By Joanne Degnan, Managing Editor
ROBBINSVILLE Teachers return to their classrooms this week without a new contract while the school district and union continue to work with a state-appointed mediator in an effort to resolve the impasse.
The union, whose contract expired June 30, filed an unfair labor practice against the district with the state Public Employment Relations Commission several months ago and in June PERC assigned a mediator to intervene.
Board of Education member Thomas Halm, who is on the district’s negotiating committee, said last week that only one meeting has been held with the state mediator to date and that there was no significant progress to report.
”We had our first meeting (with the mediator) as part of the impasse last month … and we resolved some initial ground-clutter issues that were kind of out there; nothing substantive,” Mr. Halm told the school board on Aug. 30.
”These were issues that we were either at agreement on or close to agreement on,” Mr. Halm said. “We got those out of the way to be able to concentrate on some of the bigger issues.”
The next meeting with the mediator is scheduled for Oct. 12, Mr. Halm said.
The Robbinsville teachers’ now-expired contract had provided a 4.5-percent increase in salaries for every year of the three-year pact. The district has not disclosed publicly what its salary offer is to the union in the new contract and neither side has revealed what the sticking points are in the negotiations.
According to the online state database known as the NJ School Report Card, the median salary for a Robbinsville teacher was $54,949 a year in 2009-2010, compared to the statewide median teacher salary of $61,840. The data for the 2010-2011 school year is not yet available on the state website.
A new state law, Chapter 78, essentially removes health benefits from the collective bargaining process for new public employee contracts. Teachers will have to contribute between 3 percent and 35 percent of the cost of their healthcare coverage premiums by the time the law is phased in. The law requires the minimum contribution for health benefits to be at least 1.5 percent of the teacher’s base salary.
When the law sunsets after four years, the new higher employee contribution levels become the starting points for future contract negotiations.
The New Jersey Education Association is among the public employee unions that have filed a lawsuit to overturn the law, contending it violates the collective bargaining rights of employees and that the mandatory contributions equate to an illegal salary reduction.
