By Jamie Ausk Crisafulli
Ranger-Review Staff Writer
The next contract negotiations for Glendive teachers is scheduled for Monday and a representative with the Glendive Education Association has announced its membership has voted overwhelmingly to reject the Glendive Unified School Board Labor Management Committee’s recent proposal.
“With the best information that we have, our membership has rejected it. We are not going to accept it,” Maggie Copeland, MEA-MFT field consultant representing the GEA, said Thursday.
The GUSB’s most recent proposal included the district covering 80 percent of the highest deductible insurance plan, 75 percent of the mid-range plan (also considered a high deductible) and 70 percent of what is referred by both sides as the Cadillac plan.
The GUSB has stated that currently GEA members on average cover 2 percent of their insurance premiums on average, although Copeland said she disagrees but says she has been unable to get information from the district on how that figure was determined.
The GUSB’s proposal also included a salary increase of $4,166.88 for every individual in the district. The increase equals the amount a teacher on the highest deductible family plan would pay in premiums next year if the district’s insurance contribution was accepted.
At the GUSB’s meeting in May, trustee Paul Hopfauf explained that the permanent add in salary across the matrix on the base is not only a benefit for teachers in the short term to cover insurance costs, but the money in the salary is added to their pension.
“Yes, it is a littest onerous on families, but as Paul said it adds to their pension,” Jeanne Seifert, former board trustee, said at the May meeting.
Although Seifert’s term on the board has expired, the GUSB voted to retain her as lead negotiator for the school district through the month of June.
“You can either have this mechanism paying the teachers through base, which would make us one of the most competitive base salary district in Class A for a recruiting and retention standpoint, or we can opt to do what we currently do ... so there is no pension benefit and pay (the money directly to) Blue Cross,” Hopfauf said.
He said the district’s proposal gives the board a mechanism “that if prices go up in forward years you now have a tool to do other additional one-time type things to help.”
But the GEA membership did not see the proposal in the same light.
In the weeks following the last negotiations session in April, GEA sent personalized surveys to each member in the district showing how he or she would be impacted by the GUSB’s proposal.
The impact for the 2017-18 school year for teachers vary from an increase in salary of $4,166.88 for teachers who do not have insurance through the school district to an overall loss of almost $4,000 for two district employees if they choose to keep the same level of insurance as they have in the past. The average impact is smaller on both ends, however, ranging from an increase of $1,600 to a decrease of $1,700.
Sixty-seven percent of the GEA membership returned their surveys, and all but four replied that they wanted to reject the proposal offered by the school district.
The GEA developed a chart that they feel shows district representatives are overstating their budget woes to justify contract proposals that will hurt teachers, particularly senior teachers in the district.
“I don’t feel there is any economic exigency to their proposals. I just don’t. It’s something they want, but it’s not something they need,” Copeland said.
The GEA negotiations team does not have a counterproposal. They will meet before Mondays negotiations session to determine the next step, but Copeland said that will likely be fact finding.
Fact finding is when both sides go to a common arbitrator and explain their positions. That person evaluates all the information provided to him and makes a decision on what he feel is the best proposal.
According to Copeland, the decision is issued to the parties and they are given two weeks to settle. If it is not settled, the arbitrator’s decision is published in the newspaper with the intention that public pressure will push a contract agreement forward.
Copeland said scheduling conflicts will not allow another meeting until after July.
“Insurance is done. We can’t make that change in the middle of the year,” Copeland said. “I don’t know how they would do that, really.”
Monday’s negotiation session will begin at 4 p.m. in the Dawson County High School Board Room.
The school district had to cancel the second day of negotiations scheduled for Tuesday, June 6 because Andy Sever, the district’s negotiator from the Montana School Boards Association, was subpoened to court that day on a matter not related to Glendive Schools.
Reach Jamie Ausk Crisafulli at rreditor@rangerreview.com.