Pay, right to work cited in slow Mich. teacher talks

Nearly a month into the school year, teachers in more than a dozen Michigan districts are working without contracts as negotiations bog down over wages and other issues.

After years of pay and benefit concessions, teachers are clamoring for raises, while districts say they need to hold the line on costs because of flat or declining enrollment and revenue.

Education and labor experts say the state’s right-to-work law also is contributing to the slow pace of negotiations and making the climate more challenging for teacher unions.

The 3-year-old measure, which allows teachers and other employees to opt out of union membership, has weakened unions by adding administrative burdens and, at least in some cases, reducing dues revenue, they said. Michigan law bans teacher strikes, further limiting union leverage.

“Unionism might have to win back deeper support for the public and press to restore the climate for collective bargaining ... this might mean outreach and strengthening community ties/alliances, etc.,” said Mike Whitty, a retired University of Detroit Mercy labor relations professor.

The Michigan Education Association has 10 locals without contracts, while the American Federation of Teachers-Michigan has six, union officials said.

Among the MEA locals still bargaining is Birmingham, where the union and the Oakland County district are close to finalizing a contract to replace one that expired June 30. The school board said Tuesday evening it had accepted the union’s settlement offer but that details still need to be worked out.

The announcement from the two sides came as about 200 teachers from Birmingham and other area districts demonstrated outside the Birmingham Schools Administration Building before a school board meeting.

“It is not uncommon for school to start prior to settling a contract,” said Scott Warrow, president of the Birmingham Education Association. “When I came to the MEA 25 years ago, it was considered unusual, but not anymore.”

The union argued the Birmingham district can afford a raise, and that teachers deserve one for taking on additional responsibilities and staffing extra days.

Under the local’s previous contract, pay ranges from $41,043 a year for a beginning instructor with a bachelor’s degree to $88,482 for a top-scale teacher with a master’s degree and 30 years of experience.

“The board supports the precedent of keeping our teaches amongst the highest paid in the state; this reflects both the value we place on our teachers and the value they bring to our students,” said Robert Lawrence, president of the Birmingham school board.

“All of this is done while trying to address the long-term decline in state funding, decreases in student enrollment, continued growth in health care costs, and legacy pension obligations that now add approximately 35 percent on top of covered personnel salaries.”

“This can be a difficult balance, and helps to explain the parties’ challenges in reaching a new agreement,” he said.

The state’s budget process also slowed negotiations, he said.

“We did not get clarity until mid-June, when the governor signed the funding bill. This resulted in a meager increase of $25 per student,” Lawrence said. “Coupled with an enrollment decline of 100 students, and normal inflation, the board approved an operating budget in June 2015 that included the district spending $2.3 million from its fund balance to cover the projected operating deficit for the 2015-16 school year.”

At Tuesday’s board meeting, Birmingham parent George Yaple said the district needs to wrap up negotiations so teachers can focus fully on educating students. “I urge you to figure it out because it is a distraction, a detour,” he said to cheers from teachers. “Negotiate like these people are your jewels.”

AFT locals negotiating include the Arenac Federation of Teachers, which is trying to settle a wage and benefit reopener in its pact with the Arenac Eastern School District in the east-central Lower Peninsula.

School board president Ann Brown said the two sides are stuck on wages, which have been frozen. “Talks are centering around concessions, which is always a difficult conversation,” she said.

Tracy Ready, a representative for the Arenac union, said falling enrollment makes it harder to reach a deal. From 2009-10 to 2014-15, the district’s student count dropped from 270 to 188, according to state data.

“Declining enrollment is the bane of most districts,” she said. “AE is no exception.”

Finances also are driving the talks in the Clintondale Commnity Schools, where negotiations began in June.

Ken Austin, president of the Clintondale Education Association, said teachers want a raise after years of concessions but recognize the district is struggling to erase a deficit, which stood at $837,531 as of June.

“My members are very demoralized at this point. They all work very hard and have seen no growth in their income for a very long time,” Austin said.

Clintondale board president Jason Davidson said both sides are focusing on economics.

“Wages are obviously a large part of these proposals, and given the efforts of the district to emerge from deficit by the end of this school year, there will be a great deal of conversations around this item,” he said.

Austin said the union recognizes the impact of state aid levels. “We would likely not be in the current position if it were not for the many huge cuts to school funding that districts have been forced to endure for many years,” he said.

Chandra Madafferi, president of the Novi Education Association, cites the same reason for the lack of a new contract in her district. The previous pact expired June 30.

“It’s very simple. It’s a lack of funding for education,” she said, adding that the state’s aid hike translated into $161,250 in new revenue for the district. Novi’s budget is $71.2 million.

Madafferi said many teachers were hired at the bottom of the salary scale — under $40,000 a year — and have stayed there the past three years, with just a 1 percent raise.

“I took a survey last year of our 400-plus teachers and about 60 percent of them are working second jobs, either in the summer and/or throughout the school year to make ends meet,” she said.

Novi Public Schools board president George Kortlandt said teachers don’t have a contract because “we are trying to live within our means.” He also cited the $25-per-student bump in state funding as an obstacle.

“That minimal increase makes it difficult to find money to settle contracts,” he said.

Roland Zullo, an assistant research scientist at the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, sees another factor that’s slowing negotiations: the right-to-work law.

Zullo said some of its provisions can sap time and resources that locals could otherwise devote to contract talks. For instance, when a contract expires, districts can no longer deduct union dues from paychecks on behalf of a local.

“Thus, a union without a contract must develop an alternative method for collecting dues,” he said. “It is quite possible that by crippling the ability for these organizations to fund their activities, unions do not have the resources to effectively complete the contract process.”’

Warrow, the Birmingham teachers union president, said the right-to-work law and others have tilted bargaining in favor of districts.

“Since these laws have passed, school districts have little incentive to bargain contracts quickly because the longer teachers work without an agreement, the more the districts save money,” he said.

But Madafferi said she has seen no impact from the law in Novi. “I really don’t think RTW has had an effect on bargaining at all,” she said. “Our membership is stable and we are getting new teachers to sign up to replace those who retire.”