Responding to last week’s opening negotiating proposal from the union over the adjunct dispute involving El Marino Language School, the School District, upon advice of counsel, has concluded the 20 teaching aides are beyond their purview.
War clouds between the school/community and the union are looming more ominously than at any time since this controversy over the non-union members of the 26-year language program became public last month.
“I am not surprised but I am disappointed,” President Debbie Hamme of ACE, the Assn. of Classified Employees, told the newspaper this afternoon. “I am a firm believer in solving issues at the lowest common denominator. This just prolongs everybody’s agony.
“It is unfortunate because the community deserves to have some resolution.
“It disappoints me that the District would want this to go to the next level.
“I guess the District doesn’t want to be the bad guy.”
Supt. Patti Jaffe told the newspaper this afternoon that the District consulted attorneys “to look at all aspects of this very difficult situation. The advice was that these individuals at El Marino, the District has no control over their compensation or other terms and conditions of employment. They are not District employees.”
ACE is prepared to move on.
“The next step,” said Ms. Hamme, “would be that we file a grievance with the District and cite the areas of the contract we feel have been violated.
“Then we will file a PERB violation with the Public Employee Relations Board.
“The grievance would be another step in the process of negotiating at the lowest common denominator rather than going to PERB.”
A verdict is a very long distance away, Ms. Hamme said.
“This is our concern,” she said, “about going to PERB. PERB is so backed up with cases that they deliberate.
“It will be months and months and months of community turmoil. PERB will not get to this in a timely way. We are look at six months or more before PERB would even hear the case.
“Which ever way it goes – whether we are told ‘no, it is not necessary to bring these people into your unit’ or they say ‘yes, it is necessary for the people to be brought into the unit’ – it still prolongs the community agony.
“It also will prolong the divisiveness, and I think that is very unfortunate.”
