Bargaining Table

While the current contract does not expire until Aug. 31 and negotiations are still underway, NTA President Michael Zilles said that both parties have taken an interest in concluding negotiations as quickly as possible. However, he said, the School Committee has not responded to NTA proposals with the requisite urgency. He said that negotiations are moving slowly as a result.

“When we [first] sat down at the table and negotiated ground rules, they were concerned about fast-tracking the negotiations to get it done by February,” he said. “It's confusing because they haven't even put their focal points on the table yet and they haven't responded to us.”

Negotiations are regulated by a collective bargaining agreement (CBA), a written legal contract between an employer and an employee union that itself must be negotiated. The terms of a CBA include any element of work pertaining to the compensation of conditions of employees.

While no regular public updates on negotiations from the School Committee are available, regular summaries of each negotiating session posted on the NTA’s website depict the sessions as tense and riddled with conflict.

In a Dec. 3 update posted following the conclusion of the third negotiation session, Zilles, along with NTA Vice President Elizabeth Del Porto and Treasurer Christine Walsh, described the School Committee’s initial proposals to the NTA. Among these were limits on the employee usage of sick days, restrictions on access to special education services by children of educators living outside of Newton and a proposal for the district to return students prior to Labor Day — all of which the NTA labeled as “ill-conceived… punitive concessions.”