Labor Relations Reform Package From The School Administrators Alliance.

School Administrators Alliance
Labor Relations Reform Package

January, 2011

The School Administrators Alliance urges state lawmakers to enact the following package of changes to the state’s laws on labor/management relations:

• Align school employee total compensation increases with the annual statewide per pupil adjustments under revenue caps, equal to a five-year rolling average of personal income growth multiplied by the amount of the low revenue ceiling. Districts avoid arbitration if alignment is achieved.

Prescribe cast-forward costing for all employers and include lane movements for teachers. There is no requirement to maintain fringe benefits to have a “QEO”.

• Make health insurance a permissive subject of bargaining.

• Restore the “greatest weight” factor of revenue controls and “greater weight” factor of local economic conditions in the statutory criteria used by arbitrators.

• Limit the subjects that can be arbitrated (even among the mandatory subjects of bargaining).

• Prohibit an arbitrator from considering an employer’s fund balance as a reflection of the employer’s ability to pay or to fund the union’s offer.

• Prohibit the payment of lane, step and benefit cost increases during contract hiatus to create an incentive to settle.

• Repeal statutes that allow combining of bargaining units, multi-employer bargaining units and professional/non-professional bargaining unit mergers.

• Change the following mandatory subjects of bargaining to permissive subjects: preparation time, subcontracting, assignment of duties during the work day, class size, employee evaluations, reductions in force or work hours, the impact of the use of instructional technology, and the calendar of student contact days and employee work days.

• Establish in statute specified misconduct that, if engaged in, would be grounds for discharge without the application of just cause.

• Define “probationary status” for teachers in statute. Probationary teachers must have a minimum of three consecutive years of demonstrated effectiveness to gain non-probationary status.

• Non-probationary teachers who are found to be ineffective in two consecutive annual evaluations (or two within any four year period) shall have their contract non-renewed or be returned to probationary status.

• Educator effectiveness shall take precedence over seniority when making layoffs.

• Allow school districts the option of freezing the pay of teachers found to be ineffective in annual evaluations.

• Repeal the state Family and Medical Leave Act and simply align with the federal law.

• Change the threshold below which the state prevailing wage would not apply for school public works projects from the current $25,000 to $250,000.