GUTTENBERG FEDERATION OF TEACHERS
Contract Bargaining Update
June 25, 2010
The Guttenberg Board of Education is seeking to provide little to no wage increase over the next three years, while our members become laid off and our class sizes grow. Meanwhile very little, if any, “shared sacrifice” is being discussed for the upper-levels of administration. We need you to ask, “why not”?
The Board would like to provide us with a less-than-comparable health insurance plan while we pay 1.5% of our salaries towards it. They would like us to extend our work hours without ample compensation. What are you willing to do about it? We will need to call upon all GFT members to support our alternate budget choices during the summer and into next school year. Researchers from AFT have begun analyzing financial information from the
The GFT Negotiations Committee has met with the Board for a total of six meetings to date. The most recent meeting was held on June 9th, 2010. Our next meeting will be held on July 7th, 2010. The negotiations sessions are moving at a slow pace, in part because of the uncertainty of both the State and local budgets. Our voices must be heard on this issue.
Based upon your input, we have proposed about a dozen items (some are new contract articles while some seek to modify existing articles). We feel that our proposals are both practical and proactive in nature. For example, we have proposed a professional development language that is creative yet cost effective. Most of the Board’s proposals seek to eliminate long-standing benefits and to create more work for our members with little/no compensation. This is unacceptable!
Unfortunately, no provisions or new articles have been tentatively agreed upon to date, and the Board seems reluctant to make progress at the bargaining table. This is also unacceptable! Again, we need your support outside of the bargaining table as we continue to meet throughout the summer.
In solidarity,
Negotiations Committee
Guttenberg Federation of Teachers