News
Moving to the Front of the Bus

Members of an NEA affiliate in rural New York State bargain a pay schedule that will enhance ESP recruitment and retention.

Al Beck: 'Our old guard successfully negotiated a decent wage for newer, low-paid members.'

Support staffers in New York's rural Morrisville-Eaton Central School District are a pretty typical bunch of ESP. They enjoy working with children, and more than 75 percent of them live in the community.

Moreover, Morrisville-Eaton ESP respond instinctively to kids in need. Some 15 of them volunteer each year in a toy "duck race" to fund research of a rare blood disease that debilitates a local elementary student.

"These are probably the best ESP a school district could want," says district Superintendent Nelson Bauersfeld.

"They're loyal, they come to work every day, and we have to send them home when they're not feeling well--they want to come back," adds Bauers-feld. "They're solid people, the kind of people you want working with kids."

But until very recently, the district didn't show appreciation for its support staff in the pay envelope.

When the district's 61-member NEA ESP affiliate, Morrisville-Eaton Central School District Educational Support Personnel, went to the bargaining table in the spring of 2000, 29 percent of its members were still earning less than $6.50 an hour.

Worse yet, building cleaners and food service workers were starting at $5.79, and "pay rates were all over the place," recalls local President Al Beck, a 13-year bus driver. "People could drive 15 miles down the road to another district and earn more money."

But as bargaining began, Morrisville-Eaton ESP learned their real value to the employer. The district desperately needed them for its two schools and wanted to keep them from making that 15-mile drive.

One token of the district's regard for ESP was the red, fleecy--and pricey --all-weather jackets it issued to its transportation work force, each bearing the name of driver and school.

"I was envious of those jackets. I wanted one," chuckles NEA-New York UniServ rep Bob Maclin. "When I saw them, I told the members, 'Your district has money for an ESP raise.'"

Fortunately, the district wasn't inclined to play games with money--or the incomes of its support staff. "Most ESP reside in this district and aren't looking to go to other places," notes Superintendent Bauersfeld. "But the bottom line is that they have to feed their families, too."

"When we sat down initially with the union," he says, "both sides agreed on three basic goals that served as our frame of reference throughout negotiations. We had to reach an agreement that provided people a living wage, enabled us to recruit and retain staff, and was equitable for all."

The final settlement, reached last autumn, goes a long way in meeting those goals. The new 2000?03 contract boosts ESP pay by almost 19 percent over three years and establishes a new nine-year, three-step pay schedule to move employees to a living wage.

The new schedule boosts minimum pay to $10.50 an hour for drivers and mechanics, $9.50 for cooks, $7.50 for aides and clericals, and $7.25 for building cleaners and food service workers.

And it credits workers for seniority and experience, moving, for instance, a seven-year teacher aide to $10.00 an hour and a seven-year driver to $13.50.

Other contract gains include improved bereavement and clothing allowance language, district-paid license fees for bus drivers with five years of service, and new job classifications that conform with New York state civil service titles.

The Morrisville-Eaton agreement provides a minimum across-the-board increase of 3.5 percent a year over three years and immediately boosts the pay of some ESP by as much as $2.25 an hour. "In effect, this contract tells people that if they come to work for this district, they can expect a $1.50 raise every fourth year, even if a recession hits," notes local President Beck.

This groundbreaking contract didn't drop out of the sky. It's the product of:

• Member organization. Before bargaining began, UniServ rep Maclin focused ESP on the NEA fact of life that members are the union, and that effective bargaining isn't about "behind-the-back deals" and sellouts.

  "We got a cross-section of job titles on the bargaining team," he recalls, "and I listened to complaints at staff meetings and reminded members that nobody, especially me, can ram anything down their throat."

  Maclin corrected some misconceptions--like the biggie that existing contract provisions are carved in stone for the ages--and promised members that they would "know how the bargaining process really works" by the time a new contract was signed.

  And, yes, the UniServ rep used the Power word. "You do something meaningful and can shut this district down easier than teachers," he reminded the troops. "Don't take a back seat or allow anyone to put a lower value on what you do for a living."

• Creativity. Morrisville-Eaton's sparkling new pay schedule wasn't lifted from some template. Al Beck researched salaries and pay scales in surrounding districts, did some math, and then collaborated with local Association Secretary Cindy Phillips, a cleaner-aide, to create a pay scale from a "clean sheet of paper."

  "Cindy and I just sat down one afternoon, bumped off each other--we could get in each other's face and not take it personally--and drew up the original step system. Then we showed it to the larger team," Beck says.

  "We figured out what different people were making, 'pigeonholed' them into the new schedule, and then took it into negotiations, where we and administrators tweaked it."

• Support from the district. Beck calls Nelson Bauersfeld, now in his third year as superintendent, a "straight shooter" who kept bargaining "very civilized."

  "I worked with my board of education on this because I didn't want constant staff turnover. I needed to be able to get good people, and I felt people needed to start at a better wage," Bauersfeld explains. "We tried to treat people fairly within the limits of what this community feels it can afford. Everybody feels this is a fair settlement."

• Staff solidarity. The real heroes in this story are the better-paid Morrisville-Eaton ESP who settled for an annual 3.5 percent raise so that those on the bottom could have a real chance to move up.

  "During the contract ratification vote," Bob Maclin recalls, "I asked the senior people to 'Turn to your brother and tell him he doesn't deserve this raise.' They replied, 'Yup, it's their turn. They should be brought up.'"

• Maturity. Unlike many New York teachers, who already worked under comprehensive district personnel policies when the state's bargaining law was passed in 1967, ESP have labored for the past 34 years to build up written agreements from scratch.

  "Now that the fight for basic rights like binding arbitration is behind them," says NEA-New York affiliate relations director Lenny Lavalette, "support staff are able to concentrate on salaries, just like teachers. Each year, more and more New York state ESP units like Morrisville-Eaton are reaching maturity and able to reach some nice settlements."

  "Now we're seeing education support personnel change from being needy individuals to employees whose work allows them to live," Lavalette concludes. "And, after all, they care just as much about their districts as teachers and administrators do."

To contact Morrisville-Eaton Central School District ESP President Al Beck, send a fax to 315/684-9650.