Archives West Finding Aid

The Washington Education Association (WEA) was founded April 1889 as the Washington State Teachers' Association with 124 members. From 1915 through the 1960s, work by the WEA resulted in basic education requirements to become a teacher, the creation of teacher retirement plans, state contributions to school construction, paid sick leave, and the right for classified school employees to collectively bargin. From the 1970s to today, the WEA has continued to organize for teacher pay and benefits, education funding, and other improvements. The WEA was the defendant in Davenport v. Washington Education Association, a landmark public-sector union case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. It is the largest representative of public school employees in the state.

From its founding until the mid-1960s, the WEA was dominated by school administrators, and saw itself as a professional organization advancing the interest of public education. Much of its work involved lobbying the state legislature for increased funding and professional regulation. Numerous affiliate units included associations of principals of elementary, junior high and high schools as well as other administrators. A “Department of Classroom Teachers” was only one of these subsidiary organizations.

Passage of the Professional Negotiations Act by the Washington State legislature in 1965 allowed collective bargaining by teachers, and the WEA began to act more like a labor union. At the same time, the AFL-CIO-affiliated American Federation of Teachers (AFT) continued organizing teachers, and a rivalry between the two resulted in community college teachers being organized into both organizations. The WEA ended up dominant among K-12 teachers and professional staff.