Editor’s note: This story was updated Wednesday to include comments from district officials.
The United Teachers of Richmond, the union that represents about 1,500 educators in the West Contra Costa Unified School district, has authorized a strike, with 98% of those voting in agreement.
The voting, which took place over the past week, concluded at 5 p.m. today. By 6 p.m., all 1,383 of the ballots submitted were counted. At least a dozen teachers gathered at UTR’s Pinole office to help manually count votes from across the district of 25,000 students.
The most commonly heard word in the room as educators read out what was marked on each ballot: “yes.”
“I am not surprised we got this number and I’m not surprised we got like 99% participation either,” sixth-grade Ford Elementary teacher Juanita Flores-Mejia told Richmondside after the results were tallied.
Flores-Mejia said the union was very organized in getting out the vote. She helped bring ballots to teachers on campus and even opened her house if educators wanted to pick up ballots there.
While the results show how frustrated teachers are to be working without a contract since June, the strike authorization vote does not mean a strike is inevitable. It means that if the district and UTR are still unable to agree on a contract, even with state mediation, the teachers’ union can go on strike. It may not be the only union to do so either. The majority of WCCUSD’s Teamsters Local 856 on Friday announced 96% of its members who voted also authorized a strike.
“If the stikes happen, it will be a principal, maybe some subs (on campus). That’s it,” Flores-Mejia said. “(Aside from no teachers) there will be no secretaries, no cafeteria ladies, no custodians.”
A strike cannot happen immediately. The state mediator has now released UTR and the district to the final step of the statutory impasse process: a hearing before a state-appointed panel. A hearing date hasn’t been set yet. The district has until Oct. 24 to turn in any documents to the state’s Public Employment Relations Board. From that point, the state has 10 days to set a date for the panel hearing. After the hearing is held, the state has 20 days to publish its report. Once the report is made public, the union can call for a strike and must give the district 48-hours notice.
In that time period, WCCUSD board trustee Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy said its imperative the district finds a compromise that can avert the strikes.
“I think that maybe, out of all my colleagues, I am probably the most pessimistic in believing that the strike is going to happen, but I do think that it’s our job to ensure that it doesn’t and do everything we can to avoid it,” Gonzalez-Hoy told Richmondside on Wednesday. “We, the district, have to be really thoughtful to not make mistakes that continue to anger labor.”
It’s unclear how long a strike can or will last if it is called, UTR President Francisco Ortiz told Richmondside. The longest educator strike in California in the past 20 years was eight days (Sacramento strike in 2022). He is hoping the union will not have to strike that long, particularly because the longer the strike, the harder it will be for families.
In preparation for a strike the school district held an emergency meeting Monday to figure out how to keep schools running if employees decide to go on strike.
In an email statement to Richmondside, Raechelle Forrest, WCCUSD director of communications, said the district is hopeful an agreement can be reached, but is bracing for the reality that it may not happen.
“Our primary goal during this period is to reach a fair and responsible agreement and avoid a strike,” Forrest wrote. “If, however, the UTR leadership decides to call for a strike at some point after Factfinding is concluded, we are committed to keeping our schools open for students and ensuring our students are safe when they come to school.”
Trustees voted 4-1, with trustee Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy dissenting, to pay substitute teachers up to $550 a day — about double the regular $280-a-day rate — instead of the $750 a day proposed by West Contra Costa Unified School District Superintendent Cheryl Cotton, who argued that anyone willing to cross a picket line deserved a higher rate for a “challenging” situation.
“We have a responsibility to ensure that schools continue, that we have adults in buildings that are providing services for students,” Cotton told the board. “People who are going to have to cross the picket line … are going to be yelled at, be insulted. I wouldn’t say hazard pay, but it is a challenging situation.”
Last year, for example, Oakland’s school district advertised $700 for strike substitutes. In 2023, Fresno Unified paid substitutes $500 during a strike.
The proposed rate was scrutinized by some school board members, who noted the strike substitutes would be making more in a day than fulltime teachers (the highest paid teacher in the district makes $119,000 a year).
Board debates how much to pay subs if teachers go on strike
The school board noted that a high substitute rate would be an insult to educators who have said one of their reasons for threatening to strike is frustrations over pay. Gonzalez-Hoy dissented from voting because he wanted the pay to be $400 (the highest substitute rate offered in the Bay Area currently), noting that the impact of the decision will have ramifications for years.
“My per diem as a teacher was $290,” Gonzalez-Hoy said. “If I was making that today and I saw you’re paying subs $750, I would be on the strike line as long as it took for the district to pay what I need.”
Gonzalez-Hoy said a high strike pay rate could also “look like we are also trying to break the unions from having the ability to go on strike.”
More so, the district needs to be fiscally responsible, he said. Although the district won’t have to pay educators while they’re on strike, WCCUSD is set to lose money because a lot of students will likely not come to campus, impacting revenue the district gets from its daily enrollment numbers.
Trustee Jamela Smith-Folds disagreed with Gonzalez-Hoy, suggesting a strike pay rate of $650. She said the decision is challenging because while the school board is responsible for maintaining good working relations with educators, the priority will always be what’s best for students.
“Almost everybody in here has either been a teacher or are children of teachers. They have been in that role. They understand the plight of teachers,” Smith-Folds said. “At the same time … how do we keep our education with our students going.”
Monday’s meeting took place on a federal (and school) holiday, a move criticized by UTR Executive Director Mark Mitchell.
“There’s no emergency. There’s no need to have a secret meeting on a holiday when nobody knows this is happening in order to sneak (this) by,” Mitchell told the board. “It’s an absolute gut punch to the 1,500 educators of United Teachers of Richmond who are struggling to make ends meet. And the district, to think that you would apportion these kinds of resources to undermine those who actually serve our students is an outrage.”
Part of the resolution also details some of the logistics if a strike were to take place. Students could need to be relocated to other school sites and afterschool programs or extracurricular activities may have to be cancelled. However, any programs or educators that operate under non-union contracts will not be impacted by a strike.
The resolution also asked the board to give the superintendent the authority to authorize taking legal action to stop or challenge the strike (a standard practice in such situations), but the board refused.
Instead, it agreed that if the board cannot meet within 24 hours to make a strike-related legal decision then the superintendent or a designee can make the decision.
Who is potentially striking and why?
If the Teamsters and the United Teachers of Richmond go on strike, it would be the first such labor action in the 60-year-old district’s history. Two years ago, UTR authorized a strike vote, but a deal with a district was met at the 11th hour and the strike was averted.
The Teamsters Local 856 represents 1,500 employees who work in a variety of jobs including clerical, food service, maintenance, paraprofessionals in special education and security. The Teamsters announced Friday that 96% of members who voted authorized a strike amid stalled salary and staffing negotiations.
The unions have been meeting with the district over the past six months to finalize contracts that expired in June. However, the parties have reached an impasse and will next head into fact-finding — the next stage of the state-run mediation procedure if an agreement is not reached.
“Teamsters are the backbone of the West Contra Costa Unified School District and should be treated as such,” said Peter Finn, Secretary-Treasurer of Local 856 and director of the Teamsters Public Services and Health Care Division, in a statement. “Workers know the essential services they provide to students and their families throughout the region and won’t settle for less than they deserve. Striking is always a last resort, but the school district has left us little to no choice.”
The teamster’s position is nearly the same as the 1,500 teachers represented by the United Teachers of Richmond, which has been conducting a strike vote over the last week.
UTR President Ortiz has cautioned many times that frustrations have been mounting and that a strike is imminent unless the district can meet some of the union’s demands.
The biggest point of contention is salary, but there are a number of other issues that the district and union have been unable to agree on such as changes to the special education program, class sizes, and union proposals to lighten the workload for special education teachers, therapists and school nurses.
Since April, the teachers union has asked for a 10% raise over the next two years — a move that was initially met with a 0% raise offer from the district until last week. WCCUSD then upped its raise offer to 2%, which the teachers union rejected.
“That increase, combined with the health benefit increase we previously proposed, which raised the District’s medical benefit contribution from 80% of the monthly premium to 85% of the monthly, already exceeds the 2.3% (cost of living) increase the District received this year (from the state),” Forrest wrote. “The District’s proposal is a sincere and good faith to reach a resolution and avoid a strike and the harm it would cause our children.”
Jeffrey Bean, a fifth-grade teacher at Shannon Elementary in Pinole, told Richmondside that although he does not want to strike, he voted “yes” because he believes it is the only way to make things better for educators, and therefore students. In fact, only 22 teachers in UTR voted “no” to strike.
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“I hope the district settles in a reasonable way, but I am 100% willing to go on a strike in order to make things better in the future.”
— Jeffrey Bean, Shannon Elementary School teacher
“If we are out of school for three or four days next month and that forces the district to change their ways and it makes it so that the following year I don’t have empty classrooms next door to me. That will be well worth it,” Bean said. “Getting paid more will be nice too.”
Bean said educators are not only fighting for themselves. Higher pay would help WCCUSD attract and retain more teachers.
“When you’re at a school where there’s a vacancy, it is disheartening and sad, because you want to help those students that were your former students who are next door to you, but you can’t,” Bean said. “I hope the district settles in a reasonable way, but I am 100% willing to go on a strike in order to make things better in the future, because what they’re doing now is not working.”
This is a developing story and Richmondside will update it as further details become available.
” The longest educator strike in California was eight days. ” Actually there have been many have been longer. The Oakland strike in 1996 was 22 school days.
The teacher situation in our district is grim. My student at PVHS went for nearly her whole freshman year without an English teacher. There was no real work assigned, the sub was more a babysitter. She got a meaningless A and learned nothing. And this wasn’t her only class without a teacher. Many other situations where teachers go on leave for extended times (one PE teacher was home all year during middle school, high school physics teacher gone for months, now the beloved band teacher is out, etc). WCCUSD teacher AND sub situation is really disappointing.
It’s unfortunate that the only way the district pays us any mind is when the nuclear option 🪧🪧 is brought up. Now they found some money 🔎💵 all of a sudden. As a former substitute teacher, hate to say, the district oftentimes won’t act unless you force their hand. They were going to cut 7️⃣5️⃣ paraeducator positions until the union told them to do better math and then they changed their mind and only cut one job 🙄.
I wantd suporte por the Teachers more benefits better pay more teachers and more aide for school