Hello Union Siblings,
This weekend’s monumental strike vote by the educators at Greater Lawrence Technical School (AFT-MA Local 1707) and the subsequent and absolute cave-in by the GLTS School Committee demonstrated once again that our collective power as a union is always greater than the sum of our individual parts. In that spirit, the Contract Action Team met again today to discuss ongoing negotiations for the Clerical and ESP units, as well as to discuss the potential impact of the School Committee tasking the Superintendent with coming up with a plan for returning to full in-person learning on April 1st.
The Clerical bargaining team reports that they continue to make slow progress in negotiations with the School Committee, but an agreement still has not been reached. Please take a moment to email the School Committee (schoolcommittee@haverhill-ps.org) and let them know you support a fair cost of living wage increase for the Clerical Unit. The next bargaining session is scheduled for March 8th at 4pm. Any member of the unit who would like to observe negotiations should contact Cyndi O’Shaughnessy by Thursday, March 4th. Clerks should be receiving an update on negotiations directly from Cyndi shortly.
The ESP negotiations team will be meeting with the School Committee on Wednesday to continue their quest to ensure a living wage for all ESPs. We will be holding an All-ESP General Membership meeting on Monday, March 1st at 7PM to discuss next steps and to coordinate future actions in support of the bargaining team. We will be calling all ESPs between now and then to help us better prepare for the meeting, so please be sure to answer your phone when the call comes in.
Finally, Superintendent Marotta sent out a survey today to gauge opinions about increasing in-person learning. Please make sure you honestly fill out this survey (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc6FvS5umWaLofxLs9tHWPyVYuOaMcgco1zfEtsULs2SZ0e7Q/viewform) so the School Committee and Mayor can see the data on how all staff feel about increasing in-person learning at this time. Depending how things go this Thursday, the Action Team is planning to meet again on Monday afternoon to discuss reopening and potential actions related to it. Watch for an announcement sometime Friday to confirm.
In Solidarity,
Ben Flagg and Natalie Campisano
HCAT Co-Chairs