union employees at Dover schools fight for their jobs

A small group of local union employees took to the streets of Dover on April 13, marching and waving signs in front of City Hall on Central Avenue. The group, consisting of members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 2932, was protesting the Dover School District’s decision to privatize custodial services at city schools. The decision means that 30 to 35 union employees who currently staff the schools will be out of a job when their three-year contract expires on June 30.

The demonstration was quickly broken up by police, who said the group needed a permit for such a public congregation. Union members tried to reschedule for the following Monday, but they were told that the permit would have to be approved by the City Council, which would not convene again until Wednesday, April 23.

“Apparently, you can’t disagree with city government unless city government gives you permission to disagree with them,” said Brian Lamirande, a representative for the New Hampshire office of AFSCME Council 93.

The turbulence that culminated in the recent demonstration has been growing for many months now. Last year, the Dover School Board spent six months negotiating a new contract with the union, which is responsible for custodial maintenance and grounds at Dover schools. During the process, the School Board notified the union that it would consider outsourcing custodial services to a private company, thus fulfilling a contractual obligation to give the union six months notice about any decision to privatize.

The School Board later approved a union contract that offered employees incremental raises over the next three years. In October, the City Council voted to provide the School District with enough funding to cover the new union contract. But, after securing the funds, the School Board changed its mind and decided to outsource, awarding a much less expensive contract to a Massachusetts-based company called UNICCO.

With their jobs on the line, union employees were willing to make further concessions to match UNICCO’s proposal, according to AFSCME Local 2932 president Ken Hall. But they were never given that chance.

“We were never afforded an opportunity to put a bid in to bid equal with the company they’re bringing in,” Hall said. “We now stand to lose our jobs at the end of June.”

The union brought the issue before the Public Employees Labor Relations Board, but the Board sided with the School District, ruling that it had fulfilled its contractual obligations. But union representatives say the contract was never at issue.

“We never disputed that issue. What we did dispute was, there was never good faith bargaining,” Hall said.

Dover Superintendent John O’Connor disagrees. “That’s their opinion. Clearly, representatives of the Board who negotiated the contract will tell you that they bargained in good faith,” O’Connor said.

Reached by phone last week, School Board chair Marjorie Fisher declined to comment on the matter, saying she had been advised by lawyers not to speak to the media.

The Labor Board instructed the union and School District to take the issue to an arbitrator, but the union intends to contest the Labor Board’s ruling in court. Failing to bargain in good faith, union reps say, should be addressed by the Labor Board and cannot be settled through arbitration.

“As soon as we get their ruling back in writing, we’re going to contest it. We don’t agree at all with this,” Lamirande said. “Bad faith negotiating is something that needs to be decided by the Labor Board. This isn’t a question of a violation of a contract.”

Noting that Dover’s newly enacted tax cap puts strict limits on city spending, O’Connor said the decision to privatize was primarily based on economics. “We’ve been looking for ways to live within the tax cap and not affect our core business, which is the education of children,” he said.

Since the School District had already secured enough money to cover the union contract, the decision to go with UNICCO left it with a bundle of extra cash. According to O’Connor, the science curriculum and programming at the Regional Career Technical Center will receive $400,000 above and beyond what was budgeted.

“We have chosen to use those funds to cover other programs, to support programming and personnel in those programs,” he said.

To union representatives, the process of approving and then ditching the union contract seemed like an underhanded way of securing extra funding that the Council may not have otherwise approved. Lamirande accuses the School District of playing a “shell game with taxpayer money.” As a result, he said, employees who have staffed the schools for up to two decades will lose their jobs. “Not a fair way to deal with people,” Lamirande said.

Hall also worries that the inexpensive labor that UNICCO hires will lower quality of service at the schools. He noted that Dover privatized custodial services back in the 1980s, but it only lasted one year.

“Privatization has been tried in Dover in the past and it failed miserably,” Hall said. “I have eight grandkids, so I definitely care about what happens in the schools. We’re not there to make a profit, we’re just here to make a living.”

According to O’Connor, UNNICO has not yet started hiring labor. But even now, he said, most of the schools’ employees are not from Dover.

“First of all, we have no employees that have signed on with UNNICCO. They have not started their campaign to hire individuals to fill our positions,” O’Connor said. “I’m assuming we’re gonna have Dover residents just as we do now, but the vast majority of our current employees do not live in Dover.”

If the City Council approves their permit, local members plan to demonstrate in front of City Hall on Monday, May 12. According to Lamirande, if the Council denies the permit, they just might hold their demonstration anyway.

“I’m not afraid to get arrested for doing what I believe is my right as an American citizen,” he said.