U-46 bus union says step raises not an issue

Pay raises for experience make a significant difference in Elgin Area School District U-46 teacher salaries.

It's a different story for district bus drivers, mechanics and dispatchers who have spent decades on the job.

"They are such a minor factor that we never talk about them," said Dave Neal, Uniserv director for the District U-46 Transportation Union.

While it takes decades to reach the top of the pay scale on a teacher's salary, district transportation employees hit the ceiling after just five years.

"Back in the transportation department, employees bypass (experience raises) very quickly," he said.

After a year of negotiations and two federal mediation sessions, union members Feb. 2 rejected the district's "last, best and final" offer.

Union President Doris Cartwright called the deal "second best compared to other U-46 administrators and employee contracts," at Monday's school board meeting.

The deal offers a 4.4 percent across-the-board raise for the first two years of the contract.

Increases in the third and fourth years are tied to the rate of inflation, and could be between 5.5 and 6 percent.

An average 0.4 percent increase for experience, called a step increase, would be applied on top of these raises.

January's inflation rate came out at 4.3 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

"One-half percent more than a cost of living rate is just insufficient," Neal said. "On a bus driver's scale that's only a few cents an hour."

By contrast, teachers will receive 4.2 percent flat raises this year, a 3.8 percent raise for the 2008-09 school year and between 2.5 percent and 3.8 percent raises in 2009-10.

Adding in 1.9 percent increases for experience and education gives the average teacher a raise of 6.1 percent in the first year of the contract, 5.7 percent in the second year, and between 4.4 and 5.7 percent in the third year.

Both Neal and Cartwright point to a May 2007 statement by former Superintendent Connie Neale.

"When she was negotiating her own raise last spring, she made a comment that everyone in the district, including bus drivers, got a 5.8 percent raise," Neal said. "In reality, that's hardly the case. Transportation employees have never had that."

The district's contract offer has to reach "beyond 5 percent before we have anything to work with," Neal said.

The 394-member union and the district will head back to the drawing table Thursday to re-negotiate terms of the contract. Members have been working without a contract since August, U-46 officials said.

"Last time we were in negotiations with (the district), they just pushed numbers around," Cartwright said. "Hopefully Thursday we'll get them to give a little bit more."