May 29, 2008
Pay raises without a contract
For public employees in New York, "working without a contract" does not mean foregoing annual pay raises. Under the Triborough amendment to the state Taylor Law, unionized workers continue to receive "step" increases in pay, as explained in more detail in the Empire Center's Taylor Made study.
Consider the case of the Pine Plains Central School District in Orange County. The teachers union there--whose last contract expired June 30, 2007--threatened to stage an illegal strike unless the school district settled on a new contract.
But during the past 11 months, most Pine Plains teachers continued to collect step raises. Under the 2006-07 pay schedule in the expired contract, teachers with less than 20 years of experience received annual increases averaging up to 2.9 percent. Between steps 20 and 28, they receive a larger increase every three years.
And these figures don't include additional increases for which a teacher can automatically qualify by earning added graduate credits.
The Pine Plains school district and teachers union announced early Tuesday they'd come to a tentative agreement, but full details haven't emerged. As the Middletown Times-Herald Record reported:
...the agreement is said to be nearly in the middle of what each side wanted. The district was offering annual salary increases of 3.58 percent, while the teachers wanted 4.01 percent.
An earlier story painted a different picture of what the two sides were seeking.
Despite getting offers of 5 percent to 6 percent raises per year--including seniority step increases--the union hasn't responded to recent negotiation requests, school board President Jay Anthony and interim Superintendent Bill Bassett said. The average teacher salary is $63,851.
The bottom line: in gauging the cost and generosity of the new contract, school board members and taxpayers need to consider longevity steps as well as base salary increases.
« Previous |
Main
| Next »
|
