By: centraljersey.com
This is the way it’s supposed to work.
The Board of Education and leaders of the education association agreed following a 10-hour session Sunday to "save" about 270 nonteaching jobs from being handed over to an independent contractor that would set its own salary scale and benefits.
In exchange, the school board gained health-care concessions that allows it to drop the $2.2 million privatization plan in the 2011-12 budget.
Immediately, association members will pay 1.5 percent of health care premiums. Starting in July, that will rise to 12 precent. The following year, they’ll pay 18 percent.
Gov. Christie is on record wanting teachers and other public sector employees to pay 30 percent of benefits by 2014. In today’s hypercharged environment, it’s possible the Legislature could vote for that.
For the next two years, the Hillsborough teachers avoided the possibility. And the board lost those potential savings if it did happen.
Both sides gave in order to gain. But they arrived at the decision after talking to each other with each side recognizing 2011’s economic realities.
The negotiation wasn’t acrimonious. It didn’t overreach and demand unreasonable concessions. Neither side came out "blaming" the other for hard times.
Somehow, in today’s pressure of out-of-balance budgets and ever-climbing tax rates, collective bargaining units have received the brunt of the blame for the woes we all face.
The last time we looked, there are two signatures on any contract. And it seems unfair points won in honest bargaining can simply be walked away from by saying "We’re broke."
Banks don’t like it when lenders do that. Guys don’t like when someone reneges on a handshake. Nobody should break the sanctity of a contract.
So, if one side is having a hard time living up to its end of the bargain, the two sides should talk. Usually, they’ll come to terms on a solution both sides can live with. That happened here.
Hillsborough isn’t Wisconsin, but the lesson from the school board-association pact here is that negotiations between reasonable people can work.

