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Past Issues December 2005 Accepts what PACT team rejected in 2003
| Accepts what PACT team rejected in 2003 |
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By Deborah Lynch In another example of outright lies, poor judgment and questionable bargaining skills, the “UPC Team” currently in power at the Chicago Teachers Union spent $20,000 more of the members’ hard-earned dues on a mailing promoting a questionable settlement agreement they made with the Board of Education and lying about the “previous administration” over a grievance on pensionability. Members will remember that the 1999-2003 CTU contract had a provision requiring the Board to seek pensionability legislation (making our overtime pensionable), or pay members the equivalent of the cost of pensionability each year of that four-year agreement. Tom Reece and Paul Vallas announced a one-time “bonus” right before the May 2001 CTU election. When the PACT team won that election, the Board tried to claim that the bonus (which cost nearly $11 million) was really the first two years of the pensionability money. Reece had told CTU members that it was the first year of that money and that the Board had ponied up the other $5.4. The big lie in the recent letter to the members from Ms. Stewart claimed that “no move was made to collect the money” under Reece’s successor. Yet they have just accepted a settlement agreement to the grievance I filed to ensure that CTU members received not two but all three years that the Board owed us. In that class action grievance, which was filed by me as President of the Chicago Teachers Union in January 2003, the CTU demanded that the Board pay members the equivalent of the pensionability money at current value, which was $13 million per year (for a total of $39 million) at the time I filed the grievance. The Board offered us $18 million in 2003. On behalf of the members, we rejected that amount because the contract language expressly stated that “in the event that the appropriate legislation is not enacted, the parties agree to negotiate a benefit equivalent in cost…” (It was agreed in November 1998, when the contract was ratified, that the cost was approximately $5.4 per year.) We did not — and do not — believe that $18 million was enough. The Board reneged on that contract in two ways: by refusing to seek pensionability legislation during the life of that contract, and by trying to claim it did not owe CTU members the full years worth of equivalent money. The PACT team demanded that CTU members get the full three years at current value, hence the demand for $39 million. The PACT Team negotiated a commitment from the Board for 5+5 and pensionability in the current contract. Members will have to decide for themselves whether the UPC Team settled for less than they deserve in this settlement, which will not even be pensionable. Members do need to know, however, that the Stewart/ Reece/ UPC Team continues to lie and misrepresent the actions and accomplishments of the PACT team (“the previous administration”) and they are doing it at their expense. |
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