justice for janitors

February 28, 2013February 28, 2013

NK: Investing In Dog Park; Cutting Fire Budget

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nk school committee meeting — Unon members and residents packed a North Kingstown School Committee meeting.

Something is seriously wrong in North Kingstown.

Recall that the town is mired a bitter battle with its local fire fighters, trying to get them to work 24-hour shifts and take an average $5 an hour pay cut. And also remember that the school department fired every school custodians this summer only to hire them back at a lower wage with worse benefits. Like the firefighters face, the custodians took a $5 an hour pay cut.

In both instances, elected officials cried poverty. School Committee Chair Kimberly Ann Page even wrote that she feared having to choose between paying janitors a living wage and keeping the school heated.

But while schools struggle to stay warm and public sector employees are being denied a decent living, the dogs in North Kingstown are doing quite well. According to North Kingstown Patch:

At Monday night’s town council meeting, Town Manager Michael Embury proposed a possible location for NK’s first dog park. Though it’s not a priority, Embury says that many residents have expressed interest in having a dog park in town similar to those in South Kingstown and Newport.

Embury said he could have the department of public works director look into the cost creating a dog park at the location, including fencing and maintenance.

A town can’t have money to make a park just for dogs and not to pay its employees a living wage. It’s bad government, poor politics, atrocious economics and horrible humanity.

There’s no reason public sector employees should have to live in poverty, especially not if the taxpayers concerns include too much poop at local parks.

August 28, 2012August 29, 2012

North Kingstown School Committee Silences Crowd

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About 300 people packed the North Kingstown High School auditorium for the school committee meeting, many of whom planned to address committee members about their decision to outsource custodians’ jobs to an out-of-state company.

And if you think they were upset at the beginning of the meeting when Dick Welch made a motion to move public comment to the end of the agenda, you should have heard them when the committee closed the meeting without letting the people have their say.

“Shame on you, shame on you,” chanted the crowd, filled with both local residents and union members from around the state.

School committee member Don Boscardin said they adjourned because the crowd was getting too rowdy. Welch declined to comment to RI Future.

Throughout the meeting, members bickered with each other over issues as small as how much toilet paper should be purchased for the next fiscal year.

Committee members Bill Mudge and Melvoid Benson played to the crowd by stalling the meeting with a myriad of mundane questions. School staff and Committee President Kim Page responded by talking down to them and sometimes cutting them short.

Mudge said in an email earlier in the day that the other committee members have frozen he and Benson out of the negotiating process. During the meeting, he threatened to reveal discussions from executive session.

“For the record, I was never advised by phone, e-mail or while I speaking with Mrs. Berglund and/or Mrs. Benson that a negotiations meeting had been convened and was underway in the superintendent’s office between ESP Union officials, Dr. Auger and School Committee Members Mrs. Page, Mr. Ceresi, Mr. Boscardin, and Mrs. Avanzato,” he wrote.

Earlier in the day, the union agreed to return to work on Wednesday, according to Judge Brian Stern, who was hearing a request for an injunction to end the work stoppage. In exchange, the school department agreed to continue working towards a resolution with the union.

The school committee still has some 30 days to nullify its contract with the out-of-state company hired to clean the public schools, though union officials expressed doubt that an agreement could be reached outside of a court decision. There are still some grievances and unfair labor practice complaints that could reverse the decision.

August 28, 2012August 28, 2012

NK Evades Responsibility With Custodian Contract

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I woke up today to an automated phone call from the school superintendent telling me that the first day of school in North Kingstown has been delayed by a strike. The Educational Support Personnel (ESP) union has walked out over the School Committee’s action to outsource the jobs of all 26 janitors, and so my daughter is home today instead.

As is usual, there is a welter of claims and counter-claims. The ESP union offered some pretty substantial concessions this spring. They say they met the dollar figure the School Committee had insisted was necessary. The Committee responded that they were close, but the superintendent had already budgeted some of the savings the union was offering so they needed more. An arbitrator was called in and that report offered a way to save $1.3 million over two years, but again that was measured over the previous year, not over the proposed budget, which already included some of those savings, so it wasn’t enough.

In response, the School Committee voted 5-2 to outsource the 26 custodian jobs. They did insist that the new contractor hire back as many of the custodians as possible, and I gather that 21 of them took the new deal: their old jobs at about 70% of salary, minus the health insurance and pension. In other words, around a 40-45% pay cut, give or take. Would you take that?

I talked to my daughter about this, and she told me about the custodian at the middle school who had encouraged her with a model car she and some classmates built for a Science Olympiad competition in seventh grade (their team won the state event, and went to the national event in Wisconsin that year), and about the elementary school custodian who talked and joked with the children in the cafeteria, but also knew them all, even the first graders. Those are the kind of people you get when the jobs are good jobs.

But I guess that kind of thing is to be part of the past now. Instead of jobs that can support a family, we’ll have jobs that people move through. We’ll have custodial staff stretched thinner, and we’ll have an outsourcing company that is making good money off the deal, that indispensable part of what some people call progress.

Will the district save money? Maybe this year. But the teacher contract comes up in the fall. What do you suppose will be their level of enthusiasm when the School Committee requests concessions to get through this fiscal storm?

Oh yes, that storm. In all the ire directed at the School Committe in this dispute, let’s not forget that it was the actions of the Town Council that precipitated this crisis. The School Committee told them last winter that they weren’t going to be able to meet the property-tax caps imposed by the state without severe pain. In response, the Town Council cut the school budget even further than the property tax cap demands. North Kingstown has a notoriously dysfunctional School Committee, but it was Council President Elizabeth Dolan, and members Michael Bestwick, Charlie Stamm, Carol Hueston, and Charles Brennan who have effectively put the screws to the custodians.

Council members I’ve spoken to seem proud that they’re willing to hold the line on taxes, but at what cost? North Kingstown’s taxes are already lower than average in the state, according to the tax effort formula defined in state law (75.5% of the average). In a conversation one summer evening this past July, one council member told me with certainty about the waste that could be cut out of the school budget. As I usually notice when people decry government waste to me, the member could supply no specific suggestion to cut beyond the job of an assistant to the superintendent, a cost of less than one fifteenth the amount they insisted be cut.

The custodian contract wasn’t the only change this year. Just looking at the high school (where my family’s attention is focused, for better or worse), the foreign language offerings have been slashed, school supplies cut way back, and graduation requirements lowered, all for budget reasons.

One of the curiosities of government around here that we take for granted is that we elect School Committee members, and don’t give them the independence to make their own decisions. I’m doing policy consulting work in other states lately, and I’ve noticed that in lots of states — maybe the majority outside New England — school departments are a parallel government, operated independently of the city or county where they are located, often with separate tax bills. School Committee members there are directly responsible to voters for the decisions they make. Around here, by contrast, the School Committee is subservient to the City or Town Council. The North Kingstown Council has spoken, its members are largely responsible for the budget crisis in the school department, but they take no heat for that. Union press releases inveigh against the School Committee, but ignore the Town Council. This, it seems to me, is the opposite of taking responsibility.

So, Liz Dolan: Your Council cut the school budget. You overruled the opinions of the people supposedly responsible for that budget. Where exactly is the waste? Michael Bestwick: Precisely what would you cut? Charles Brennan: Where else do we find savings? Please be specific. Carol Hueston: What other jobs are to be outsourced? Charlie Stamm: How do we settle this dispute? It is the straightforward consequence of your decisions: how will you defend those choices? Or will you just hope no one notices that you were behind the hard choices made by someone else?

August 28, 2012August 28, 2012

VIDEO: Labor Strike Cancels School in North Kingstown

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North Kingstown cancelled school today as a result of all school personnel striking in solidarity with the custodians whose jobs were outsourced to a private company earlier this summer.

About 70 school employees marched and formed a picket line in front of North Kingstown High School this morning, and plan to rally again tonight at a school committee meeting.

Several union members said negotiations ended with Superintendent Phil Auger ended at about 10:30 last night, even though they were willing to keep working towards a deal. School was not cancelled until 6:30 this morning. One parent at the high school this morning, a non-union member, said his family got the call just 15 minutes before the school bus was supposed to arrive.

Earlier this summer the school committee rejected the decision of an arbitrator that would have saved the district more than $1.3 million over the next two years and instead fired the school custodians and outsourced their jobs to an out-of-state company. Some custodians were hired back but at an approximately 30 percent cut in salary.

Teachers were not on the picket line this morning, but voted unanimously yesterday afternoon not to cross it either. While teachers voted to do so for at least two days, several union members at the high school this morning said they expect a court injunction will remand employees back to work as early as today.

Union officials said they will not ask members to defy a court order. Instead, they hope today’s action will ignite the interest of the people, who may be more persuasive in changing school committee members’ minds that union intermediaries have been.

Bill Mudge, a member of the school committee, has filed an Open Meetings Act complaint with the Attorney General’s office and has implored his colleagues to come back to the negotiating table.

Here’s a video of Nancy Ferencko, president of the education support professionals union in the North Kingstown school system addressing those on the picket line this morning:

August 28, 2012August 28, 2012

NK School Committeeman Cries Foul On Outsourcing

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North Kingstown School Committee member Bill Mudge said the school committee and superintendent have not negotiated in good faith with the custodians and its union and said at “Tuesday night’s meeting I will request a vote of the entire S/C to hold a special/open meeting to consider the unions June 26, 2012 proposal” in an email he sent out to state and town officials Monday evening.

“Unfortunately, I believe that there has been complete breakdown in the negotiation process, absence of School Committee leadership and that school committee erred, when it failed to consider the union’s proposal presented to Attorney Carroll on June 26,” he wrote in the email.

All school personnel have decided either to strike or not cross a picket line today, which was supposed to be the first day of school. They are protesting the huge wage cuts custodians took when their jobs were outsourced to a private company.

The school committee meets tonight.

Mudge has been critical of the way the school committee has handled the situation with the 26 custodians, whose jobs were outsourced to the private company GCA and took an average pay cut of about $13,000.

“What happened was most unethical,” he said in a phone interview earlier in the day. “I don’t know what the ultimate result would have been but we didn’t bargain in good faith and I am ashamed to be on the school committee.”

Mudge said the school committee received a decision from an arbitrator on June 26 that would save the district more than $1.3 million over two years. Later on the same day, the school committee agreed in executive session to proceed with privatizing school custodial services.

“We had all received a copy of arbitrators award and we had a meeting that night,” he said. “Nobody really looked at it and the superintendent said he disagreed with it.”

Mudge walked out of that meeting, he said, because he didn’t think the school committee followed open meetings rules when it went into executive session. He later filed a complaint with the Attorney General.

“My issue is not necessarily the result, it’s the process,” he said.

The school committee ultimately signed a contract with the out-of-state company rather than agree to the terms laid out by the arbitrator.

School Committee Chair Kim Page indicated in a reply email to Mudge that she does not think he has the votes to pass his motion at Tuesday’s meeting.

“Poll the committee all you want Bill,” she wrote in reply to his email. “If you get even 3 votes to attend your meeting, I would be shocked.”

Here’s Mudge’s entire email:

I am writing you because I am concerned about the subject notice posted on the NKSD website which states “While School Committee labor negotiations continue with the NK Educational Support Professionals, there remains a possibility that this union may strike on Tuesday and force the closure of school. Right now both sides continue to meet, and we are doing all we can to avert a work stoppage, but I am writing to you to give you some advance notice to make contingency plans for your children’s care should the NKESP go forward with a strike.”

First, as a member of the school committee, I (and I believe Mrs. Benson) am unaware of any continuing labor negotiations currently ongoing with the NK Educational Support Professionals. Regardless, to the best of my knowledge, on June 26, 2012 NKESP union officials did provide additional contract concessions to Mary Ann Carroll, attorney for the North Kingstown School Committee’s (NKSC), with the understanding that Attorney Carroll would present the new proposal to the NKSC that evening. It is also my understanding, Attorney Carroll attempted to present the unions proposal to the school committee, however it was rejected out of hand by committee members Welch, Page, Avanzato and Boscardin.

Second, I am also unaware of any ongoing negotiations with ESP union officials since March 13, 2012, when at that time a motion was made by Lynda Avanzato and seconded by John Boscardin to dissolve the Negotiations Sub-Committee and subsequently passed by a 4 to 1 vote. Mrs. Avanzato’s and Mr. Welch’s rationale to dissolve the committee was predicated on their assertion that when the committee moves into arbitration, it’s the entire committee that becomes involved. Thus, any interface or discussion with union officials by a School Committee Member or members and Superintendent Auger were not authorized and therefore not representative of the School Committee. Additionally, Attorney Carroll has not been authorized to represent the school committee in any matters concerning union negotiations.

Third, since the June 26, 2012 school committee meeting I have attempted on several occasions, to poll all NKSC members to hold a special or emergency school committee meeting to address the unions latest proposal; however, Chairperson Page has continually rejected each of my requests, in violation of our own school committee policy. Because of Chairperson Page’s in transient’s and unwillingness to bargain in good faith, on August 12, 2012, I filed several Open Meetings Act complaints with the Atty. Gen.’s office regarding the procedural conduct of the June 26 meeting and because the school committee voted, in essence, to rejected the unions new proposal in violation of the OMA.

Fourth, I would like to point out that on the evening of June 25, 2012, during executive session, and after only a 20 minute discussion of an arbitrator’s 25 page decision and award which had just been received and included $621,000 and $687,000 of budget savings in FY13 and FY14 respectively, the school committee voted to fire the janitorial staff. Furthermore the decision was predicated and accepted “without question” on Superintendent Auger’s assertion that the amount of savings cited by the arbitrator was incorrect and would not be realized, despite the fact that the arbitrator’s written statement that “most of the values were provided by the school committee as part of its evidence in this case.” I feel the S/C owed its valued long time employees the professional courtesy to at least validate the accuracy and/or disparity between the arbitrators and Dr. Auger’s calculated savings.

As outlined above, I have done everything possible since February, when I was first appointed to the now defunct negotiations committee, to ensure that School Committee and the ESP union were bargaining in good faith. Unfortunately, I believe that there has been complete breakdown in the negotiation process, absence of School Committee leadership and that school committee erred, when it failed to consider the union’s proposal presented to Attorney Carroll on June 26, 2012. As such, and in regard to the rumored statement there “will be a work stoppage” resulting in school closure, I respectfully request that all union employees continue to work their normal work day schedules until the S/C meets this Tuesday. In turn, I give you my word of honor that at the Tuesday night’s meeting I will request a vote of the entire S/C to hold a special/open meeting to consider the unions June 26, 2012 proposal. I believe this is a win, win proposal for both parties and the parents and children of our community, even if only for a day.

August 27, 2012August 27, 2012

NK Teachers Won’t Cross Custodian Picket Line

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nk custodians — A North Kingstown school custodian at a rally to protect his job from being outsourced to a private company earlier this summer.

North Kingstown public school teachers voted unanimously this afternoon to stand in solidarity with their fellow workers who plan a strike Tuesday for the first day of school to fight for fair wages for school custodians.

Mary Barden, a middle school social studies teacher who is president of the local teachers’ union said the members agreed to do so both for safety concerns – because it can be dangerous to cross a picket line, she said – and “equally as important we want to stand in solidarity with the people we work with every day. We want them to know we support and honor what they are doing.”

Barden said union members passed three resolutions at the afternoon meeting.

The first was that if school is cancelled they will not report. If school is not cancelled teachers will report to school “but we will not cross a picket line.” The third motion was to follow the same process if the custodians and the school department have still not worked out their differences.

August 27, 2012August 27, 2012

NEA-RI President Purtill On NK Strike Possibility

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Larry Purtill, president of the NEA-RI, issued a statement about the possibility of a labor strike at North Kingstown public schools if the School Committee there declines to nullify a contract with a private company that resulted in the 26 custodians being outsourced and getting an average salary cut of $13,000.

Here’s his statement:

The superintendent and school committee need to only look in the mirror for someone to blame if school doesn’t start on time. They need to rein in their actions, put a stop to their unfair labor practices, and deal with their responsibilities to SEIU. They are out of control and need to put the welfare of the district before their personal political agendas.

Ironically, the contract with GCA doesn’t save the district any appreciable amount of money more than the arbitration award did, and yet they chose to upheave the personal lives of their loyal employees and disrupt the entire town by their irrational behavior.

And here’s the full press release from the NEA-RI

What has been festering all summer between North Kingstown custodians and the school district is threatening to boil over at this Tuesday’s school committee meeting. The committee’s rejection of an arbitration award and subsequent firing of 26 workers in favor of privatizing has incited more than one local labor union.

The NK Education Support Professionals (NK ESP) and its parent union the National Education Association Rhode Island (NEARI) sought court intervention to stop the move as soon as the firings occurred last June. This suit is currently under appeal. Meanwhile, information gathered about the private contractor – GCA Services – indicates a spotty past in other districts around the country. (See www.roundhouseleft.com for details.) Despite mounting evidence against the company’s practices, the Committee continued to move forward with its plan.

At last Tuesday’s (August 21) School Committee session, residents and union members stood up and spoke out against privatizing. The following day, North Kingstown Superintendent Phil Auger took the local NK ESP president behind closed doors and upbraided her for those comments, prompting the union to file an unfair labor practice charge against him.

Learning of the charge, Vice Committee Chair Dick Welch told the union leadership the next day that he would not support any agreement reached unless “the union withdrew the unfair labor practice charge.” Welch’s conduct is itself an unfair labor practice. The union filed that additional charge Friday, August 23.

In response, Superintendent Auger has emailed parents warning of a possible job action Tuesday that could interfere with the on-time opening of schools.

Another statewide union has reason to protest. GCA Services has a regional agreement with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which has complained that GCA ignored its contractual obligations in the North Kingstown situation. Auger and the school committee have not addressed the potential action that SEIU may consider taking on its own against this company. Either way, should the parties appeal to the courts, jurisdiction now resides in private sector law since it involves a private company, and would likely not end up in the Rhode Island judicial system.

NEARI President Larry Purtill said, “The superintendent and school committee need to only look in the mirror for someone to blame if school doesn’t start on time. They need to rein in their actions, put a stop to their unfair labor practices, and deal with their responsibilities to SEIU. They are out of control and need to put the welfare of the district before their personal political agendas.

“Ironically, the contract with GCA doesn’t save the district any appreciable amount of money more than the arbitration award did, and yet they chose to upheave the personal lives of their loyal employees and disrupt the entire town by their irrational behavior.”