...Employees feel shortchanged by Portland School Dist.
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Unions (DCU), an alliance of 16 unions
representing about 300 workers in a
number of occupations, including main-
tenance workers, school bus drivers and
mechanics, radio station employees,
and driver-ed instructors. It took the
DCU close to two years to get its 1999-
2004 contract. And its most recent con-
tract — which spanned from mid-2004
to the end of 2005 — took nearly two
years to bargain, and wasn’t signed un-
til less than two weeks before it expired.
Chief negotiator Gene Blackburn of
Teamsters Local 206 said DCU reps are
not relishing the thought of returning
for the next year-and-a-half of bargain-
ing.
• Next are 1,200 clerical support
staff, classroom assistants and special-
ed assistants, who are represented by
the Portland Federation of Teachers and
Classified Employees (PFTCE), also
known as Local 111 of American Fed-
eration of Teachers-Oregon. They’ve
been without a contract since June 30,
2005. Four mediated bargaining ses-
sions are scheduled for March.
• And last in line are the “lunch
ladies.” The 250 cafeteria workers in the
nutrition services department belong to
Service Employees International Union
(SEIU) Local 503, Oregon’s second-
largest labor union. They’ve also been
without a contract since June 30. All but
a dozen of them are women. Most earn
$9.07 an hour. One lead worker per
school earns $11.80 to $13.16 an hour.
To represent school district manage-
ment in negotiations with these work-
At one of two remaining work stations, cafeteria workers package frozen
potato sticks in a cavernous kitchen that once prepared much of the food
served at Portland Public Schools. Last year, budget cuts eliminated 32
cafeteria positions, and struck cinnamon rolls and wiener wraps from the
menu.
ers, PPS pays an outside attorney $190
an hour. The attorney is Richard Lieb-
man of the Barran Liebman law firm;
PPS in-house attorney Jollee Faber Pat-
terson says the district is getting a spe-
cial deal — that’s half Liebman’s nor-
mal rate.
Cafeteria workers, the lowest-paid
workers in the district, say they don’t
work for the wages; they work for the
benefits — full-year, full-family health
coverage for 171 six-hour days of work.
For these workers, health coverage
costs work out to $8.84 per hour. [Part-
timers get less-expensive employee-
only health coverage.]
The district now proposes to elimi-
nate health benefits for new-hires who
work less than full-time. [About two-
fifths of the unit are part-timers.] And
for the remainder, the district wants to
cap its health insurance contribution at
$779 a month, with employees paying
any increase over that amount. They
currently pay from $0 to $107 a month,
depending on the plan.
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“They’re not willing to move in any
direction for us,” said lead cafeteria
worker Deanna Gathman, who serves
on the union’s bargaining team.
The two sides also disagree on
wages, contract length and contracting
out. Cafeteria workers want a three-year
contract with 3 percent annual raises;
the school district wants four years of
2.65 percent annual raises. Faced with
the threat to job security from private
companies like Sodexho and Aramark
that run many school district cafeterias,
workers want the chance to “bid” if PPS
moves to contract out cafeteria services
altogether. Management has refused
that union proposal.
Cafeteria workers used to belong to
the same SEIU local as the district’s
300-plus custodians (School Employ-
ees Local 140), but in 2002 the district
terminated the custodians and hired an
outside janitorial company to do the
work. Local 140 was dissolved and the
remaining cafeteria workers were
merged into Local 503.
However, Local 140 challenged the
school district’s action in court, arguing
that it violated a state law that requires
school custodians to be civil service
employees. The law applies only to
Portland. The case went to the Oregon
Supreme Court, which ruled against
PPS management in October 2005. PPS
attorneys asked the court to reconsider.
Local 140 lawyers think the court will
“reconsider” by mid-year, and will up-
hold its decision. That could mean rein-
statement and back pay for the termi-
nated custodians, the union says,
though the district would likely fight
that.
For the cafeteria workers, as negoti-
ations dragged on, they began taking
their cause directly to the elected school
board, attending board meetings and
seeking to meet with board members.
Only one board member, Dan Ryan,
has met with cafeteria workers so far.
“These workers are treated as sec-
ond-class citizens by the district,” says
SEIU staffperson Shannon Strumpfer,
who was assigned to help the cafeteria
workers negotiate with management.
Newstrand, the PPS labor relations
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manager, resigned in January, but with
attorney Liebman still in charge of bar-
gaining, union leaders aren’t hopeful
that the district’s approach will change.
PFTCE President Kathy Hornstein
said when her union didn’t accept the
school district’s offer, Liebman’s de-
meanor changed. “He took our counter
offer, and shoved it back across the table
without even reading it. He said ‘We
told you what we were giving you and
that’s it, take it or leave it.’ ”
Union leaders acknowledge that
times are tough at PPS, but they feel
disrespected, and they’re mistrustful of
the district’s numbers.
“They’re tripping over dimes and
nickels as they lose dollars,” said the
DCU’s Blackburn.
Some, like Hornstein, think top ad-
ministrators get secret raises.
Lawrence disputes that, and says the
district has been in a belt-tightening
mode since voters passed Ballot Mea-
sure 5, a property tax limitation, in
1990. Lawrence said just 4 percent of
the PPS budget is spent on central ad-
ministration, and the district has made
all the cuts it can make without hurting
classroom education.
After Measure 5, school districts got
most of their funding from a state
school fund — all property taxes in the
state are put in a pool, which the Legis-
lature divvies up. PPS backers say the
Legislature’s formula disadvantages
Portland, which has a higher cost of liv-
ing, more special education students,
and older buildings that cost more to
heat and maintain. In recent years, local
voters approved local property and in-
come taxes to prevent cuts in the dis-
trict. But the expiration of the local op-
tion property tax last year resulted in a
$26 million budget cut. PPS’ budget
went from $391.6 million for the 2004-
05 school year to $365.7 million for the
2005-06 school year. The district re-
acted to the loss with a variety of cuts
— including 250 teaching positions,
150 clerical and teacher assistant posi-
tions and a new approach to school
lunches.
To save money, PPS no longer pre-
pares food from scratch. Instead nutri-
tion service workers repackage, heat
and serve canned and frozen food, and
the district contracted with a private
company to make and deliver salads
and sandwiches. The change cost 32
union jobs, and it meant the loss of
some of the district’s best-loved foods,
including cinnamon rolls and wiener
wraps.
This year Multnomah County’s tem-
porary income tax is due to expire, with
the result that the district’s budget for
the next school year is projected to fall
$36 million, to $329 million, barring
some further rescue from local taxpay-
ers. As of press time, Portland Mayor
Tom Potter was mulling whether to
campaign for a new school-supporting
tax on the May ballot.
But the bad blood between the dis-
trict and its unions has union leaders
wondering out loud whether they’ll
even support a campaign for a new tax.
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