North Shore Teacher Strikes: Gloucester Union First Of 3 To Reach Deal
BEVERLY, MA — One of the three North Shore striking teachers’ unions is headed back to the classrooms on Monday after reaching a tentative deal to end its two-week work stoppage.
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The Union of Gloucester Educators said early Friday afternoon that it reached a tentative agreement to end the strike after 15 days and that contract was ratified by its membership. The union went on to blast the School Committee and mayor for “stalling and dragging the strike on” when it could have been settled weeks earlier.
“This contract fight was about working class educators, community members, students versus those that have power and wield it to maintain a broken system,” UGE co-Presidents Rachel Salvo Rex and Maryann Aiello said in a statement. “The love for our students and our unending commitment to improving our lives fueled us for 15 long days in the rain, in the cold, and throughout this struggle.
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“What this strike proved is that in the face of cruel punishment and immense hardship, the more than 400 educators of this community had enough power to stand up, fight back, and transform this community.”
While bitterness clearly remains, the agreement does at least assure families and students that school will resume ahead of the Thanksgiving break with several upcoming vacation days already needing to be lost to make up for the 10 days out of school and the requirement for students to be in classes for 180 days.
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It could also pave the way for striking unions in Beverly and Marblehead to reach their own deals after classrooms have been closed for 10 and nine days, respectively, in those districts.
Beverly School Committee Chair Rachael Abell said on Friday night morning that the situation was “dire” and that the Committee “is seriously considering all options and will do what we need to do to end this strike and get students back to school.”
“We hope it can be at the negotiating table, but that will only happen if the union returns with reasonable and more serious counter-offers which ultimately bring us to a resolution this weekend.”
An Essex County Superior Court judge has set a Sunday night deadline to reach a deal or face a state-mandated “expedited” fact-finding process.
Abell said each side put forth counter-proposals on Thursday but that the Beverly Teachers Association’s offer remained “significantly beyond what is affordable to the city.”
BTA co-President Julia Brotherton charged on Thursday night that the negotiation stalemate is “intended to make educators feel pain and either they are not through punishing us” or “they do not ideologically believe our hard-working paraprofessionals should earn anything more than poverty pay.”
“The simple fact is that we cannot go back to work or end this strike until we have fair contracts that pay our paraprofessionals a living wage, ensure our students have (extended) lunch and recess, ensure our paraprofessionals have fair parental leave and includes a return-to-work agreement that allows us to get back to the normal business of educating our students,” Brotherton said.
In Marblehead, there was a similar sense of despair from both sides around the negotiations as of Thursday night.
“The School Committee is not more willing to negotiate than they were two weeks ago when the educators in this town decided they could no longer tolerate the deteriorating conditions in our schools and the plummeting morale of our staff,” MEA co-President Jonathan Heller said. “Enough is enough.”
The School Committee countered in a statement Thursday night, saying that: “It is not the lack of urgency or dedication that has kept the parties from reaching agreement. It is the MEA’s demands for unaffordable wages that will require layoffs, larger class sizes, and cuts in programs for years to come that prevent agreement.”
(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at [email protected]. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)
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