism has been expressed in the past several legislatures in the form of laws and proposals by conservative politicians to strip teachers of their rights to “fair dismissal” protections – which have traditionally required employers, in both the public and private sectors, to show cause when firing workers. These provisions have been included in union contracts for at least 50 years, and the stringency of the firing process varies from contract to contract. Recently adopted Oregon laws restrict the collective bargaining rights of public school teachers by disallowing labor contract provisions which maintain what the media has labelled teachers’ “tenure.” For details see Oregon teachers lose seniority, job security. Oregon’s 1997 Legislature passed The
