Teachers’ union reaches agreement with Harford County
Harford County’s board of education and the Harford County Education Association, which represents about 3,000 teachers in the county, reached an agreement Monday which will take effect Wednesday, pending ratification by both sides. The teachers are not seeing pay increases in the deal.
According to a joint statement by the school system and the union, the contract brought few changes to the contract, maintaining health care and pay standards. The announcement comes following four months of negotiations.
“My fellow Board members and I are glad that we were able to reach an agreement with the Harford County Education Association,” the board’s President, Patrick Hess, said in the statement. “In light of tough economic times, we have reached an agreement which is best for all involved.”
So if they didn’t get a pay raise and just maintained the current health plan, wouldn’t the union members receive a de facto raise by cutting out their apparently worthless union membership fees?
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This is a disgrace! That union is spineless. How do they get nothing after four months and act like it is a victory. Then, have the nerve to keep taking money from teachers for their hard work. Teachers should have at least gotten their step increase. I can see how there is no money for new cost of living raises, but if they don’t get a step this year, it does not get made up the following year. This means that teachers are basically losing a year of paid service. There is no reason Harford County should not have given a step because you have people who retired this year that were being paid at the top and new teachers who are hired will be making at least 20k less than the retirees were. They are also hiring fewer teachers because of positions that have been cut. The state requires that each county receive no less funding than the previous year, so they should have had the step increases budgeted in already. This is a gross mismanagement of funds! How do you tell teachers of one of the top ranked counties that they have millions for building new schools and plasma screen televisions for those new buildings, but they cannot give 60-70% of their teachers an average step increase of fifteen hundred dollars? There are only 15 steps, so teachers above that would not get a pay increase. We will be lucky if teachers don’t start leaving our county in droves. I sure hope a new television or pool can teach my children.
Comment by R. Lee — July 23, 2009 @ 7:52 pm