On May 1–fittingly on May Day, which celebrates workers and their labor struggle–members of the teachers’ union voted overwhelmingly to approve the new contract.
Negotiated by the Archdiocese, school administration, and union leadership, teachers nearly got everything they wanted– discounting smaller class sizes– which was reflected in their electoral landslide.
Grace Ingersoll, AP Economics teacher and a union representative who helped negotiate, said, “This negotiation focused on…the rising cost of living and the increased complexity of teaching. We live in a time of change, and I believe we walked away with a new contract that better reflects the time we live in.”
Now, for the following three years until the next negotiation session, they will have: Teacher salary raises over the next three years, increased retirement bonuses for teachers for 24 years or more, lower health care prices for teachers with kids, an extra personal day, and standardized supervision credit.
Longtime union member Michael Vezzali-Pascual ’88, who voted in favor of the new contract, said, “I thought they did a remarkable job getting a good financial package that sees us through the next three years, especially amidst the recent economic uncertainty…it’ll take the rough edges off for us, for sure.”
However, the administration continues to have concerns about the financial sustainability of the package the union just approved.
President Tim Reardon, who sat on the literal and metaphorical opposite of the negotiating table, said, “While Riordan is on very solid financial footing and can happily support solid raises for our teachers, that’s not the reality for all the schools in the [Collective Bargaining Agreement].”
Reardon noted that a “major flaw” of the CBA is the uniform pay scale for four schools in very different financial situations, explaining how a raise can only be as high as the least financially secure school can afford. “I think it works against the teachers’ best interests in many ways,” he said.
Wishing there was a way for individual schools to handle their own situations autonomously, Reardon continued, “I understand why some teachers might want to be part of a union…but to me there’s something inherently (and unnecessarily) divisive about our situation.”
For the union, this represented a hard-won win over a negotiation that dragged out longer than what was typical or what many expected. Usually, negotiations are done before Easter break, but not this time.
Ingersoll explained, “Honestly, this negotiation lasted so long because there were some proposals we were willing to continue fighting for. After every negotiation, our members received updates with the proposals that had been accepted, denied, and deferred. And continuously, we heard from our members that they were willing to fight for more, and that they needed us to fight for more.”
She added, “So we continued to go back to the negotiating table and do just that.”
