Huntley District 158 Teachers Strike

The Huntley District 158 teachers have rejected a 17.8% increase over the next 3 years and called a strike today. The District’s Press Release is below:

Date: September 15, 2008 4:00 a.m. RE: Union Turns Down 17.8%

Salary Offer; Calls Strike for Monday, September 15.

The Huntley Education Association (HEA) leadership gave notice they are officially on strike as of Monday, September 15, 2008. Because of this action, over 8,000 students will not be in school on Monday. The HEA leadership has repeatedly declared they would not strike as long as the Board continued to negotiate. The Board spent over forty hours this weekend alone bargaining in good faith
and making major concessions. Despite that fact, the HEA leadership did not keep their promise to the families and students of District 158, and instead declared a strike.

The Board offered a number of language changes that were very important to HEA members (for more details see press release of September 14, 6:00 p.m.). At 8:10 p.m., the Board suggested a three year “meet the union halfway” compromise offering every on-schedule member more than a 5% salary increase for each of the three contract years. The supposal also listed off-schedule members as receiving 4% in the first year, and 3.5% in years two and three.

The combined salary schedule increase offered over three years (with lane changes included) was 17.8%. As a major concession, the
Board also offered to include TRS compensation as part of this increase.

The Board of Education is extremely disappointed the HEA Leadership declined an offer of over 5% salary increase for most of its members in each of the three years. The Board of Education asked the HEA to defer their strike in order to continue bargaining. The HEA Leadership refused.

The teachers are asking for 21% raises over the three years:

The union has proposed a deal that would increase overall teacher compensation by 6 percent, 7 percent and 8 percent in years one, two and three of the union’s proposed contract, respectively.

Home values are decreasing, salaries are decreasing, more and more people are losing their jobs, and the Huntley Education Association is striking because an almost 6% raise per year isn’t enough for them. This is a direct attack on the children. It shows their greed and self serving nature of the Union that they would care more about getting exhorbitant raises than teaching the children of the district.

Related to teachers unions are the following past articles:

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One Response to “Huntley District 158 Teachers Strike”

  1. Bernie Williams, on September 15th, 2008 at 8:39 pm Said:

    Unions for university educated people are stupid on face value. Long live Regan’s courage when dealing with unions- fire them and start over!! There is a long list of hungry teachers looking for work. I don’t care how “under paid” the teachers feel they are- they signed the last contract. If your great at what you do but still want to be grouped with the masses for job security- you should expect and deserve to be paid less.

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