Budget repair bill nixed salary schedule, changed benefits
By Vicky Wedig
Editor
The start of the 2013-14 school year Tuesday marked the beginning of the third year Delavan-Darien School District staff are operating under Act 10 – Gov. Scott Walker’s budget repair bill adopted in 2011.
Among the law’s provisions are limiting contract negotiations to wages, requiring public employees to contribute to their state pensions and health insurance premiums and allowing districts to choose their own insurance carries rather than negotiating the choice.
Teachers no longer have a negotiated salary schedule, so, as of this year, some third-year teachers are paid the same as first-year teachers in the Delavan-Darien School District, said Wileman and Darien elementary school teacher Doreen Grams, president of the Delavan-Darien Education Association.
The most tangible financial benefit to the school district – and hardship on employees’ paychecks – has been employees’ contributions to the Wisconsin Retirement System, said district Business Administrator Carey Bradley. She said the district saved – and employees paid – about $800,000 last year in payments to WRS.
Before Act 10, Bradley said, retirement savings was a benefit, of which the district paid 100 percent. Act 10 required public employees to share a certain percentage of that cost with their employers. The requirement now is that employees pay 6.75 percent of their salaries to the retirement system, and districts pay the same amount. The employees’ share is slated to increase to 7 percent in 2014.
Changes at D-DSD
Grams said the Delavan-Darien School District has, for the most part, been fair in the changes it has implemented since Act. 10.
“Are we totally happy with things that have happened? No,” she said.
She said staff members are disappointed in the way their employee handbook, which replaces the employee contract, was written, but said overall the district has done well in its handling of Act 10.
She said employees are not compensated for after-school meetings they’re required to attend for an hour after school every Wednesday and new employees no longer receive post-employment benefits. But, the district continues to pay 100 percent of employees’ health insurance premiums and left employees’ sick leave benefits in tact.
“They haven’t changed a whole lot,” Grams said.
Grams said teachers no longer have a salary schedule – a negotiated grid that compensated teachers for years of experience and continuing education.
Under the negotiated salary schedule, employees moved a “lane” – to the next column of the salary grid – for every six credits they earned over a bachelor’s degree. For each year of experience in the district, employees moved a “step” – to the next row of the schedule for an increase in pay.
However, Grams said, the district compensated four people who obtained their master’s degrees by increasing their pay to the amount they would have received under the district’s former salary schedule.
Employees also continue to receive salary increases, which have essentially followed the salary schedule, Grams said, but employees no longer get pay hikes from “step” and “lane” changes.
“You’re stuck where you were when Act 10 when into effect,” Grams said.
Americans for Prosperity, another organization lobbying in favor of Act 10, contends that as of early this year, the law had saved taxpayers $2 billion and turned a $3.6 billion deficit into a surplus.
Bradley said any savings the district has realized in employee salaries since Act 10 are difficult to calculate. Before Act 10, if contract negotiations failed, districts were required to give employees a “qualified economic offer” – a 3.8 percent combined salary and benefits increase – to avoid binding arbitration. Now, salaries and benefits are considered separately, so doing comparative costing is difficult, Bradley said.
The district changed insurance carriers and increased the deductibles employees pay but continues to pay 100 percent of employees’ health insurance premiums.
The district changed its insurance carrier from Wisconsin Education Association to employees’ choice of Dean or Humana last year. It increased prescription co-payments and office visit co-pays in October 2011. In-network and out-of-network deductibles increased in January 2012.
The switch in carriers, which was effective in July 2012, was expected to save the district more than $600,000 in the first year and at least $370,000 the second year.
The district also changed its post-employment benefits – health insurance coverage employees receive after retirement. Before Act 10, teachers received eight years of paid health care if they retired after working in the district at least 20 years and four years of health care if they have worked at least 10 years. Employees paid the insurance carrier directly but were considered part of the district’s group plan.
Now, new hires in the district will not receive post-employment benefits when they retire, she said. Existing employees who were hired before the change will continue to receive health insurance benefits upon their retirement.
“At this point, it sounds like they don’t plan on changing a whole lot if they don’t have to,” Grams said.
The concern is when the district runs out of money, teachers will have to contribute more.
“I just wish they’d make a decision because it’s hard right now,” she said. “It would just be nice to know, ‘What are the rules we’re playing by?’”
Act 10 challenged
While the Delavan-Darien School District has followed Act 10, some public entities have resumed collective bargaining with their employees’ unions citing a 2011 Dane County Circuit Court decision.
Act 10 has been opposed by unions and legally challenged since its inception, and in most cases has been upheld. Among the cases were two federal challenges, – the Wisconsin Education Association Council vs. Walker and Laborers Local 236 AFL-CIO vs. Walker. In the Laborers case in U.S. District Court, most of Act 10 was upheld with some changes. When the case was appealed in the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the changes were reversed and Act 10 was upheld in its entirety.
However, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Juan Colas– in Madison Teachers Inc. vs. Walker in 2011 – struck down Act. 10, ruling it unconstitutional. The case is being appealed in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and a decision is expected around November.
As a result of the Dane County decision, some entities in Dane and Milwaukee counties – such as Milwaukee Area Technical College – negotiated with their employee unions and entered agreements that operate under Colas’ ruling and defy Act 10. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which supports Act 10, filed a lawsuit against MATC in Milwaukee County Circuit Court in May for violating Act 10.
Other districts are operating as though Act 10 is in tact until the Supreme Court makes its decision.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty contends those districts are proceeding properly by not acting on the Dane County decision, said Rick Esenberg, the organization’s president and general counsel.
“That has no precedential value,” he said. “We believe that the circuit court judge in Dane County was wrong and the decision will not be upheld.”
The Supreme Court last week gave the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty permission to file a “friend of the court” brief in the case in support of Act 10.
