Dist. 203 wants court to order Naperville C. workers back on job

Naperville Unit District 203 is poised to seek a temporary restraining order Tuesday morning to force nonstriking union workers to resume construction at Naperville Central High School, officials said Friday.

Superintendent Mark Mitrovich said the legal action will be part of a larger campaign that will include e-mail blasts, signs at Naperville schools and fliers that will be distributed outside Central and at the Naperville Ribfest celebration across the street.

School district attorney Ken Florey said he will seek help from the National Labor Relations Board to get crews back on the project if work does not resume Saturday or Monday.

"On any given work day, that school should be a beehive of activity with more than a hundred different trade workers getting this thing done," Florey said Friday. "Come first-thing Tuesday morning, if it's still shut down, or has been shut down over the weekend, we'll petition the NLRB to file a complaint for unfair labor practice based on the illegal secondary boycotting of the project."

The illegal boycotting comes into play, Florey said, when nonstriking union members honor the strikers' picket line, forcing the project to be stopped.

"Federal law allows for a two-gate system at picket sites with one gate for the striking workers and a second gate for nonstriking workers," Florey said. "If that is set up correctly, the workers not on strike are required to honor the construction contract and get back to work without technically crossing any picket lines."

Mitrovich said the district also is drafting a letter to the striking unions pledging that workers who return to the job site will be paid "retroactively whatever they settle on from the day they get it."

In return, he said, the district would require the picket lines come down and the school gets finished on time.

Work on the $87.7 million renovation project came to a halt Thursday morning and is unlikely to resume until next Tuesday or Wednesday at the earliest - even if the district gets its temporary restraining order, Mitrovich said.

Without the restraining order, there's no telling how long the labor strife that's affecting construction projects throughout the region could delay renovations at the school.

With the project already on a tight timetable to be finished by the scheduled start of classes, that could be devastating for the district - and especially Central seniors - the superintendent said.

Losing even three days this week (including Saturday, which is a scheduled work day), "was about the window we had," Mitrovich said. "We're in trouble and they (union officials) were aware of that."

The school at 440 W. Aurora Ave. serves roughly 3,000 students.

The International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 150 and Laborers' District Council of Chicago and Vicinity both are at odds with the Mid-America Regional Bargaining Association and Excavators Inc., representing contractors, over wage and benefit issues. The groups represent about 15,000 workers.

The strike is affecting at least 300 area road projects as well as the Central renovation.

The school is building a three-story addition that will house all major subject areas. It also is getting infrastructure upgrades, a new learning resource center, new athletic and music spaces, improved traffic flow inside and out, and synthetic turf on the football field.

The project affects roughly 75 percent of the building.

The district already was racing the clock and had pushed back the start of classes a week to Aug. 25. Crews of 175 to 250 - representing more than just laborers and operating engineers - have been on site six days a week since classes let out in late May and are replacing 165,000 square feet of the building.

That work stopped Thursday and Mitrovich says the district has no choice but to do everything in its power to get nonstriking workers back on the job as quickly as possible.

With that in mind, he said the district hopes to establish two gates at the work site - one where striking union members can picket and the other where nonstriking workers can enter without technically crossing the picket line.

He said officials plan to meet with administrators from both Naperville Central and Naperville North next Tuesday to discuss possible options if Central isn't ready for the start of the new school year.

He said the district is especially concerned with the impact on Central's roughly 750 to 800 seniors.

Among the possibilities being considered are having seniors start the year in another building to be determined or filing an appeal with the Illinois State Board of Education to delay the opening of classes.