MISSION VIEJO : School Union to File Labor Complaint

Leaders of the union representing the Saddleback Valley Unified School District’s 700 classified employees have unanimously agreed to file a labor-practices complaint against the district, officials said Thursday.

The complaint, according to California School Employees Assn. President Walli Skrocki, is based on what she and other classified workers see as bad-faith bargaining by the district in recent contract negotiations.

Jennifer Hall, the district’s director of classified personnel, acknowledged that the district erred in computing the raise of classified employees but denied that bad faith was involved.

The dispute grows out of contract talks tentatively concluded late last year. As a result of those talks, classified workers voted Jan. 9 to approve a three-year contract that included an annual 7% increase.

As employees were voting, however, Hall said she discovered an error in the calculations. As drafted, the contract package would actually have resulted in a raise of at least 8%.

“We agree that we made the error,” Hall said. “We were very forthright in bringing that to them.”

Skrocki, however, said employees are being unfairly punished. “They made a mistake, and they’re asking us to pay for it,” she said.

Union leaders met with the membership Wednesday and afterward unanimously agreed to file a complaint, she added.

Although Hall has asked union leaders to return to the bargaining table, Skrocki said the union will file its complaint within the next several days. Once filed, such a complaint can take six months to a year to adjudicate, during which time district employees will work without a contract and thus receive no raise.