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Highlands Today

Negotiations To Resume On Support Incentive Pay Provision

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By MARC VALERO | Highlands Today

Published: December 16, 2007

SEBRING — An oversight by school district and support personnel negotiators will require another bargaining session to work out details on incentive pay.

As the school board was about to approve the support union employment contract recently it was pointed out that a small portion of the contract was not in the agreement the employees ratified Dec. 2. The language concerned job incentive pay for employees with two- or four-year college degrees.

"That poses for us a potential problem," said Sam Lee, negotiator for the school district. "It is my opinion that should the board adopt page 21 ... you in all probability will have committed an unfair labor practice," because it was not included in the contract ratified by the employees.

"You cannot unilaterally change people's salaries," he said. "While both sides really thought we had some form of a verbal agreement over that $300, it appears that we do have some kind of verbal agreement, but we don't agree to exactly what it is."

The school board unanimously approved the support personal contract without the incentive pay provision.

The support personnel's chief negotiator, Michael Bernier said both sides negotiated incentive pay during contract talks.

"At the end, both the district's negotiator and I failed to write up the tentative agreement on it," he said. "As bargaining closed, we dropped the ball."

A bargaining session has been scheduled for Monday to finalize and formally write up a tentative agreement on the job incentive pay.

The employees and school board will then likely vote on that portion of the contract, Bernier said.

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