With Gov. Terry Branstad poised to sign into law a bill radically curtailing the collective bargaining rights of Iowa’s state and local public sector workers, the Perry Community School District (PCSD) and the local teachers union, the Perry Education Association (PEA), hastily negotiated a new two-year master contract Tuesday afternoon that will likely be ratified Wednesday.
The four-person PEA bargaining team proposed extending the current 2016-2017 master contract with the PCSD more or less unchanged but for some minor adjustments in the distribution of the state teacher salary supplement.
“A multi-year extension would provide stability for employees and the district,” said PEA negotiator Nathan Krohn, “while allowing administration and the board to budget and plan effectively.”
Krohn, a science teacher at the Perry Middle School, was joined on the PEA bargaining team by Perry Elementary School kindergarten teacher Becky Reuter, Perry High School vocal music teacher Jenn Nelson and Perry Elementary School fifth grade teacher Jen Molitor.
Their counterparts on the administration side were PCSD Superintendent Lynn Ubben, PCSD Board of Directors Vice President Jim Lutmer and Perry Middle School Principal Shaun Krueger. Board Secretary Kent Bultman was also present in the negotiations.
The contract proposed by the PEA for both the 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 years called for a zero percent increase in the base salary and the continuation of the current health insurance plan and the system of seniority pay grades.
“The reason we are here today and proposing zero,” Reuter said, “is because we want to settle and be able to maintain a master contract that gets us the rights for a lot of things that will be eliminated as soon as that law is passed.”
The bill the governor is expected to sign this week or early next will limit contract negotiations for all public sector employees to base salary only. All other non-cash benefits, such as health insurance, seniority rights, job evaluations and pensions, will become non-negotiable mandates.
So-called public safety workers — deputy sheriffs, police officers, firefighters, motor vehicle enforcement officers and others — would be exempt from new limitations. Critics of the proposed law call it blatant union busting and see the exemptions as a tactic to divide union workers.
The speedy progress of the legislation — House File 291 and Senate File 213 — through the state capitol has caused teachers unions and school districts to scramble into contract negotiations prior to the bill’s passage.
“Any agreements that are in place before this bill is signed will be honored,” Nelson said, “but if we would not have it settled and they passed the law, then master contracts that we have now in place would be void.”
The PCSD, one of about 340 public school districts in Iowa, employed 148 licensed full-time teachers in 2015, according to Iowa Department of Education records. The PEA has 75 members. Of the state’s 184,000 state and local public sector workers, about 35,000 are public school teachers.
The only change in the proposed two-year contract was the removal of insurance from the 2018-2019 terms due to expected changes in the district’s plan. Base salary in the Perry school system continues at $31,751.
“Our intention is not to take anything away,” Ubben said. “Our intention is to not necessarily put it (insurance) in there, and I think that’s what other districts are doing. That’s why they’re not putting it in there because it probably will be a statewide plan.”
The PEA is a chapter of the Iowa State Education Association (ISEA). Reuter said the ISEA has been working feverishly with school districts to ratify contracts prior to the anticipated changes in the law.
“They were surprised not that it was going to happen but the speed with which is has progressed,” Reuter said. “They knew it was the intent but to have it introduced and done in a week, that I think was not expected.”
The PCSD administration seemed to sympathize with the local union’s impending disempowerment while also keeping an eye on the district’s financial interests.
“They’re wanting to meet to keep their master contract, and that’s why they’re going for two years,” Ubben said, “and we don’t blame them, but as a district we have to be a little careful, too, of committing to two years with a 1.11 percent.”
Some school districts “are not settling early,” said Ubben, who last week announced her intention to retire in June. “They’re saying, ‘We’re going to wait.’ But I think it’s probably better for both sides to go ahead and do it. We’ve been pretty good over the years, and they’ve gotten some good settlements the last few years, but I’m not ready to throw everything out.”
The Iowa Legislature is currently considering a 1.11 percent increase in general funding for public schools, far below the 4 percent increase recommended by the schools’ management and labor alike.
The bills before the Iowa legislature are similar to a law passed in 2011 by the Wisconsin Legislature that basically abolished collective bargaining for public sector unions. The effort is part of a nationwide push led by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a nonprofit conservative group that provides ready-made, state-level model bills, such as stand-your-ground laws, voter IDs, immigration reform, tort reform and anti-animal rights laws.
ALEC shares funding sources and is closely allied with the conservative political action group Americans for Prosperity, funded by conservative industrialists David and Charles Koch. A representative from Americans for Prosperity spoke in support of the union-reform bills Tuesday at public hearing at the capitol building in Des Moines.
