Brownsville strike enters fourth day
Brownsville Area’s 147 teachers and 2,200 students remained outside the classrooms Wednesday, and the two negotiating teams have not been back to the bargaining table since the strike began. Wednesday marked day three of the strike that followed almost a year of negotiations between the district and the Brownsville Education Association (BEA). The teachers have been working without a contract since last year. The union’s main sticking points in the talks are salaries, health care and early retirement incentives.
The district, through its solicitor, Matt Hoffman, has said, although they would like to come to an agreement, the district cannot afford to rush into an agreement that is not “financially responsible.”
Both parties have been reluctant to talk about negotiation issues, but in releasing general terms of the proposed agreement, both have since come forward and explained some of the terms of the agreement.
The BEA seems most dissatisfied with the proposed early-retirement incentive. The union also began speaking out on salary issues, after Hoffman presented average figures for salary increases proposed in the tentative agreement and also compared average teachers’ salaries to those of every district within Fayette County at a planning session earlier this week.
On the issue of health care, the union seems reluctant to change health care providers from Blue Cross/Blue Shield to Select Blue, a managed care plan, which the district says does not present a difference in the level of benefits but in the delivery of service and would save the district $124,000. BEA officials say they have been with BC/BS “well over 30 years.”
The issues concerning both parties in reference to the proposed early-retirement incentive and salaries are a little more complicated.
EARLY RETIREMENT INCENTIVE
Hoffman said the early-retirement agreement offered has a value of $33,200 and offers teachers, who retire within a certain window of time, $300 monthly contribution toward health care costs for seven years and $40 per day payment for up to 200 days maximum of unused sick leave.
Hoffman said the early-retirement package is a “true incentive” and is meant to get teachers to retire sooner than later.
According to Ball, the package is offered to teachers with 30 or more years service in year two (2002-03) and year three (2003-03) of the proposed contract. He said in year four of the contract, (2004-05) the package is offered to teachers with 30 to 34 years service. In the fifth year of the contract (2005-06), Ball said no retirement incentive is offered.
Ball said that although the incentive is offered to teachers with 30 or more and then 30 to 34 years of service, the incentive is only likely to entice teachers with 35 or more years service, when a teacher is eligible to receive full pension from the state. He said during the fourth year of the contract, when the most number of teachers reach 35 years, the incentive is not offered to teachers fully vested with the state.
Ball said the state Department of Education penalizes teachers who retire before reaching 35 years of service by subtracting 2.5 percent for every year less than the 35 required years from their pension. He said the state will penalize a person a maximum of up to 15 percent.
Ball concludes that those teachers with 30 to 34 years of service are not likely to retire because they will be penalized by the state
According to figures provided by the BEA, in the two years that the incentive is offered to teachers with 30 or more years, there are, in year two of the contract, 33 teachers with 30 or more years, but only 3 teachers with 35 or more years that are likely to consider the offer. In year three of the contract there are 37 teachers with 30 or more years, but only one with 35 years.
In year four of the contract, when the incentive is offered to teachers with 30 to 34 years of service, there are 39 teachers with 30 or more years of service. During that contract year, 11 teachers reach 35 years of service, but the incentive is not offered to them that year.
In year five of the contract, when no incentive is offered, there are 47 teachers with 30 or more years and seven teachers with 35 or more years.
Diana Michael, BEA spokesperson, said the proposed early retirement incentive is only attractive to the four teachers who have 35 years of service during the first two years of the offer.
Michael, said it is unlikely that anyone with less than 35 years of service will retire to receive the incentive package the district has offered because the “(state) penalty is greater than what the district has offered as an incentive.”
“They (teachers with less than 35 years of service) are losing more than they are getting,” she said.
Butch Santicola, director of organizing for the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), said that an incentive package should never include penalties.
“When accepting an incentive plan, you should never be penalized. That’s normally the situation,” he said.
Santicola, on behalf of PSEA, advises the BEA on organizing the strike and on how a strike is to be run.
Hoffman said the union has never presented those figures to the district, but he said the incentive package is intended as an early retirement incentive and is a “true incentive” not an entitlement.
“I hardly see giving a benefit as a penalty,” Hoffman said.
He explained that the premise of the incentive package is to get teachers to retire during year two and three of the contract.
“The premise is that if you have enough years to retire, you have to retire this year or next,” Hoffman said. “The intent is to induce people to retire when they can.”
He added that a teacher who is 62 years old is considered fully vested in the state at 30 years.
Hoffman said the district “continually emphasized” to the BEA that they were looking at concepts in developing the incentive package and invited them to participate.
He said, instead, the union presented a counter proposal with an “entitlement that did not matter when people retired and our incentive is to get people to retire sooner than later,” he said.
In the prior contract, a teacher received $100 monthly contribution toward health care costs to age 65 and $17-per-day payment for unused sick days whenever they chose to retire.
Ball, commenting on the $33,200 value of the package, said the package value includes $25,200 for the $300 monthly contribution for seven years toward health care and $8,000 from the $40 per day payment for up to 200 sick days.
Ball said teachers are given 10 sick days per year and in order for a teacher to have 200 sick days upon retiring, they must have worked in the district for 20 years and never have missed a day of work. He said he believes there is one teacher that has 200 sick days and would receive the full value of the package.
BEA officials said that “recently retired administrators” received full health benefits and half of a day’s salary as payment for unused sick days.
Officials said the district at one point during the negotiations offered teachers full health care coverage for a number of years based on years of service, but have since rescinded that offer.
SALARIES
Hoffman has said that, in the proposed agreement, the average annual salary increase is $2,048 or a five-year average total increase of $10,238. He said the proposed agreement offers salaries that are “regionally competitive.” He also said that, according to data published by the state Department of Education in comparing average salaries of teachers within districts located in Fayette County, Brownsville teachers are not the lowest paid as teachers have claimed, but are listed fourth out of the sixth districts.
Ball spoke out against those figures. He said the average annual salary increase may be $2,048 but the figure implies that teachers will receive a $2,048 annual raise when they do not.
He said the way the teachers’ payment schedule is set up, a few teachers at a certain step may receive a very large increase during a time teachers’ refer to as a “bump,” while the majority of teachers at another pay step may receive a very low increase. He said during a “bump,” a small number of teachers’ salaries increase can be so large that it would hike up the average and look like a large salary increase when only a small number of people at the high end of the salary step are receiving significant increases.
He also said that Brownsville will have a higher average salary than some districts in Fayette County because the district has a higher number of teachers being paid at the maximum salary scale than any other district in the county. He said that in comparing individual salaries on the same pay step, Brownsville teachers are, in fact, the lowest paid in the county.
He also contends that it takes Brownsville teachers 20 years to reach the top step of payment while the county average of the other districts is 16.6 years (not including Brownsville in that average) and in between those years, Brownsville teachers make $48,000 less than that of the average salary in the county.
In comparing maximum salaries for teachers with master’s degrees, Ball said teachers in every district within Fayette County make more money and also reach the maximum salary level before teachers in Brownsville.
In 2002-03, a Laurel Highlands teacher with a master’s degree at maximum salary earns $62,300 at Step 16, at that same step a Brownsville teacher earns $44,159. A Uniontown teacher reaches maximum salary, $61,700 at Step 18; Frazier, $56,188 at Step 17; Albert Gallatin, $56,183 at Step 18; Connellsville, $56,043 at Step 14 and Brownsville $53,420 (currently) and $55,033 (under the proposed agreement) at Step 20.
At those same steps, Step 14, 16, 17 and 18, when the other districts earn maximum salaries, Brownsville teachers, under the proposed agreement, would earn, $43,503, $44,159, $44,487 and $44,814.
According to Hoffman, the proposed agreement allows for a teacher with a master’s degree at maximum salary to increase every year of the five-year contract as follows: $53,954, $55,033, $57,372, $59,810 and $62,203.
Ball said that in the first year of the agreement (2001-02), only teachers at maximum salary will receive a 1 percent salary increase. He said during that contract year, teachers below the top step will move up a step, as required by the state, and receive an approximately $321 increase in their pay, which he said is not a salary increase, but an increase in your pay step or number of service years.
For the remainder of the contract, salary increases are as follows: 2002-03, 2 percent; 2003-04 and 2004-05, 4.25 percent each year and in 2005-06, 4 percent.
Hoffman said, “There is a limit to what the district can afford to accomplish. Their (teachers’) demands have to be in step with what the district can afford.”
He also said that throughout negotiations, the district has asked the BEA negotiation team if they wanted to discuss restructuring the salary schedule and they have never made an offer.
“Their (teachers’) criticism is of the negotiation team and not the offer made by the district,” Hoffman said.
Michael said the negotiation team is working out a salary schedule to present to the board.
The board and the union have set a date and will go back to the bargaining table Tuesday evening. Hoffman said the BEA is expected to present a proposal to the district beforehand for their review.