By Dale Martin
Not everyone reads the fine print in their collective bargaining agreements, but rewards may be in store for those who do.
In three recent instances, CTA members who paid attention to the details in their contracts won important legal decisions and monetary awards when the cases came before arbitrators and administrative law judges.
The Grant Union High School District in Sacramento, for example, has been ordered to pay $250,000 in back pay to Grant Teachers Association (GTA) members in three high schools for forcing teachers to use advisory periods to teach academics. The state arbitrator found that the district had violated the contract by requiring teachers to provide instruction during the 10-minute advisory periods at the beginning of the day.
The district had established the advisory periods in order to break down the big-school atmosphere in the three high schools. The idea was to provide a time in which students would be with the same classmates for all four years.
However, with block scheduling at the schools, the 10-minute period grew to two hours a week in which teachers were required to do everything from teaching reading to tutoring students.
Teachers maintained the district was requiring them to work six "teaching periods" rather than five, which also required extra preparation and grading time.
"It was just ridiculous," says GTA President John Ennis, "and it affected about 200 teachers."
The district was ordered to stop the practice, and teachers will be entitled to collect back pay from Feb. 25, 2004, through the end of the 2005-06 school year.
Teachers in the San Mateo Elementary Teachers Association (SMETA) also received good news when a PERB administrative law judge found that the district reneged on a tentative agreement concerning retiree health benefits.
In a case that goes back almost two years, the school district signed a tentative agreement with the union to provide a certain amount for retirement benefits. The district apparently got buyer's remorse a few days later and notified the chapter that a mistake had been made and post-65 retirees would receive less than what had been agreed to. When the chapter refused to amend the agreement, the district adopted a contract containing its own language. That's when the association filed an unfair labor practice charge.
"It seemed so obvious in the first place," says SMETA President Carole Delgado. "The district bargaining team agreed to something at the table and then walked away and changed the agreement."
Although the decision is almost certain to be appealed, it marks a sweet victory for the association, which stood up for its retirees. "It's very good news," says Delgado.
In another case, a PERB administrative law judge found that the Parlier Unified School District in Fresno County violated the Educational Employment Relations Act (EERA) by unilaterally reducing a salary increase due to members of the Parlier Faculty Association in 2004.
Under the salary formula called for in the bargaining agreement, the 2004-05 salary schedule was to have been increased by the "state-funded COLA [cost-of-living adjustment] received by the district."
The Parlier district did what several other districts around the state had threatened to do. It reduced the COLA by the "negative COLA" of the year before, when funding was actually reduced.
The union took the position that not only should there be no offset, but that "funded COLA" meant whatever the district actually received after adding COLA dollars and multiplying by the deficit factors.
The administrative law judge has ordered an increase in the salary schedule, back pay with interest and the usual postings of notices.
Although the challenges posed by the three chapters involve technical elements of bargaining contracts, they illustrate the importance of vigilance among workers when it comes to protecting economic benefits and working conditions.
