Small district wins grant to boost labor-management communications

Bad relations between labor and management can take place even in the smallest school districts. Take Gold Trail--a two-school district in Placerville, Calif.--for example. Last year, teachers there went through "an ugly round of negotiations" before finally settling their contract, says Sue Plank, president of the AFT-affiliated Gold Trail Federation of Educators. "It was very divisive in the community."

When Plank heard from the AFT about grants available through the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) in Washington, D.C., to promote labor-management communication and cooperation, "I thought this was a prayer answered," she comments.

About the same time that the teachers union was working with district administrators on the FMCS grant, classified employees in the district voted to join the teachers' union. Kathy Fish, one of the leaders of the effort to organize the classifieds, got involved in the FMCS grant as well.

"If the teachers had so many problems with their negotiations," says Fish, a paraprofessional, "I thought it would be a good idea to communicate" better with management and lay the groundwork for better relations.

As press time, the classified unit was in the middle of negotiations to finish their first contract, and "so far, it's going pretty well," Fish says.

With assistance from the AFT on getting their applications together, more than a dozen AFT locals have won FMCS grants in recent years. The Gold Trail federation grant is obviously smaller than most--about $18,000 over 18 months--and the main focus, as Plank notes, is communication. One of the first things the grant partners did was send out a simple five-question survey to everyone who works in the district. The first question, for example, asks respondents to rate from 1 (never) to 5 (always) how effective communication is throughout the district.

For the classified employees, joining with the teachers and improving communication have already helped lessen a common complaint they share with PSRPs throughout the country: feeling like second-class citizens. "That's why we pushed to get the unions together," Fish notes, adding that "we've had a tremendous reception and a lot of support from the teachers."

For her part, Plank hopes that improved relations can help in the short term with selecting a new superintendent--the former top administrator left at the end of January--and down the line with future contract negotiations.