The Post Standard, February 28, 2011, Monday

The Post Standard

February 28, 2011, Monday

The Post Standard

Pay freezes or not?
A tough question for Central New York school districts like Syracuse and Auburn

To people who have lost their jobs or endured pay cuts, a pay freeze doesn’t sound so bad.

But imagine, if you will, you have a job and next year will receive a raise you’ve been counting on. Your job is important to society, you believe you do it well and your employer signed a contract promising to give you the raise. It’s a done deal.

And then your employer says: “We don’t have enough money to give you raises and balance our budget. We have to lay people off. Will you accept a pay freeze? If you do, you will save jobs.”

What would you do? The public, whose tax dollars support your paycheck and some of whom have lost their jobs or endured pay cuts, is watching your decision.

Teachers, administrators and other unionized employees in some local school district and around the state have faced, or are facing that question, posed by school district administrations that must close budget shortfalls for the 2011-12 school year.

West Genesee teachers and administrators, among other employees at the district, said yes to a freeze. Their counterparts in Liverpool said no.

In the Syracuse and Auburn, school district unions are pondering requests to take a one-year pay freeze. Syracuse teachers have a contract with a 4.5 percent raise next school year; Auburn’s contract calls for a 3 percent raise.

A number of factors come into play when teacher unions decide whether to open their contracts and give something back, said Sally Klingel, director of labor-management programs in the Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution at Cornell University’s ILR School.

Unions consider, among other things, when their current contracts expires and what tax rate the community will bear. The relationships between the unions and the administration play a major role, according to Klingel.

“When there’s a low level of trust and a school board that may be perceived as sort of hostile to the interest, the longer term interest, of teachers, it’s a lot harder to convince the membership to give something up because they have little faith that it will be reciprocated when times are better,” she said.

West Genesee and Liverpool could be a case in point. Union leaders from those districts describe their relationships with their administrations in very different terms.

Trust made the freeze possible in West Genesee, the teacher union president says. A “lack of a really positive relationship” was one reason why the Liverpool union dismissed a freeze even before taking it to members for a vote, its union president said.

Without the freeze, Liverpool teachers will receive a 2.2 percent raise; administrators a 4 percent increase.

In West Genesee, teachers, administrators and the superintendent, among others, took a freeze. Teachers in the district would have received a 2 percent pay hike.

“It was a very difficult decision to make, but it would have been an impossible decision to make if we didn’t have complete open lines of communication with the district,” said John Christian, president of the West Genesee Teachers Association Local 3106.

“And I think that’s what a lot of my colleagues are running into right now is they just don’t have that kind of trust and that kind of relationship,” he said. “And I know how they feel. We’ve been at West Genesee under superintendents that it would have been nearly impossible for this to happen,”

West Genesee Superintendent Christopher R. Brown shared all the financial information with the union, hide nothing and stood in front of its members to tell them exactly what the plan would be with and without a freeze, Christian said.

The West Genesee pay freeze got national attention. Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued a statement praising the parties for the “type of tough but smart decisions school districts across New York should be making.” Christian and Brown were interviewed on CNN and mentioned in a New York Times blog after reaching the accord.

Cuomo wants almost all state employees whose contracts are up for negotiation April 1 to take a one-year freeze. Local school districts say Cuomo’s proposed cuts in school funding are a big reason why they face layoffs and cuts.

“We will not entertain a wage free in 2012-13. And the reason for that is our sole motivation for this wage freeze was to retain as many people as possible in the hopes that the governor realizes that he may have gone just a little too far,” Christian said.

Leaders of the United Liverpool Faculty Association said no to a freeze for a number of reasons, union President Pattie Miller said. One was that the administration went to employees, including Miller, directly about freeze rather than bringing it to the union, she said.

To the public that might sound minor, she said.

“But it really suggested to us a lack of a real positive relationship between the association and the district, and so that became a part of the issue in our response,” Miller said.

There is a “troubling trend” nationally of districts and superintendents bypassing the union and going straight to members, which undermines collective bargaining, she said.

The union was against the freeze, too, because some of its members make less than $25,000 a year, she said.

And there was no guarantee that taking the freeze would result in fewer layoffs, especially in light of the district’s dwindling enrollment in recent years, she said.

In Syracuse, the region’s largest district, Syracuse Superintendent Daniel Lowengard asked all employees to take a one-year freeze to mitigate job cuts for 2011-12. Lowengard proposes to cut 539 jobs to balance the budget but he has said a pay freeze would cut the number by more than 100.

Contracts for some of the district’s bargaining units expire in June, others run another year and include raises.

If the administration’s proposal makes sense, union leaders will bring the freeze request to its members, Syracuse Teachers Association President Kevin Ahern said.

The association needs to look at budget numbers, including payroll, and see exactly which positions the board decides to cut, among other factors, he said.

“The discussion revolves around several things, one of which is, you know, the fact that we negotiated a contract in good faith, and what is the district’s obligation in terms of that?” Ahern said. “But there’s also the discussion about the financial realities that we’re facing.”

“And what are the implications of taking a wage freeze in terms of saving positions versus not taking a wage freeze?” he said. “I mean, that’s the nature of the conversation.”

The Syracuse teachers’ union will make no decision until after the school board approves a tentative budget, which is supposed to happen March 9, Ahern said

Brian Nolan, who heads the Syracuse district administrators’ union, said it is negotiating with the district and the wage freeze is on the table. Its contract with the district expires June 30, so there is no raise already in place.

“I am hopeful that all units will help in some way to avoid huge layoffs,” Lowengard said.

Contact Maureen Nolan at 470-2185 or mnolan@syracuse.com.