Worcester teachers union, committee still stalled

The teachers union in Worcester passed a vote of noconfidence Friday against the city’s school committee and other officials hours after the committee announced it is requesting a state mediator to settle contract negotiations that have dragged on for more than a year.

The Educational Association of Worcester said its members have been working under the terms of an expired contract since September and are seeking increased wages and improved working conditions for teachers. The Worcester School Committee said it has held more than 20 bargaining sessions with the union since negotiations opened in January 2022, but the union said the committee made its first financial proposal in December and the sides have met seven times in the months since.

Both sides claim the other has not responded to counterproposals, slowing the talks. In a statement , the union criticized the school committee’s move toward mediation, calling it “a stall tactic ... [that] is time-consuming and costly.”

“It prevents the two sides from bargaining directly and face-to-face,” the union said in its statement, which was released by EAW president Melissa Verdie. “The School Committee is shifting its responsibility to an external entity and in the process wasting time and funds that could be directed toward improving WPS for students and staff directly.”

Earlier Friday, the school committee released a statement announcing it had filed a petition for the appointment of a mediator from the state Department of Labor Relations. The committee said its latest offer to the union on Tuesday included “significant wage increases and longevity benefits for teachers by offering an additional $40.5 million over four years.”

“The Worcester School Committee has repeatedly proposed sizable wage increases for our dedicated teachers and continuously engages in good-faith bargaining,” Worcester Mayor Joseph M. Petty, a member of the school committee, said in the statement. “We are requesting a state-appointed mediator so that our hard-working educators do not wait any longer for the fair and competitive compensation package they truly deserve.”

The school committee said the union rejected its offer Tuesday that would provide an average salary increase of 18.3 percent for teachers.

During this meeting, the union said it would not make any further counterproposals until the school committee requests additional funding from the city council, according to the union’s statement.

“Instead of doing that simple and reasonable task, the School Committee opted to cancel all further bargaining sessions,” the union’s statement said. The school committee’s latest proposal would also require teachers to work an additional two days per year outside the classroom for professional development, and new hires would pay 1 percent of their earnings to the Other Post Employment Benefits Trust Fund “to address the City’s growing cost of supporting retiree health insurance,” the school committee said.

The union called this stipulation a “salary tax” that places the burden on new teachers to balance the city’s retirement accounts. “This is a misguided approach to fixing the city’s own budget mismanagement and will only exacerbate existing staffing issues,” the union’s statement said.

The school committee said its proposal would increase wages between 15 percent and 19.4 percent for all teachers, “including additional compensation for educators with more than 10 years of experience; and a substantial increase in hourly pay for after-school and summer work, from $37 to $60 an hour.”

The union said Worcester teachers are currently paid between $10,000 and $13,000 less than educators in neighboring districts.