NEGOTIATIONS UPDATE
TO: APEA Membership
FROM: John Napolitani, President
Sean Hamilton, Vice President
DATE: September 30, 2009
The Negotiations Team met with our PERC appointed mediator last Thursday evening at the Board Office. Our team met before our negotiations session to discuss strategy and points that the Board wanted to discuss at the table. The meeting started promptly at 6:00pm and lasted past 11:30pm. At this meeting, all items on the agenda were discussed which included our main points and the Board’s main points.
As we discussed in prior correspondence, our team narrowed our proposal down to six main issues. The Board managed to do the same but had several sub-sections. Their proposal was significantly reduced from the last session, which was a major stumbling block for all our prior meetings.
Things are continuing to move slowly. We agreed to try one more session, which will be scheduled some time in October, to attempt to bring some items to closure. As with most districts in the state that are at this point in negotiations, a major area that we are not agreeing on is the section that has to do with our benefits. A discussion on a salary increase can not even be discussed until the next session because the Board was late producing the scatter grams to the Association. Now that we are in possession of these scatter grams, we can have NJEA analyze it and see what the true cost of people moving through the guide is going to cost the Board over three years.
Once again, we have created an APEA Action Team to mobilize the Association for possible action(s) during the year. We are still looking for representatives from each building. Please submit your name and your respective building if you are interested in assisting with this team to either John or Sean. As always, we will keep the membership informed of our progress step by step. Remember, Ben Franklin stated, “We must hang together, gentlemen…else, we shall most assuredly hang separately.” This is truly a time for the APEA to stand together.