Placentia : School District Workers Accept 5% Salary Hike

Bus drivers and other Placentia School District workers who conducted a “sickout” to protest wage negotiations earlier this month have accepted the district’s offer of a 5% pay raise.

Of 105 workers who cast their ballots Friday night, the majority voted to ratify the agreement reached between the union and the school district, said Nancy Lavallee, president of the California School Employee Assn. Local 293. Lavallee, who represents about 265 union members of the 700 non-management employees, would not say Saturday what percentage voted to ratify the contract.

“They accepted it. It’s a relief that it’s over,” Lavallee said.

Lavallee was one of 40 bus drivers from a crew of 44 who called in sick May 3, setting off a chain of early-morning telephone calls among parents, teachers and administrators to pick up children left at bus stops. The bus drivers transport about 3,000 students in north Orange County. Another 60 employees in clerical, transportation, food services and maintenance departments also participated in the sickout.

Union officials were demanding a 9% raise and an extra holiday. Instead, they got the district’s offer of a 5% raise effective July 1, along with an additional 5% salary hike retroactive to July 1, 1984, Lavallee. The typical full-time bus driver earns about $13,000 a year, said Sharon Furlong, a union field representative.

Although the union lost on its salary demand, it won several concessions from the school district, Lavallee said.

The union “came down (from the 9% salary raise request) because it was a two-year contract,” she said. The school district earlier offered a one-year contract, which the union said was too short, and then switched to a three-year contract, which union officials said would tie them down for too long, Lavallee said.