SVUSD continued its budget cutting actions last night by imposing a $3,888,744 reduction in pay on classified employees. The 1,200 workers include non-certified teaching staff such as aides and specialists, non-administrator office employees, maintenance personnel, and other support staff.
Nine negotiating sessions failed to reach a resolution. An independent mediator released a fact-finding report on August 16. Last night’s action implemented the fact-finder’s report, which was primarily based on the District’s “inability to pay.” The District said a factor in the impasse was the refusal of CSEA to accept a two-year reduction like the teachers union.
“The District recognizes that this is a hardship for classified employees, and regrets that unlike all other employee groups, CSEA chose not to make any reductions in 2009-10. This delay magnified the impact by condensing the reductions into two rather than three years,” said the District’s report.
The classified employees were represented by the California School Employees Association. A spokesman told the Dispatch CSEA made a proposal before the Board meeting for continued negotiations and was considering a lawsuit for unfair bargaining practices. He said work stoppages are rare and the option hasn’t been discussed. The Board left the door open to additional talks to consider changing the mix of salary cuts, furlough days and medical insurance hikes, but will not deviate from the total amount of savings required.
CSEA members complain their cuts are deeper and disproportionate to those for teachers, despite being lower paid employees. The average employee will experience a 13.47% in total compensation during the next two years.
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The District forgot to mention the deep unfair cuts that they have been offering is the reason why we didn’t settle last year, it was not because we didn’t want to take a two year reduction like the teachers did. The District has not once offered a fair share reduction to classified employees. CSEA has filed a suit against the District for Unfair Labor Practice alleging that the District has bargained in bad faith in the negotiations by taking an unlawfully inflexible position, making regressive proposals and for making proposals to CSEA that are predictably unacceptable and intended to frustrate the bargaining process.
Its high time that the interests of our kids education came first. Let the members of these unions join the rest of the country in this recession. Be thankful that they have a job.
I can’t muster up even a little sympathy. These union employees receive multimillion dollar pensions. Get taxed in a lower bracket because they don’t get taxed for the pension benefits while working (they don’t put their own money into it). Summers off to relax or take second jobs. Job security by having the private sector taxed more to feed money into their job and benefits. I would be happy with the whole government school system going bye bye.
I would like a system that is for the kids.