In my hometown, North Andover, there is an interesting warrant article to petition the General Court to make any collective bargaining agreement entered into between the School Committee and the teacher’s union subject to a vote at town meeting.
I first read it that all CBA’s had to be approved by Town meeting, but then they added in an explanation from the Finance Committee that clarified that it only applied to the School Department.
Here is a link – to PDF – language is on page 72.
Questions:
- Does this happen in other towns?
- Can it be legal to have only one bargaining unit’s contracts come to Town Meeting?
Thoughts:
I’m outraged. Full disclosure; I used to teach fulltime – now in industry. There is a real split in town gov about education – the school committee is committed to working hard to make the schools good, but the Finance Committee and the Selectmen are trying to reduce the portion of the town budget that goes to the schools. Most recently, the teachers had their HC percentage go from 10% to 25% of premiums, and then got a 9% raise over 5 years (with two years at 0). [Yes, I know about steps and columns.] But, generally speaking, the town does not have high salaries or high per student costs. We ranked 271st/329 in the most recent survey. The town is in a tough spot b/c we are mostly a bedroom community with a limited tax base.
This strikes me as completely unfair – I still wouldn’t like any collective bargaining to be subject to Town Meeting, but signalling out the teachers is reprehensible. People have campaigned for School Committee attacking contracts and lost. The selectmen have a vote on the contract and in fact they pulled their member off because he thought the contract was good and they didn’t like it – he was replaced by the Town Manager.
What are your thoughts?
in PP’s
teacher contracts were voted on in PP’s town meeting, if I remember correctly. I’m not sure if that meant more than the money itself.
Only town meeting can appropriate money, so it has to vote the money for the teacher contract. It doesn’t have approve the actual terms of the contract.
We don’t separate the teacher’s contract from the school budget at my town meeting. We may vote on the salaries figure, but that’s it. Salaries are reported along with the name of the teacher in our annual town report. The same is true for all town employees. That’s one way I can tell how much more money I make in the school system I work in.
Any public employee contract is a public document, but it seems like an anti-union move to open up the contract to a town meeting vote. Someone has to negotiate the contract and defend it, and there are plenty of details to cherry-pick out of contracts that sound stupid, petty, or extravagant.
I just finished negotiations with my town’s police union and some of the money benefits might seem silly out of the context of negotiations. But there’s a give and take involved, and what we really cared about as employers was amount of money the contract would cost. It doesn’t matter whether the money goes to an employee in a uniform allowance or a physical fitness bonus or a raise. It’s all money. Incidentally, even with cordial negotiations, it took us 25-30 hours of meeting to hammer out the details.
Involving town meeting in negotiations–which is really what you’re doing–makes things difficult. You can make a democratic argument for it, but given that the strength of the opinions for many town meeting participants is inversely proportional to their knowledge of how things work, it could be a mess.
We had the discussion of step raises and employee levels at our last town meeting. TM made the right–if eventually untenable–decision, but not without one guy sowing as much confusion as possible. Discussing the in’s and out’s of a contract, getting people to understand such concepts as past practices, not to mention the idea of negotiations, and then getting them to vote for something that took 25-40 hours to develop… well, that’s not an enviable job.
By lumping that burden on the town’s negotiators, collective bargaing becomes less effective or practicable. For some, that’s a consummation devoutly to be wished.
Although the language of the warrant you linked to would permit a bylaw that applies to all contracts, you say the motion that is to be offered under the article would only bring school contracts to Town Meeting.
Either would be unusual and maybe singular. What you describe is a very different step than the votes by which Town Meeting funds contracts.
But your question about it being legal–yes, it is perfectly legal for a municipality to petition the legislature to change its form of government. Barring some constitutional issue, which I do not see here, if the legislature grants the petition (far from guaranteed), it’s legal; that’s how laws are made (assuming gubernatorial signature or passage over a veto).
Sounds like this is not aimed at teachers so much as at the school committee. Doesn’t your SC negotiate with other unions too? Someone must not be happy with the way your SC has been handling contract negotiations.
Of course the union is likely to oppose this change, because as Mark points out it complicates negotiations. Also if the SC is under fire for being too generous then probably the union would prefer to deal exclusively with the committee rather than with Town Meeting and the Finance Committee.
So I guess I think your outrage about “signaling out teachers” is probably misplaced, whatever the merits or demerits of the proposal.
But if you read down to the Finance Committee’s explanation it clearly says that this would apply to CBA’s signed by the school committee. The majority of these apply to the teachers.
I do believe it unfairly singles out teachers – thanks for the editing – because it would mean that their salaries, steps, etc., would be debated at Town Meeting, unlike other CBA’s. (Although we did have a vote on the Fireman’s contract last year, but only on the change to a 24 hour shift, not pay.)
In my town, the level of review for the schools is very different than for the “town” side of the budget. The school budget is one line item. The town budget is many line items, including separate approval of funding for each contract and pay raises for non-union employees. On the school side, town meeting approves a lump sum, that the school committee can allocate as it sees fit. A line item budget is presented, but is not binding.
In a way, what your town is proposing would make the review of education budgets more like the review of town spending. Even if you disagree with this proposal, to call it “humiliating” is a bit over the top.