A few days before Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and the Iowa Legislature radically curtailed the collective bargaining rights of Iowa’s state and local public sector workers in 2016, a hastily negotiated two-year master contract was signed by the Perry Community School District (PCSD) and the local teachers union, the Perry Education Association (PEA).
That contract will expire June 30.
In its first step toward negotiating a new contract, the district presented its initial proposal to the teachers union Monday at the administration building. Of the 17 articles in the master contract, PCSD Superintendent Clark Wicks proposed deleting nine of them, effectively gutting an agreement that has been in place, in various forms, since the 1970s in the Perry public school system.
Under Iowa’s new collective-bargaining law, public employee unions can only negotiate over base salary. Other terms of employment, such as hours and benefits, are “permissive or illegal/excluded,” as Wicks described them Monday. PEA contract articles proposed for deletion include procedures for staff evaluations, staff reductions, staff transfers, insurance and some terms about salaries.
Speaking on behalf of the PCSD School Board, Wicks said that “the board is willing to discuss treatment of these articles or portions of these articles outside of the collective bargaining agreement.” He said the board would consider transferring the substance of some articles to an “employee handbook” or similar location.
“It isn’t as if we’re deleting them from life,” Wicks told the three PEA negotiators. “We can work out some kind of labor-management agreement so we continue with these kind of guidelines but just in a different location.”
Wicks said that “at another school, this is what we did. I know that by law you can do this, and it has worked out very well.”
The district’s initial proposal also called for a one-year contract with no wage increases.
“So according to your proposal, then,” said PEA negotiator Becky Reuter, “it’s acceptable to you to have teachers not receive any increase in wages for three years? Because this will be our third year with nothing, with no increase in wages.”
“That would be correct as far as the initial proposal,” Wicks said. “That would be as far as base wages are concerned. Because just to age the contract, some people — maybe not you but as we look at the whole group — there are people still getting increases.”
In the current contract, to the base wage is added a teacher salary supplement (TSS). Changes to the TSS distribution formula from the prior contract to the current contract have caused pay to rise for some teachers and fall for others.
“Over 40 members of your staff received a decrease in pay,” Reuter said.
“That would be true,” Wicks said. “The other way that I look at it, that it could be looked at, is because the TSS money, the way that it was distributed” has changed. “You have to look at how many years we’ve had TSS and you’ve had a very, very generous amount given, in my opinion,” Wicks said.
Ray Harden of Perry, a retired Perry public school teacher and 17-year veteran of PEA negotiations, said the master contract dates from the late 1970s.
“For the most years that I can recall, it has worked well,” Harden said. “There was only one year the union went to binding arbitration. That was under Superintendent Blaine Lytle. We never went to arbitration again because the local teacher union, with the help of the ISEA, won more issues than the superintendent and the school board wanted to give.”
Harden said the PEA used to have a membership of 90 percent to 95 percent of the district’s teachers. The PCSD now employs about 140 teachers, and about 50 percent are PEA union members.
“The master contract gave protections and rights to teachers that they did not have before collective bargaining,” Harden said. “I have many stories about hirings, firings and abuses by the school administration. Before the teachers had a master contract, each teacher would often have to negotiate his or her own salary.”
Addressing Reuter and PEA representatives Jenn Nelson and Leslie Mayhugh, Wicks said the school board wants to work with the teachers union in reaching an amicable agreement.
“The board intends to work with teachers,” Wicks said. “This is important to me and it’s important, I think, to the board as well as our principals and directors — the board intends to work with teachers and other staff to relocate or restate many of the articles and concepts from the current master contract to board policies and procedures, or I’m thinking of an employee handbook or if you want to call it employee work rules.”
Reuter said she was “surprised” and “disappointed” by the school board’s initial negotiating proposal.
“I really don’t see their reason or rationale for this tactic,” Reuter said. “The master contract has been a useful instrument for many years.” She said the absence of a contract would repel talented teachers who might otherwise choose to work in Perry.
Contract negotiations will continue April 3 in a closed session.
