Pay dispute nears end

FRANKLIN TWP. | Facing an unprecedented situation, the Warren County Technical School board is expected to decide by month's end whether to award back pay to former staff members who left the district before a new contract was approved.

The Warren Tech Education Association filed a grievance with the school board last month on behalf of five teachers, a secretary and a maintenance worker, union President Ed Yarusinsky said. Those individuals are entitled to between $1,200 and $2,000 each in retroactive pay, Yarusinsky said.

The school board met Wednesday with Yarusinsky behind closed doors, but school officials are still awaiting a formal legal opinion on whether to send out the paychecks, Chief School Administrator Robert Glowacky said.

School board Attorney Bruce Jones did not return a call for comment Thursday.

Once the two-year contract dispute was resolved, the school district sent out nearly $300,000 in retroactive paychecks in July. The back pay covers July 1, 2006, to last July 15.

The contract, however, does not address back pay for former employees, because the district has never before faced a situation where teachers left amid a contract dispute, Glowacky said.

Warren Tech has maintained that the former staff members are not eligible for back pay, because they left the district before the contract was settled, Glowacky said.

The case of one member, who died while she was still employed by the district, will be considered differently, but the other employees decided to leave their jobs at Warren Tech and should not be considered members of the bargaining unit, Glowacky said.

"How you rationalize we still owe you money, I don't know," Glowacky said. "I don't agree with that."

Yarusinsky argued that those staff members should receive their back pay because the negotiations and final contract were completed with those individuals in mind as members of the bargaining unit. The staff members had worked under an expired contract.

"They're expecting their salary. They always did," Yarusinsky said. "It was something that was understood."