Contract negotiations between San Benito High School teachers
and the school district halted last Friday when Don Balfour, the
district’s chief negotiator, declared the two sides had reached an
impasse.
Hollister – Contract negotiations between San Benito High School teachers and the school district halted last Friday when Don Balfour, the district’s chief negotiator, declared the two sides had reached an impasse.
SBHS teachers began negotiations with the district for a 3-year employment contract in January, after working for nearly a year under the terms of the previous, expired contract.
Paper work will now be filed with the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB). If the board agrees an impasse has been reached, it will appoint a mediator to conduct further negotiations. If that fails, PERB will appoint a neutral party to serve on a fact finding panel to evaluate the positions of the two sides.
“We don’t understand why they are not settling,” Balfour said. “We have met all of their demands.”
Balfour, a former teacher and principal, started negotiations for the district in January and said the tone, so far, has been positive and proactive.
Chuck Schallhorn, the teachers’ lead negotiator and soon to be CTA union president, said that union’s main sticking point involved contractual language proposed by the district.
“If they had met all of our demands we would have settled,” Schallhorn said. “It has come down to language and we want to make sure that language protects all of our teachers.”
Balfour said the district had agreed to maintain health benefits without an increase in costs to the teachers through 2007. The remaining sticking point, he said, was that the union was attempting to secure and maintain current health benefits at no additional cost to the teachers not only for the length of the contract at hand, but also for the future years beyond the contract.
“We need to be negotiating for this contract and not for future contracts,” Balfour said. “It would be irresponsible to negotiate that far into the future. We cannot be held hostage to increasing health costs.”
Schallhorn and his union members are concerned that the proposed contractual language will make it harder for teachers to maintain current benefits at no additional cost in the future.
“Contracts are a funny thing,” Schallhorn said. “Unless the language is negotiated out, it stays, and we want the language that best protects teachers.”
Schallhorn said that teachers work many hours beyond those that they are contracted for and deserve health benefits at no additional cost.
“When teachers are out sick, the students miss out,” Schallhorn said. “And you cannot quantify the relationship a teacher has with his or her students.”
Although uninvolved in direct negotiations, Superintendent Jean Burns Slater said that she was concerned with their progress.
“I’m afraid that health benefits is something that they [the teacher’s union] will hold onto so tightly that we may not be able to reach an agreement,” Slater said. “We haven’t felt a lot of give and take.”
Balfour and Schallhorn agreed that although halted, negotiations are far from over and that a strike is not on the horizon. State and federal laws would prohibit such a job action before the negotiation process is exhausted, Slater said.
“Our goal is not to strike,” Schallhorn said. “Strikes divide the community and create ill will.”
Brett Rowland covers education for the Free Lance. He can be reached at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or br******@fr***********.com.
