Victory for locked out teachers

River Rouge teachers back at work

Nearly half the teachers in the River Rouge School District are back on the job following a lockout that ended with a settlement to resolve a months’-long dispute.

In July, the Wayne County district laid off 24 teachers in an effort to eliminate a ballooning budget deficit. Substitutes filled many of those jobs when classes started this fall.

“What they were doing looked like, felt like and smelled like a lockout,” said teacher David Kocbus, president of the 49-member River Rouge Education Association.

The lockout capped a months’-long dispute between the association and the district that began when the district introduced a number of initiatives. When the association demanded to bargain over those efforts, allowable under law because the existing contract didn’t address them specifically, the district countered with its own demands to bargain – over wages and health insurance contributions from employees.

Over the course of a few months, the district asked teachers to each give up $10,000 a year in pay and to contribute significantly more toward their health insurance. As the union questioned the district’s financial calculations – and informed the district that it did not recognize the demand to bargain as legitimate, a projected $1.5 million shortfall grew to about $3.1 million.

“The membership was, of course, a little flabbergasted at the enormous amount of the increase,” Kocbus said.

The River Rouge Education Association was on solid legal ground – bargaining law doesn’t allow a district or a local union to demand to bargain over provisions that have already been settled, said Nancy Koziol, the MEA UniServ director who works with the association.

The teachers’ contract doesn’t expire until 2011.

With the help of MEA, the River Rouge Education Association sought an injunction in circuit court and filed multiple unfair labor practice charges with the Michigan Employment Relations Commission.

A retired circuit court judge was brought in to mediate the case.

MERC notified the district and individual school board members that fines would be imposed if they were found guilty of a lockout. The district subsequently agreed to settle the dispute and restored the teachers’ jobs.

“We hung tough,” Kocbus said. “We received a great deal of support from MEA. They worked tirelessly and were with us every step of the way.

Updated: October 6, 2009