NORTHAMPTON — The union that represents Northampton school employees expects to file an unfair labor practice charge against the School Committee by the end of this week over failed negotiations on how the district would grant the full-time release of its president.
The Northampton Association of School Employees union is alleging that the School Committee engaged in the practice of regressive bargaining, when negotiating with NASE last year on the full-time release of union president Julie Spencer-Robinson.
For the previous two school years, Spencer-Robinson was granted full-time release from her teaching duties while serving as union president and receiving her full salary and benefits.
Prior to the beginning of last school year, the School Committee entered into negotiations with NASE, seeking to change the status of its full-time release arrangement, which was governed by yearly agreements.
When an agreement could not be reached, Spencer-Robinson returned to teaching full-time this school year.
Spencer-Robinson said that this will be the first charge filed with the board in her tenure as union president, which is in its fourth year. She also said that her predecessor, Sharon Carlson, never oversaw the filing of an unfair labor practice charge during her tenure of 14-years.
Spencer-Robinson asserted that the district’s decision on full-time release was a budgetary one.
“It was not in the best interest of … school employees,” she said.
Since the school year started, further negotiation has been unsuccessful, with the committee releasing a statement on Nov. 30 saying that the two groups were at an impasse, and explaining its view of the history of the dispute.
“While the School Committee always endeavors to reach a mutually agreeable resolution to issues, the negotiation subcommittees for the School Committee and NASE met four times on this issue since the close of the 2016-2017 school year, and the School Committee believes that it is no closer to reaching an agreement than when the discussion first started,” reads one sentence of the letter.
In response, NASE sent a letter to its members on Dec. 15 disputing much of the narrative in the committee’s letter. It also announced that its Executive Committee had determined that it would file a regressive bargaining charge against the School Committee.
Plans were also made to read the letter at the School Committee’s next meeting, which were executed on Jan. 11. The letter was read in the meeting’s public comment period by NASE members Suzanne Strauss and Heather Brown.
“At its Dec. 12 meeting, the NASE Executive Committee moved to file an unfair labor practice charge against the Northampton School Committee, for regressive bargaining,” Brown said.
At the center of the dispute is the committee’s position that NASE reimburse the school for the full salary and benefits of Spencer-Robinson while she is on release. NASE, meanwhile, wants to reimburse the school with a flat rate, as was done for the previous two years.
Members of NASE have asserted that basing the reimbursement off of the salary and benefits of the person on full-time release would provide an unfair incentive to elect a lower-paid president. Spencer-Robinson also noted that experience is associated with higher pay in the school system.
School Committee Member R. Downey Meyer meanwhile, has pointed out that the new full-time release language presented to NASE is based on the language Springfield uses for full-time release for its teachers.
Spencer-Robinson was paid $69,853 last school year, while her replacement was paid $55,518. The School Committee said in its statement that the union paid $49,323 of the replacement’s salary, while the union fired back in its statement that this could have been covered by the $24,000 it over-reimbursed the district the previous school year for a replacement for Spencer-Robinson.
Full-time release was first agreed to by the committee after the union received a three-year grant from the Massachusetts Teachers Association to offset the cost to the union of paying for a teacher to be employed in its president’s place.
Regressive bargaining refers to the practice of reducing or eliminating items previously placed on the table in collective bargaining. Spencer-Robinson said that the charge stems from part-time release being placed on the table at an Aug. 10 meeting and taking that off the table two days after NASE agreed to part-time release on Aug. 16.
Both School Committee Vice Chairman Edward Zuchowski and Mayor David Narkewicz, who serves as the committee’s chair, declined to comment on the impending unfair labor practice charge.
Bera Dunau can be reached at bdunau@gazettenet.com