Janesville teacher negotiations expected to hinge on pricey issue
(Published Sunday, January 21, 2007 12:10:35 AM CST)
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
By Frank Schultz Gazette Staff
As Janesville public school educators steel themselves for another round of contract talks, they actually agree on at least one thing:
Health care is their biggest money issue.
Anyone who runs a business or negotiates a work contract knows this. But it's an especially difficult problem for Wisconsin public school teachers. That's because state law bakes their benefits and pay into one pie. As the health-care slice of the pie gets bigger, the pay slice shrinks.
"They have a good argument," on that point, said school board member Kevin Murray, but that doesn't help the district pay the ever-rising cost of health care.
Teachers know about those costs, and they've made concessions, said Dave Parr, president of the Janesville Education Association.
Teachers have agreed to increase the co-pay for their drug coverage in recent years, and they agreed to take smaller pay increases for many years in order to maintain a high quality health-care plan, Parr said.
The result is that teachers' pay has fallen behind the cost of living, said teacher Jennifer Fanning, who is the JEA's co-lead negotiator, along with Parr.
Angel Tullar, manager of employee relations, said the district has never studied the cost-of-living issue, but she believes some teachers have fallen behind in some years, while others have gained.
In any case, the cost-of-living argument might not be a strong one to place before a school board that is facing painful budget cuts.
School board members say they're looking for help from the teachers. And that could mean cutting into the health-care plan or asking teachers to start paying premiums.
"There's an excellent insurance package there. I don't think there's anything that could beat it," said school board President Dennis Vechinsky. "… It's a lot of money, so I imagine it will be an issue."
School board members agreed at the end of the last negotiation that they would make health care a priority in the next negotiation, Murray said.
The district's budget crunch makes the issue all the more urgent.
"I don't know how many more years we can go cutting the budget almost $2 million," Murray said.
Murray suggested the teachers could help by agreeing to choose from a menu of health plans. As a city firefighter, Murray said, he pays extra for the right to choose his health-care provider, while others pay less and are limited to one provider.
Not only do the teachers have good coverage, they don't pay any monthly premium, unlike most local workers.
A 2005 survey of 16 of the larger local employers-including the school district but not General Motors-showed only three that did not require employees to pay part of the premium.
The survey by the Employers Health Cooperative did not specify which plan belonged to which employer.
Even UAW workers at GM-also believed to have one of the better health plans around-recently started paying premiums.
If the teachers don't help the district save money, they risk losing jobs because of the district's increasingly difficult budget situation, Vechinsky suggested.
"What you have to do is, you have to decide if you want more money for less people or less money for more people, and that's really what it boils down to," Vechinsky said. "So it's tough on them, and I don't like it either."
Parr rejects that choice. He acknowledged that concessions could save a job in one year's budget. But cuts likely will continue, so a job saved one year would only be cut the next year.
"That's something that we just have to accept. The programs are going to be cut, and there's nothing we can do to stop that," Parr said.
"Any concession they ask of us, they're going to ask us to make more concessions next year," Parr said. "It's a downward spiral that doesn't come to an end."
Both sides acknowledge that the teachers have a very good health-care plan.
Fanning said it's hard to compare compensation between jobs: Perhaps one job's salary is better even though health care isn't as good, she suggested. Maybe one employer pays for education or offers flexible working hours or has air conditioning in the office, something not all Janesville teachers have.
Fanning said she feels for people who have little or no health coverage, but she said that's a national problem that's going to be solved at the national level. She said she understands taxpayer concerns, because she pays Janesville taxes, too.
However, "If we cannot retain good teachers, and if we can't afford to keep them in teaching, then we're making a grave mistake for our children," Fanning said.
Vechinsky said the teachers would do themselves a favor by making a concession, because the public sees them as having it made.
"The handwriting's on the wall, and the teachers have to realize who they're playing to, and they have to play to the public," he said.
"We're willing to listen to all proposals," Parr said, if the district will agree on a fixed estimate of what health care will cost in the next two years.
Parr offered the same thing the teachers offered last time: If the board will agree to a set amount for health care, the teachers will pay anything that exceeds that amount. But if costs come in at a lower amount, the teachers would get the difference in their paychecks.
The school board rejected that offer last time, but Parr held out hope that the experience with the 2005-07 contract will help both sides this time.
Ultimately, successful negotiations usually come down to both sides' willingness to compromise.
Fanning said negotiators need to keep open minds.
"Are we going to try to protect what we have? Absolutely," she said. "But in negotiations, there is give and take, and both sides have to be willing to do that."
Murray said he hoped both sides could trust each other enough to finish negotiations quickly. He noted that autoworker unions have changed the way they bargain.
"Teacher unions are going to have to do the same thing under the circumstances that we're under now," Murray said. "It's just not the way it used to be."
