SOUTHINGTON BOE ends talks with employees

The nonteaching workers are to take a strike vote today.
By ERIC GROSSO
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
SOUTHINGTON -- The board of education has ended negotiations with the school district's nonteaching employees.
The decision comes after 22 months of failed talks with Ohio Association of Public School Employees Local 673, the union representing 15 employees.
Bus drivers, cafeteria workers, janitors and secretaries were to take a strike vote today. The board presented Tuesday some of its main changes in the two-year contract it implemented unilaterally June 30.
Holdout
The main reason for the holdout is the amount of money paid to OAPSE members who do not buy into the district's insurance coverage, the administration said. Union officials say that while wages and insurance are main issues, members object to having the contract imposed.
Under terms of the expired contract, the district was paying 50 percent of the policy, or $6,500 to employees who opted out of the plan, but because of the district's financial crisis and the rising cost of insurance, the board capped that buyout under the new contract at $3,500 per employee.
That money is in addition to their pay, district officials said.
The proposed contract also calls for all district employees -- even if they buy their own -- to have the same insurance plan the district would provide.
The union contends this would cause some of its members to change their insurance plan.
Pay raise
The contract calls for a 2.5 percent pay raise over the 2003-04 school year, with a 4 percent raise the second year.
"We're not going to continue to waste money with negotiations. It's wasting the school's money, and it's wasting the kids' money," board member Albert Haberstroh said of the board's decision to stop negotiating.
The teachers union has accepted the same contract presented to OAPSE members.
Adding that talks had gone nowhere since the last two-year contract was signed, board member Mike Davis, who has three children in school, said, "Nobody wants to see a strike. Nobody wants to put the kids through that. I wouldn't put our children through a strike for $3,000,"