Caution urged on pact talks

By Harold Gwin

Youngstown officials start classified employee contract process amid fiscal concerns.

YOUNGSTOWN — The chairman of the state fiscal oversight commission controlling city school-district finances has issued a caution to district officials regarding talks on a new contract with its classified employees — keep the district’s fiscal recovery plan in mind.

Wendy Webb, Youngstown school district superintendent, told the Financial Planning and Supervision Commission last week that preliminary talks have begun with about 295 employees represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union Local 1143.

Their three-year contract ends Jan. 23, Webb said.

The union represents the district’s education assistants, secretaries, custodians, maintenance workers, drivers, food-service workers and mechanics.

Roger Nehls, chairman of the oversight commission that has been in place since the state put Youngstown under fiscal emergency in November 2006, reminded Webb that whatever contract settlement the district brings to the commission must show any cost implications it might carry and not be detrimental to the district’s overall financial recovery plan.

He pointed out that the district, with commission approval, has made staff cuts that affect a number of employee unions and any new contracts should reflect those reductions. The commission doesn’t want to see those eliminated positions restored once the district emerges from fiscal emergency and the commission leaves, he said.

The idea behind the cuts is to enable the district to downsize itself and help restore fiscal solvency that it can maintain, he said.

The district has cut $32 million in spending and eliminated 520 jobs, many of the AFSCME positions, over the last three years.

The district needs to carefully examine the long-term implications of any employee contract, Nehls said.

Webb replied that the district realizes the importance of cost neutrality in its contracts.

AFSCME members ratified a contract in early 2007 that placed a three-year wage freeze on all but employees who were still on a salary step schedule and hadn’t reached the top of the pay scale. The union had 460 members at that time.

They also agreed to begin paying a part of their health care premiums for the first time.

That contract showed a salary range from just under $7 per hour for some food-service workers to a high of nearly $50,000 for custodians at the top of the scale.

gwin@vindy.com