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Detroit School Official’s Unilateral Order Puts Office Workers Near Poverty Line
In the middle of contract negotiations, the emergency financial manager for the Detroit Public Schools is unilaterally imposing a 10 percent wage cut for school office workers and will require employees to pay 10 percent of health care premiums.
The move by Robert Bobb, who recently received an $81,000 raise, will push office employees’ average salary to barely 15 percent above the poverty level for a family of four and below the poverty level for a family of five. The average salary for the office workers currently is $25,000.
Says Ruby Newbold, president of the Detroit Association of Educational Office Employees, AFT Local 4168 (DAEOE):
I guess Mr. Bobb’s words that we are essential and that he is committed to labor management cooperation were meaningless rhetoric. All the members of DAEOE want is what is good for students and fair to staff. We can achieve this if the district does not unilaterally implement, provides the union with accurate data and returns to the bargaining table.
Although it took a long time, the school district and the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) recently reached a contract deal. Now Bobb is denying the same opportunity for support staff. DFT President Keith Johnson says he is appalled by Bobb’s unilateral action.
Support staff are essential to the education of our children. They are no less deserving than teachers to have a contract bargained and not implemented.
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1 Comment
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Most of our politicians vote on their own raises. We elect them, without any idea what plans they believe are right. It is time for all Americans to stand up and fight to Restore, not Change America. In 1936 Detroit, MI, our teachers preached that our families should vote to join the Communists, the Workers Party. Here we are 75 years later, and I see more and more destruction of our manufacturing base, and telling us, we must Progress.
There is a great book “America, What went wrong. This book has many examples of this downsizing of our manufacturing as listed in this KY event. We stand by, and watch our nation be destroyed, and believing things will get better, wake up, it’s not going to get better. Our children are being taught there is a new global world, that we must turn off America to aid the world. When we no longer have workers employed in America, we won’t need any unions, or the United States of America
My step father worked with Walter Reuther in the 1939 era to start the United Auto Workers union, I knew first hand why workers had to unite to get rights, now Americans are surrendering, without a fight. Union or not, rise up citizens to protect American jobs. Stop buying imports. Make sure that American sounding name product was made in America by Americans.