Teachers on strike since Tuesday in South Burlington have charged the district’s school board with unfair labor practices.
The South Burlington Education Association leveled the charges in a complaint dated Oct. 14 — the same day the teachers initiated the strike they had approved a week earlier. The paperwork was filed with the Vermont Labor Relations Board on the SBEA’s behalf by the Vermont chapter of the National Education Association, the union with which SBEA is affiliated.
South Burlington High School.
The SBEA claims the school board improperly held a meeting with staff and teachers regarding the thorniest part of contract negotiations: health insurance plans. Union representatives are fighting to hold onto their current health care plans, while the school board has tried to change the plan’s structure and how much teachers will pay toward premiums.
The complaint, which names school board members in their official capacities and as individuals, also says the board employed stall tactics and came to negotiations unprepared.
School Board clerk Martin Lalonde on Wednesday dismissed both charges as “frivolous.” He acknowledged an informational session about the health care plans within the Vermont Education Health Initiative was held Monday, but said the session was not related to negotiations.
VEHI is a nonprofit, self-funded purchasing trust for school employee health care plans, through which the district’s plans are administered. VEHI is jointly managed by the Vermont School Boards Insurance Trust and the Vermont-NEA. Members of both organizations presented information at Monday’s meeting.
“Our goal is a settlement,” SBEA chief negotiator Eric Stone said. “All of this could have been avoided if they (the school board) had met us at the negotiating table and come up with a settlement.”
The parties are scheduled to meet again Thursday for their next round of negotiations on a contract that expired June 30.
Though technically expired, most of the contract’s terms were automatically renewed on July 1. That includes salary increases to reflect teachers’ longevity or professional advancement, and health care benefits split 84/16 percent between the district and the teacher, respectively.
The union of about 200 teachers, affiliated with the Vermont chapter of the National Education Association, is fighting to maintain its current health care plan and holding out for greater salary increases than the school district’s board is willing to give.
School board members say rising health care costs and other financial pressures are straining the city’s ability to fund its schools while maintaining acceptable property tax rates. The cost of maintaining the status quo on health insurance, they say, would have to be offset by other concessions by teachers.
South Burlington teachers are the highest paid, on average, statewide. Top-earning teachers who have been there the longest earn about 8 percent more than their counterparts in the rest of Chittenden County. And with above-average retention rates, there are many teachers near the top of the pay scale.
These statistics come from a fact-finder’s report prepared in August, after the union and school board reached impasse in their negotiations.
The union wants to use the fact-finder’s report and recommendations as the “framework” for a settlement. The school board has agreed to some of the recommendations that lined up with union demands, including maintaining current health insurance coverage. But to offset associated costs, the school board wants employee premium contributions to tick up to 18 percent by Fiscal Year 2017.
Under the federal Affordable Care Act, that incremental shift in payment ratios will effectively disallow the plans from being “grandfathered” beyond 2017. With so much uncertainty in both federal and state health care policy, it’s a prospect the union is not willing to entertain.
A meeting was held Monday to discuss health care coverage, Lalonde acknowledged. But he dismissed as “frivolous” the charge that it constituted an unfair labor practice. He said it was not related to contract negotiations with the teachers.
That’s at the heart of the union’s problem with the meeting. In its complaint, the SBEA specifically cites the discussions “outside the negotiation process” as part of the problem.
The charges allege that the school board called the meeting “in order to discuss its bargaining proposal directly with bargaining unit members, to circumvent the authority of the bargaining team, and to cause employees to pressure the Association bargaining team to accept the (school board’s) health insurance proposal …”
Defending the school board against the allegation, Lalonde said the meeting had been organized by the superintendent’s office, not the school board. He said two board members attended to listen, but not participate. He noted the information session was held two days after the board had abandoned its VEHI proposal and had agreed to the union’s demands to maintain the current health insurance plan. And he said the information session was conducted in part by Mark Hage, an employee of the Vermont-NEA.
“The NEA is going to send someone in to negotiate outside of the negotiation process with the negotiators?” Lalonde asked rhetorically. “It’s ludicrous on its face.”
Lalonde said the allegations are a “pressure tactic.” The board will not be distracted from the essential goal, which is contract settlement, he said.
Tactics are just as much a matter of discussion in the negotiations as the substance of the contract proposals themselves. Lalonde also dismissed allegations the school board has used “stall tactics” to belabor the negotiation process.
Those charges surfaced the evening of Oct. 6, when the SBEA presented a counterproposal to the school board. Board members said they needed time to review the proposal, but the union felt they should have stayed at the table to negotiate.
“We’ve been negotiating for 10 months,” Stone said. “The numbers should be crunched, the scenarios should be planned for.”
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