43
Board approves contracts with two unions
By Denise Dick
youngstowN
The city school board approved two-year contracts with two of its unions, leaving the teachers contract the only one left to be approved.
Both pacts call for raises of 1 percent in each of the two years.
The 295-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union includes secretaries, food-service workers and custodians. The crafts unions include seven or eight plumbers, electricians and carpenters.
They were approved by the school board Tuesday.
The pay for AFSCME members ranges from $12.66 per hour for a cafeteria cook to about $48,000 annually for a custodian at the top of the pay scale.
Both agreements also include me-too clauses. If the board negotiates an increase in the teachers contract that results in an increase in the teachers’ base salary at higher than 1 percent in either year, the union members would receive that excess percentage also.
Both employee groups are coming off four years of wage freezes, with only a handful of AFSCME employees getting annual pay increases over that time as they move through a salary-step schedule toward the top of their pay scale.
In July, the school board rejected the pacts with the two unions because of uncertainty about district finances.
Some of those concerns lingered Tuesday.
Lock Beachum Sr., school board vice president and chairman of the board’s finance committee, asked about costs and whether it would affect when the district will be released from fiscal emergency.
Treasurer William Johnson said an exact cost is difficult to determine. The cost of some provisions in the contract, such as reductions in call-out pay, depend on how often they’re utilized.
Just considering the costs of salary and benefits, it amounts to about $200,000 each year, Johnson said. That’s less than what the district accounted for in devising a five-year financial forecast model, he said.
The Youngstown Education Association, the union representing district teachers, and the administration reached a tentative agreement earlier this month that awaits ratification. No details have been released.