Legal Question in Employment Law in Washington

Re: Employee compensation

I did some checking on your question, though I did not come up with a firm answer, and I will tell you below why I didn't keep researching.

I looked at the bill itself to which you are referring, and it gives a schedule of pay rates to be applied. This would suggest to me that the district is required to grant that pay rate. However, RCW 28A.150.410, the underlying law for these particular appropriations, says these are for "allocation purposes only." This might mean that the district has some discretion. So it is unclear to me whether the district is bound to grant the salary increase or not. I don't do a lot of work with state employees, so I'm not as familiar with the law on this point, though I'm sure the attorneys for your union could tell you.

The reason I did not pursue the question further is that it sounds as if the problem has been properly resolved. They are giving you the raise now and retroactively, as far as I understand. In that case, even if what they did was not correct to start with, now that things have been made right, you have no standing (or basis) to pursue a legal matter against them.

In this case, I would say, rely on the union regarding this matter. If what the employer was doing was illegal, I suspect the union would have used that to put pressure on them to grant the raise that was intended. (Perhaps they did, in fact. Sometimes it works better to rattle sabres out of public view.)

Good luck and thank you for teaching. It's not an easy job.