Channel 34
July 24, 2014
Classified Employees File Grievance Against Inglewood Unified School District
By Cristian Vasquez
The California Professional Employees, Local Union # 2345, the Union for the classified employees in the Inglewood Unified School District (IUSD), have filed a grievance against the district for contracting painters to work on school sites without first bringing laid-off classified employees back.
“We are going after them on the issue regarding the three painters that we have which were laid off: it is absolutely ridiculous to run a school district without any painters,” Local Union # 2345 field representative Christopher Graeber said. “They are using these outside people that were not authorized at all. We are checking to see if they did the right thing and provide the correct wages, which is required for a public sector job.”
Back in April the Inglewood Unified School District’s state-appointed superintendent Don Brann laid off more than 40 non-teaching union employees during a last-minute emergency meeting; among the positions eliminated were three painters. In addition, the classified employees have been speaking out during district school board meetings against the replacement of current campus supervisors with armed school safety workers. “We can’t find one district in California that has that low-level of security guards that are armed guards,” Graeber said. “We are equating this to mall cops at the schools. This is totally unnecessary to have more guns on campus by people who are not trained to deal with kids. It is a recipe for disaster.”
The district’s layoffs all of its painters, and proposal to replace campus supervisors with other security options, has classified employees and Graeber questioning the district’s ability to deal with painting needs such as graffiti removal and to provide adequate safety for the student population. “We found people painting on school sites and we have found people that belong to outside companies, that are not authorized, cleaning floors,” Graeber said. “They [the district] are circumventing our contract so we are going after them against these painters because they don’t get fingerprinted or background checked. Regarding the painters, we argue that they should have bumping rights and they tried to circumvent a contract to fill the position. The main part of our grievance is that when you
lay painters off, the school district is saying that they have no need for painters. So if they are eliminating or freezing that position, that means that nobody works that job.”
Making the situation worse are the conflicts arising between decisions made by the two previous state-appointed administrators, Kent Taylor and LaTanya Kirk-Carter, and Dr. Brann’s current efforts to stabilize the district’s financial crisis. So far layoffs have been part of that stabilization effort; however, based on labor agreements when classified employees are laid off, those employees are supposed to be given the opportunity to fill those vacancies first.
“What we really think is going on is that they [the district] laid off the maintenance director, who is a painter and since they eliminated the three painter jobs then he does not have a place to fall back to,” Graeber said. “We don’t feel that we should pay the consequences for mistake the previous administration made. Now the current administration is making a mistake by not allowing the person to fall back on a job that he should have.”
The classified employees’ union will send a letter to the State Labor Board and wait five to 10 days to hear a response. At that point the validity of the district’s actions will be decided before a labor judge. Graeber and classified employees throughout the district have argued that administrators have focused their efforts to fix the financial crisis by eliminating classified workers more than any other group. With the large cuts suffered by the classified employees so far, Graeber believes the battle is far from over. “The state trustee is attempting to balance the budget on the back of the lowest paid employees and it will not save the District,” Graeber stated. “IUSD does not need more guns on Schools.”