MBUTANOW.org

April 16, 2012

The MBUTA bargaining team met with district officials for the second time.

March 22, 2012

The MBUTA bargaining team met with district representatives for the initial bargaining session.

March 19, 2012

The Executive Board of the Association added Wendy Thornton to the bargaining team late last week. Her highly regarded communication skill set is a valuable complement to the rest of the bargaining team and the organizing team.

March 7, 2012

More than 150 teachers and their family members attended the sunshining of MBUTA’s proposal at the School Board meeting. Association president Karl Kurz, Grand View’s  Lori Desmond, and MBMS’ Rebecca Allen all delivered eloquent speeches at the meeting, which were greeted by standing ovation.

February 27, 2012

MBUTA delivered to the District an outline proposal for sunshine at the scheduled School Board meeting on March 7, 2012 beginning at 6:30 pm. A copy of this document is available on this website. Sunshining of the proposal is a formality that is essential before collective bargaining can take place. Sunshining proposals do not contain specifics as the details are constructed during the process at the negotiating table by input from both parties.

February 7, 2012

MBUTA is set to open negotiations with the District at the School Board’s March 7, 2012 regularly scheduled meeting. This is part of a formal process when the document that reveals the contract articles intended to be negotiated by MBUTA is read to the Board of Trustees. If the District keeps to its word, MBUSD will sunshine the articles it intends to negotiate at the same time. At the subsequent meeting, the Board will formally instruct the District’s chief negotiator to begin negotiations. The timing is crucial in order to wrap up negotiations before the contract runs out later this year. Whether or not the District will take the necessary steps to get the negotiation process off to a timely start, will be a key indicator of how serious the administration is about the concerns of the Association. All members are encouraged to attend this formally important meeting and support the Association and Bargaining Team.

January 14, 2012

The Bargaining Team met on January 12, 2012 to evaluate the responses collected in the bargaining survey. Thanks to your participation in the survey, in particular the submitted comments, a multitude of issues were uncovered from the complete cross section of our membership. The team is working hard to address as many of these issues as possible while promoting unity and the common interest. Much of the discussion at Thursday’s meeting centered around the large surplus of unrestricted funds the district has accumulated, but an equal amount of time was devoted to accurately identify and mitigate the issues prevailing at the elementary campuses.

Based on this input from the membership, the team began to outline a proposal for a new contract. In addition to the most important salary and benefits proposal, the team was looking into the possibility of adding, modifying, or otherwise altering contract language related to class size definitions, extra duty compensation for elementary, middle, and high school teachers, and more
uniform arrangements for members in elementary assignments. A large number of respondents indicated an interest in a retirement incentive package, so the team began to examine various options and their short- and long-term impact on other objectives of the membership as a collective. Please remember that the issues being negotiated here will require trade-offs, unless we are all prepared to take action in support of our collective goals.

These efforts and discussions will intensify as the team develops a proposal to take to the bargaining table. Your input and participation may be requested in the future to help the team develop a proposal and negotiate a contract that has the greatest positive impact on our members and their families.

December 30, 2011

In order to better communicate with the membership about union activity, members will be receiving frequent email notifications related to updated information posted on MBUTANOW.org. The new subscription tool also allows website administrators to email the membership with special messages and reminders. All members have been automatically subscribed to post updates. A live activity calendar is also available on every page of the website. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with this information. MBUTANOW.org puts out an RSS (or feed) at http://mbutanow.org/feed. RSS readers in browsers and mobile devices allow you to stay informed by receiving updates whenever they occur.

December 19, 2011

The bargaining team has released online the MBUTA Bargaining Survey (2012) to ascertain your priorities as they gear-up to begin collective bargaining for a new master contract. The current contract will expire in June of next year. You will receive a link to the online survey via your personal email account no later than December 22, 2011. The survey needs to be submitted January 11, 2012.

December 17, 2011

MBUTA deployed a union activity participation survey that will help the organizing team make decisions and inform members about union related activities. Please click HERE to get to the survey on this site.

December 15, 2011

On Monday,  December 12, the MBUTA Representative Council met and appointed Bill Fauver, Adam Geczi, Linda Hunt, and Jed Rucker as your 2011-2012 Bargaining Committee. Adam Geczi was named chairperson for the team. If you have any questions, concerns or observations related to collective bargaining, please contact the team at bt@mbutanow.org.