Mat-Su teachers' vote gives union leaders a strike option amid contract impasse [Anchorage Daily News, Alaska]

May 22—PALMER — Members of the union representing teachers in Alaska's second-largest school district voted Friday to authorize a strike.

Just over 90% of 1,226 members of the Mat-Su Education Association as well as teachers not represented by the union voted in favor of the strike authorization, union president Vicki Hewitt said Monday. Negotiations with the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District began in early 2022, Hewitt said. Union members are working without a contract and using an existing contract instead.

The union has just over 1,000 members.

The vote does not mean a strike is imminent, she said. Instead, it gives the union's bargaining team the latitude to call a strike in the future. The union is required to give 72 hours notice if it intends to strike.

"If the school board and the district force us to strike, we will," Hewitt said. "But in the meantime, we're trying to get a negotiated agreement instead of this imposed contract."

The union's main sticking points are pay raises that don't reflect high rates of inflation and an immediate switch from current Alaska-based health insurance provider Public Education Health Trust to Premera, starting July 1.

A district spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The union last week said that, after more than a year of negotiations, the school district imposed a last best contract offer on Friday rather than continuing bargaining. Both sides are still waiting on an overdue report from an independent arbitrator, Hewitt said Monday.

District officials in a statement last week said provisions being implemented in the offer on the table include salary increases and district-funded health savings account contributions.

"The District prefers to have a mutually agreed to collective bargaining agreement," officials wrote. "It has tried its utmost to achieve an agreed upon (agreement) but the parties remain gridlocked on the health insurance provider."

Mat-Su families in the school year that ended last Friday experienced a prolonged school bus worker strike that ended in March, as well as rolling bus route cancellations for much of the year.

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