District says its latest salary offer to workers is ‘fair,’
union has asked school officials to begin mediation
Morgan Hill – Union members dressed in purple carried signs and plastic hand “clappers” as they marched around the parking lot of the Morgan Hill Unified School District office Tuesday afternoon before the regular meeting of the board of education, protesting what they consider and unfair salary contract offer from the district.
Later, as the public session of the meeting began, Service Employees International Union members filled the audience with a sea of purple. Union members have rejected the district’s latest offer, which they say does not offer as high a salary raise as was negotiated by teachers affiliated with the Morgan Hill Federation of Teachers and Superintendent Alan Nishino.
The more than 300 classified workers would like the same 5 percent salary increase teachers and Nishino received during the 2006-07 school year.
Negotiations are at an impasse, SEIU Chair Pamela Torrisi said, and the two groups will go to likely mediation to breach the divide.
Union members have been protesting and speaking out at meetings since the district made its “last, best and final offer” several weeks ago.
Following a last-ditch attempt at negotiations, the district changed its offer slightly.
The district is proposing 8 percent total compensation over two years, according to Nishino. Effective this year, the salary would increase 4 percent and benefits would increase 2 percent from $5,022 to $5,900 per year and union members would work one additional day per year.
In the second year of the two-year offer, benefits would increase from $5,900 to $6,700 per year, employees would work two additional days, and the retirement benefits would change for members, giving them benefits up to age 65, instead of benefits for five years, regardless of age of retirement.
MHFT members received a 5 percent raise in salary alone, as did Nishino.%
Torrisi pointed out that nearly half of SEIU workers in the district do not take the benefits, so they would only receive a less-than-fair raise in pay.
“We have a commitment to our students,” said Maria Gurich, a classified employee and library clerk at Live Oak High. “The district needs to treat us with the respect we deserve for the services we provide to our students.”
Bus driver Brent Carman said district classified employees want decent pay. He said bus drivers, specifically, as well as other classified workers, frequently leave the district because they need to make more money.
“We’ve been up here speaking in the past; all we’re asking for is decent pay,” he told trustees Tuesday night. “In my summer job, I only worked eight weeks and I made $12,000, but I worked all 10 months (during the school year as a driver), and I didn’t make much more. That’s why we have people leaving. We train them, and then they go somewhere like Oak Grove and make more money … I don’t like to see people going out the door.”
There are more than 30 different classifications of workers, and workers’ hours are varied, with some working four or five hours a day, while some work seven or eight, and some working less than a full school year and others working year-round, so direct salary comparisons are difficult.
Marilyn Dubil covers education and law enforcement for The Times. Reach her at (408) 779-4106 ext. 202 or at
md****@*************es.com.
