School Employees Reject Pact Offer

Nonteaching employees of the Oak Park Unified School District overwhelmingly rejected a proposed three-year labor agreement, with fewer than one in 10 workers accepting the pact.

The vote announced Thursday came as a surprise to the school board, which had unanimously approved the agreement Tuesday, pending ratification by the union.

School board member Robert Kahn said there appear to be communication problems among the district, the union and its members.

“They are the ones that accepted the agreement, so if their vote is against the agreement, their vote is against what the union accepted,” Kahn said. “If the union officials were not satisfied with the agreement, they could have kept negotiating. The agreement was acceptable to us.”

About 94% of the Oak Park Classified Assn. members who voted rejected the tentative agreement, which was reached Nov. 2. The union, which has about 100 members, represents district secretaries, custodians, groundskeepers and other non-certificated employees.

One union leader said the negative vote should have been expected after 19 months of negotiations that were cordial but sometimes difficult.

“I don’t think they have shown the classified employees much respect,” said David Stuart, a staff consultant for the California Teachers Assn., which negotiated on behalf of the Oak Park employees.

Although the agreement included a 6.6% increase in salary effective Nov. 1, Stuart said the absence of a retroactive pay increase was a primary stumbling block.

Stuart said association members should have received a 2.65% state-funded cost-of-living increase on July 1, 1997, which was included in the district’s budget. That raise was never received because negotiations had broken down.

The district then received state money for a 3.95% cost-of-living increase on July 1, 1998. The tentative agreement included the combined total of the two raises, but was not retroactive to when the district initially received the money from the state, according to Stuart.