Negotiations update

Colleagues,
In recent weeks many of you have come to members of the negotiating team with questions about the status of the reopener negotiations for our FY13 contract. I appreciate your patience and apologize that we have not been able to update you sooner. As you may guess, the fact that we have not yet been able to reach a satisfactory settlement on the current year’s reopener is not good news. In fact, we have recently declared an impasse and are scheduled to begin mediation later this week. Following that, if necessary, will be fact finding, a legal process in which both sides’ cases are made to a fact finder who acts as a non-binding arbitrator.

The reopener was triggered by the language in our ratified contract stating that should MCPS receive a raise this year, the administration and Chapter would “promptly meet and negotiate in good faith in an effort to reach agreement on such changes, if any.” We have asked the Chapter’s attorney to investigate whether the administration’s negotiations have in fact been in good faith.

Pending the results of the mediation, we will be sharing more with you in the near future about the impasse and how we got here. The Chapter’s negotiating team and executive committee are committed to seeing this process through and are doing everything in our power to bring you fair and appropriate salary enhancements.