The latest issue of AFT's excellent journal American Teacher takes a hard look at the current state of teacher's contract negotiations in large cities around the country. Their verdict is that the outlook is dark and getting darker. The article presents a careful, useful analysis of recent negotiations in New York City, Chicago, and Minneapolis, finding that teachers are getting the short end of the stick at the negotiating table largely due to the explosion in the cost of benefit costs, especially relating to health care. Administrators across the nation were able to claim inability to raise teachers' salaries due to the fact that non-salary compensation for public sector workers is rising annually at a record 8% clip; 55% of that increase is in health care and defined benefit costs alone.

That increase explains why Chicago teachers overwhelmingly rejected a generous 5- year, 4%-per-year pay raises in the last round of negotiations. Teachers were persuaded that their increases in salaries would be entirely consumed by their increased prescription drug costs and higher co-payments.

In addition to the outside pressures of healthcare costs, the AFT also attributes a lot of the tough climate to plain old bad faith on the part of negotiators and political opportunism. For instance, the Minneapolis school administration is accused of having repeatedly, knowingly breached its contractual obligations on the expectation that they could get a better ruling from binding arbitration. In New York City, the administration first fired and then rehired 485 paraprofessionals in an attempt to "breathe a little fear into the & ranks before talks begin." In Carson City, Nevada, funds that the state legislature had allocated for salary increases for teachers were reallocated by local officials for the school general fund.