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Norwalk schools support personnel have been without a new contract since July 2009, and they are angry. “The way we have been treated for the last year is deplorable, demeaning, unfair and quite frankly unacceptable," said Donna Riddell, president of the Norwalk Federation of Educational Personnel, who spoke during the public comments at Tuesday evening’s Board of Education meeting.
The NFEP represents 425 aides, clerks, secretarial and support staff and is the second-largest bargaining unit in the city, after the teachers’ union. The NFEP is asking for a salary increase and improved benefits, which they say they “rightly deserve.” The union and the BOE’s negotiations committee could not agree on contract terms and the negotiations are now in arbitration -- to be decided by an independent body by the end of the summer. The union members are working under their old contract until new terms are worked out.
In her public statement, Riddell said, “This arbitration cost could have gone towards the funding of the economic package instead of lining the board’s lawyers pockets.”
Riddell, who has been secretary to the principal at Tracey Elementary School for the 20 years, also takes issue with recent contracts giving two top administrators 3 percent raises in the form of furlough days. “The Board of Education voluntarily provided rich contracts to the Assistant Superintendent and Human Resources Director,” said Riddell, adding that support personnel are “the lowest-paid employees."
“I am sensitive to the economic times, but how could the administrators get such contracts?” she said after the meeting. “We are supposed to be in it together.”
BOE Negotiations Committee Chair Jack Chiaramonte could not be reached for comment, and committee member Jodi Bishop-Pullan said she could not comment on negotiations since they are confidential.
