Painters win grievance against Portland School District

PORTLAND - Members of Painters Local 10 employed by the Portland School District won a third-step grievance and will divide nearly $25,000 in back pay.

A four-person panel (two representatives from labor and two from management) agreed 3-to-1 with the union that 52 painters should not have been hit with a 93-cent-an-hour pay cut in the third and final year of a collective bargaining agreement negotiated through the District Council of Unions (DCU). The DCU is a coalition of building and service trades unions with members employed by Portland Public Schools.

The contract is complicated in that it tries to maintain wage parity with all similar crafts in private sector trades using a formula based on prevailing wage rates. If school district employees earn more than the outside craft, raises are capped at 1 percent.

At the beginning of the third year of the agreement (July 1, 1998) the school district determined that the Painters' total wage and benefits package still exceeded that of the outside master labor agreement, so it cut Painters' paychecks by 93 cents an hour. The union argued that a clause in the contract specified that "no employee shall suffer any reduction in the rate of pay or fringe benefits solely as a result of the execution of this agreement."

At the first and second steps of the grievance procedure the school district wouldn't budge from its position to cut wages. At the third step, after listening to testimony from several employees, the four-person panel agreed with the union and ordered full back pay to July 1.

Since the paycut, morale has been low and sick leave and personal leave have increased, reported Bill Regan, financial secretary of Local 10. He said one employee quit and several others have been laid off.

"After the ruling it was like a rock was lifted off the paint department. Everybody's morale shot back up," Regan said.