11-percent pay increase spread over two years to their classified staff union.
Merged Missoula Classified Employees Organization members were still reviewing the new offer late Thursday. While both they and the Missoula County Public Schools administrators reported some movement in the talks, both were also preparing for a possible strike just before the start of school next Tuesday.
Missoula teachers joined MMCEO members in an informational picket Thursday morning outside the school district's South Avenue business building. They were joined by Montana Education Association president Eric Feaver, who came to support the wage demands.
While noting that Missoula classified workers had waited 11 years to rectify mistakes in their pay structure, Feaver noted their situation was similar to state education funding as a whole. The inequities had been building up so long, a complete solution in one contract was unlikely.
"You can't respond effectively to a problem this large in one fell swoop," Feaver said. "But you can make a down payment and promise to follow through. You can never recover from 11 years of unfairness. The question the school district has to answer is: Are these people worth bringing into a modern pay structure that doesn't churn 43 percent of the work force every two years?"
Designing that pay structure was a major component of Thursday's negotiations. The fundamental problem is that when Missoula's formerly separate elementary and high school districts merged in 1994, the classified employees were put on a salary schedule that locked many of them at low wages and gave little room for advancement.
Right now, the roughly 350 MMCEO workers earn hourly wages between $6.64 for a starting food service worker to $18.35 for a top-of-the-scale para-educator. A previous school district offer of 4.8 percent salary increases for each of the next two years would cost a total of about $250,000 when factored throughout the pay schedule.
The union has proposed a new pay schedule, with a potential cost of as much as $700,000 in an effort to make up for the past years' low raises. MMCEO president Sheri Postma said the cumulative years' contract raises totaled $1.14, or 11 cents a year since 1994.
Thursday's school district offer would give 5 percent increases to most MMCEO workers in 2005-06, and 6 percent in 2006-07. In addition, those para-educators who meet new federal qualification standards in that time would receive an additional $1 per hour in the second year. That amounts to a roughly 25 percent increase for that group of workers, district officials said. Para-educators make up about one-third of the MMCEO membership.
That offer was being delivered about 5 p.m. Thursday, after state Department of Labor and Industry mediator Vicki Knudsen had spent almost six hours with the union negotiators and three hours with MCPS officials. Knudsen was preparing to meet with the administration negotiators Thursday evening, and both sides said they were willing to work all night.
However, the complexity of a new wage scale could require much of a day simply to run through the arithmetic so both sides could see who benefited by how much. While additional mediation sessions are scheduled every day through Monday, members of both sides said a delay to crunch numbers wouldn't imply a loss of momentum in the negotiations.
On Tuesday, MMCEO members voted unanimously to support their negotiating team if it called for a strike. That poll is not binding, and the membership would have to vote again to authorize an actual work stoppage. However, the Missoula Education Association of teachers also voted to support the classified workers by not crossing their picket lines if a strike were called.
Feaver said the Missoula situation may be the first time in the history of the state education union that classified workers had struck on a contract. Classified workers in Billings honored the teachers' union picket line during a teachers strike two years ago, but didn't strike themselves. And a unified teacher/classified union in Laurel struck together about 25 years ago, but that dispute revolved mainly on teacher issues.
Reporter Rob Chaney can be reached at 523-5382 or at rchaney@missoulian.com
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