Union frustated at contract negotiations
By Caitlyn Kelleher JOURNAL REPORTER

More than 50 teachers for the Ashburnham-Westminster Regional School District turned out dressed in green to hear Lincoln Stiles Jr. read a prepared statement to the school committee at their Tuesday, Oct. 9, meeting.

"The teachers are pretty frustrated by the lack of a settled contract," said Stiles, a member of the Ashburnham-Westminster Teacher's Association negotiations subcommittee.

Most of the large group of teachers stayed for a more than 90-minute discussion between the town officials and the school committee. Stiles was the only one to speak for the group during the public comment portion of the meeting and received a round of applause from his colleagues.

The teachers' association - the district's largest union - had a contract that expired on June 30, and have been in negotiations with the school committee since last fall.

Stiles said the teachers felt there was a "lack of urgency" from the school committee's Negotiations Subcommittee citing a lack of a desire to increase meeting lengths, a lack of movement on issues of health insurance and salary issues, and the posturing the union feels the committee is doing.

School Committee Chairman David Christianson, who is also chairing the Negotiations Subcommittee, responded by saying the committee appreciated the turnout but also said they are "frustrated by lack of progress."

He called the negotiations the "polar opposite" of the last round, because there is not the same level of cooperation between the two sides.

"We put our best offer on the table upfront," Christianson said, after the meeting. "We had a very small package of concerns. We were very up front with the association that said this is what we were asking."

Christianson continued by saying the committee expected to have some give-and-take from the offer but didn't have a lot of moving room.

During the meeting, Chris- tianson said it was hard to make progress during the negotiations when a third party is involved. After the meeting he clarified that the third party was the association's Massachusetts Teachers' Association representative.

"I'd rather deal directly with the people involved," Christianson said, after the meeting.

He said that in the past the association's representative has been a resource for the group, but not active at the negotiating table.

"Personally, I feel like he's been doing his job in representing us," Stiles said Wednesday.

Stiles said there had only been eight meetings between the two sides and five of those have been informational before the school committee requested a mediator.

"It can also slow down the process," Stiles said in the prepared statement.

After the meeting, Stiles would not expand on which issues other than salaries and health insurance the teacher's association wanted the school committee to revise their stance on.

"We have yet to receive the information on health insurance we asked for," he said.

After the meeting, Christianson said he did not know what piece of information the association thought was being withheld, but said there was a delay in getting information on certain statistics from BlueCross/BlueShield, the district's health insurance provider.

"The AWTA is entitled to the information," he said. "I am not entirely sure what they are referring to. … It does us no good to withhold information."

Christianson said he was surprised by the teachers' appearance at the meeting, and despite the problems with the negotiations he was "surprised by the lack of notice."

He said he thought the presentation and the statement was respectful but that there were points that were untrue.

He agreed with Stiles in that, "The two main issues for the district have always been new wages and health care."

Christianson said maybe it is time that both sides took part of this process public.

"They are the first, now, to bring the discussion to the open," he said.

State and federal law allow for union negotiations to be handled privately, but both sides are allowed to publicly discuss negotiations and their status if they want.

"If they think we are posturing, I would recommend to the school committee, if they would agree, that both sides put their opening statements on the table to the public," Christianson said.

Christianson, speaking for himself and not for the committee, said he's not sure the whole process should be open to the public but said there should probably be regular public updates.

"There are aspects of the negotiations you could hold in the public, a lot of the discussions are grunt work, grinding through the details, much of mechanical type of work, I'm not sure how that will add to the public discussion," he said.

Stiles said that he could not respond to these ideas on behalf of the 11-member negotiating team, but did say this would all have to be discussed by both groups individual before becoming another point of the negotiations.

"It would have to go through their negotiation channel for it be a binding agreement," Stiles said.