GILROY
– Teachers responded Tuesday to an update issued by school
district officials on an impasse in teacher contract negotiations,
questioning the validity of some of the district’s claims.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – Teachers responded Tuesday to an update issued by school district officials on an impasse in teacher contract negotiations, questioning the validity of some of the district’s claims.
Two weeks before the district and its teachers are scheduled to meet with a state mediator to resolve the impasse over last year’s contracts, Gilroy Unified School District distributed an update Friday to all certificated employees and management in the district.
Gilroy Teachers Association representatives questioned the district’s motives for sending the update to the teachers union members.
“It’s our job to keep our members informed,” GTA President Michelle Nelson said.
GUSD is responsible for providing factual updates on negotiations, and no update had been provided since June, said Linda Piceno, superintendent of human resources. The two sides last met July 8.
“The district is held to a different standard in terms of negotiations,” Piceno said. “We need to be much more factual. We cannot negotiate through our updates or negotiate except through the table.”
In its own update, the GTA countered several points made by the district. At the July meeting, a one-half percent increase in health and welfare benefits was discussed by both sides. The GTA says the district’s claims that it offered the increase are false.
“It was not in writing. … We pushed it, and (GUSD) resisted,” Nelson said.
The GTA is contacting the California Teachers Association to discuss filing an unfair labor practice charge against the district over the issue, Nelson said.
District officials said they proposed the increase because health care costs are expected to go up this month.
“We did that because there was a concern that, come Sept. 30, there would start to be out-of-pocket costs for employees,” Piceno said.
District officials reported in the update that the state mediator was available to meet in early August, while the two sides mutually agreed on meeting Sept. 15. Teachers were unavailable to meet during the August dates because they were during the week before school started or the first week of classes, Nelson said.
The two sides are tentatively optimistic about the mediation proceedings.
“We left the table on July 8 with a positive tone,” Piceno said. “Both sides have put a lot of time into negotiations and … both sides are committed to coming to the best agreement we can for Gilroy Unified.”
The district and teachers have spent 250 hours in negotiations.
“You can never predict what will happen,” said Dale Morejon, chapter services consultant for the CTA. “I’m very hopeful because of the history of Gilroy Unified.”
In July, the district offered teachers what it says amounts to a 4.5 percent pay increase the GTA rejected as “conceptual,” and only benefiting certain employees.
The final contract article that left the negotiations at a stalemate is salary for the 2002-03 school year. Through June, the district was not offering a salary increase. In July, GUSD offered the GTA a 2 percent raise on the condition that 20 teachers choose to retire before Feb. 1, 2004. The teachers would make their retirement decision in February, but would not actually need to retire until next June.
The district expects to have nearly 20 teachers retire next year, based on the number of teachers nearing retirement age and those who are looking at early retirement, Piceno said. Should fewer teachers retire, the district may still be able to keep the 2 percent offer, but if too few teachers decide to retire, the raise would not come through, Piceno said.
The offer was rejected because there is no guarantee that 20 people will retire this year, the GTA said.
“You can’t base a salary increase for last year on the possibility that 20 people will retire this year,” Nelson said. “That makes no sense.”
The raise would be retroactive to July 1, 2002, only for teachers who retired at the end of last school year or are still with the district to benefit ongoing employees of Gilroy Unified, Piceno said. Teachers who were laid off or resigned would not receive the raise. The GTA said the discrepancy was unacceptable.
“If it’s retroactive, it should be retroactive for everyone who was here for 2002-03,” Nelson said.
This is the third impasse between teachers and the district in the last decade. Representatives from both GUSD and the GTA will meet with the state mediator, who will set ground rules for negotiation and spend up to three days meeting with both sides separately to help them come to an agreement. About 90 percent of impasses are resolved during mediation, said Morejon.
If the state mediator cannot bring the two sides to a mutual agreement, the impasse will enter a fact-finding phase in which a neutral panel will hear from both sides and recommend a solution. Fact-finding could take between two and three weeks, Morejon said. Once the district makes its final offer, either accepting or rejecting the fact-finder’s recommendation, teachers will have the option of voting whether to strike.
Recent state budget cuts have officials expecting to see more cuts for next year, which will further affect teachers and might end up affecting schools, Superintendent Edwin Diaz said.
In these tight budget times, the district is struggling to increase compensation to fulfill its goal of recruiting and retaining quality staff, Piceno said.
“Other districts are giving very little salary increases, so we see this as a time, if at all possible, that we can gain on our comparative districts in terms of total compensation packages,” she said. “We’re trying to be as creative as we can.”
The last major contract article resolved was an increase in health and welfare benefits the district said equaled a 2.5 percent salary increase.
Nelson says the district’s claim is misleading because the benefits increase only applies to teachers with families and single or married teachers see no advantage. Those teachers will not have to pay into the plan, however, because the district will cover up to the family plan cap of $665 each month, which is significantly higher than the other plans, Piceno said.
