If Woburn educators don’t reach an acceptable contract agreement with the Woburn School Committee and Mayor Scott Galvin by Monday, they voted to strike.
The Woburn Teachers Association voted to authorize the strike Friday.
The last agreement the educators’ union signed only lasted for the 2021 to 2022 school year, Patch reported. The last three-year contract the educators had with Woburn Public School expired in 2020.
The school committee and Galvin released a joint statement Friday afternoon calling the actions by the WTA “illegal, disruptive and unnecessary.”
Galvin and the committee said they have been negotiating in good faith with the union for over a year and reached a tentative agreement in October 2022 that the union failed to ratify.
The statement from the WTA announcing the strike authorization said Galvin and the school committee have rejected common sense proposals and refused to work collaboratively.
“We do not take our decision to strike lightly, and believe that we have exhausted all other options,” Barbara Locke, WTA president, said. “In fact, there is no other path forward.”
The proposals the union said the committee and mayor have rejected include a living wage for paraprofessionals, physical education classes twice a week for elementary school students, smaller class sizes, compensation for all work days and competitive compensation for educators.
The mayor and committee called the latest proposal it offered educators on Jan. 18 fair and highly collaborative.
The proposal allows for “reduced class sizes, additional collaborative professional development, increased instructional time for students, and a generous wage increase that is in addition to the step increases that approximately 50% of our staff received at the start of this school year,” according to the mayor and committee’s statement.
The union has not responded to the proposal, Galvin said.
The educators’ union has called Galvin and the committee’s attitude and outlook inherently disrespectful of students and the Woburn community.
The school committee filed a petition with the Massachusetts Department of Labor Relations to investigate what it called an illegal strike on Jan. 24 and is awaiting the department’s decision after a hearing was held Jan. 26.
“Please know that the committee respects the tremendous effort, talent, and dedication of our teachers, but a strike is both illegal and counterproductive,” the mayor and committee’s statement read. “The committee remains firmly committed to bargaining in good faith with the WTA and working toward a resolution that is fair to all stakeholders and ensures high-quality education for the students of Woburn.”
A rally in support of the union is scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 28, at 1 p.m. on the Woburn Common.
The presidents of 24 local educators union in the state announced their support of the strike in a joint statement.
“Our unions stand in solidarity with union educators in Woburn who are fighting for a fair contract, a dignified living wage for education support professionals, and the schools their students deserve,” the joint statement read. “We condone the withholding of their labor and encourage the members of the Woburn Teachers Association to remain steadfast in their demands for better working conditions for educators and better learning conditions for students.”
This isn’t the first time this year a Massachusetts educators’ union has authorized a strike on a Friday and threatened to strike when school starts the following week.
On Jan. 13 the Melrose Education Association voted to strike if a contract wasn’t reached before Jan. 17.
The tactic was successful and the Melrose Education Association announced it had reached an agreement on Jan. 14.
The Woburn School Committee and Galvin said they are looking to schedule a meeting with the Woburn Teachers’ Association on Sunday morning.
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