Teachers union leader criticizes Bush pay proposal

Gov. Bush's suggested minimum teacher salary would interfere with collective bargaining, she says.

©Associated Press
October 11, 2002

TALLAHASSEE -- The president of Florida's teachers union criticized Gov. Jeb Bush Thursday for suggesting that the state set a minimum teacher salary.

Florida Education Association president Maureen Dinnen said such a law would violate the state Constitution because it would interfere with collective bargaining between school districts and teachers.

"I don't want to see something that subverts collective bargaining because I really think this administration does not believe that teachers organizations or support personnel organizations have any business speaking for their members or bargaining for their members," Dinnen said.

Bush last week told a delegation of Panhandle lawmakers he would like to see the state set minimum teacher salaries because he was frustrated with being criticized for low teacher pay when the issue was out of his hands. This week he called the discussion an "intellectual exercise" and said the state cannot set minimum salaries.

Under the state Constitution, all teacher salaries are set during collective bargaining between county school boards and teachers unions.

Bush said Wednesday that schools are expected to lose many teachers to retirement and that raising the pay level for starting teachers would help attract replacements.

"There's a real recognition that we're not going to be successful in recruiting teachers if we don't focus on minimum pay," Bush said.

The teachers union has been a constant critic of Bush and endorsed Democrat Bill McBride in the governor's race.

Dinnen also lashed out at Bush for not doing more to increase teacher salaries. While she admitted that Bush cannot directly force school districts to increase salaries, she said he could combine political pressure with more money to get them to do so.

"Give enough money to districts so they can put money into salaries and stop telling the people that you are giving enough money when you're not," she said.

Bush has boasted that education spending has increased $3-billion since he has been in office, or 27 percent. Dinnen counters that the money has barely kept up with inflation, new students and rising health care costs.

"That's just incorrect. Incorrect. Incorrect," Bush responded. "It's been incorrect every time they say it. We have increased student spending by 15 percent per student over four years, and inflation has probably been running at 2 percent for those four years, so that's real growth."

McBride spokesman Tony Welch said the Tampa lawyer's education package would provide a $2,500 across-the-board pay increase for teachers during the first year.

Welch said McBride opposed anything that would hinder collective bargaining and said Bush was trying to circumvent the union's rights under the Constitution.

McBride was in Tampa on Thursday and did not have any public events on his schedule.

Also Thursday, Bush said Florida's high medical malpractice insurance rates represented a "looming crisis in health care" in need of reform.

"The quality of care will be in peril unless we figure out a better way of dealing with these incredibly soaring insurance rates," Bush said at a 10-year celebration for Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital in Hollywood.

Doctors have sought help from the Legislature, asking for limits on jury awards in malpractice suits.

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