Melissa Bailey File Photo
Local 287 custodian Bruce Barros at Clinton Avenue School.
Two years after a panel of arbitrators imposed a new labor contract upon them, full-time school custodians reopened their agreement to negotiate their pay and medical plans for the final two years of their contract.
The school board on Monday voted to reopen the labor agreement between the school district and AFSCME Council 4 Local 287 to incorporate changes.
The contract affects the school board’s 100 full-time custodians, who are public employees. It does not affect the 162 privatized part-time custodians who now also clean schools; those part-time workers are seeking their own contract with their employer, Cleveland-based GCA Services Group.
The 100 full-time custodians currently make between $19.72 and $24.64 per hour, depending on the type of job they hold. Under the agreement approved Monday, they will now get a 2 percent pay raise retroactive to July 1, 2013, and another 2 percent raise the following July. Workers will also pay more towards their medical plans: They currently pay 13 percent of the monthly premiums; they’ll have to pay an extra 1 percent retroactive to July 1, 2013, and another 1 percent as of next July, according to AFSCME Council 4 spokesman Larry Dorman.
“It’s a fair and reasonable agreement that will carry us over the next two years,” Dorman said.
The changes come to a landmark contract handed down in November 2011 by a panel of arbitrators. Over the protest of rank-and-file custodians, arbitrators allowed the school district to privatize a third of the custodial workforce and make work rules more flexible.
The six-year contract, which runs from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2015, included no pay raises for the first two years, followed by two 2‑percent wage hikes. Arbitrators included a clause in their decision calling for the district and the union to reopen the contract to determine the wage hikes and medical benefits in the final two years of the contract.
Unlike in 2011 — when rank-and-file custodians rejected a tentative agreement their leaders had struck, sending the contract to arbitration — custodians unanimously ratified the amended contract in an Oct. 22 vote.
The cost of the changes will be about $100,000 over two years, according to schools Chief Operating Officer Will Clark.
He offered the following math: The wage hikes will cost an extra $191,050 over two years. The health care concessions will save $50,000. And because of the newly flexible work rules provided by the arbitration award, the school board saved an extra $37,552 in overtime costs beyond what it had expected to save.
Clark said the privatization plan is still saving about $4 million per year, including $1 million in overtime costs. Workmen’s compensation for Local 287 custodians plummeted by 65 percent from 2010-11 to 2011-12, saving the school board $667,000, he added.
“The custodial workforce is more productive and proactive, working closely with management and school administrators keeping the schools clean, reporting maintenance issues and vandalism, and also participating in all required training,” Clark wrote in a letter to the school board recommending approval of the new contract.
“I expect to continue to improve productivity and our solid working relationship with Local 287,” Clark wrote. “This is a great example of how to achieve effective custodial operations district-wide while saving money and promoting a positive environment for the workforce and safe, clean schools for New Haven students and the community overall.”
Dorman remained skeptical of New Haven’s privatization plan.
“I’m glad they have a union,” he said of the privatized custodians who work for GCA. “That’s a good thing that workers have representation.”
But “privatization is a tool that big corporations use to drive down wages and working conditions and the quality of public services. There’s nothing that is going to convince me otherwise.”
In general, he said, “privatization benefits corporate America at the expense of workers and their community.”
"Clark said the privatization plan is still saving about $4 million per year, including $1 million in overtime costs. Workmen's compensation for Local 287 custodians plummeted by 65 percent from 2010-11 to 2011-12, saving the school board $667,000, he added".
It's awfully strange how the BOE wins repeated contract concessions from many of it's unions, claim huge savings to salary and health benefits, yet savings never seem to show up in the next preceding annual budget.
Instead, the BOE continues to ask for line item increases to salaries, overtime, as well as, running deficits each year.
Someone, over there,(Clark) is not computing the math very well.