What’s In Your Contract?

Preamble, Article 1, Article 2

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be going through your contract to get you familiar with what’s inside. Today we start at the beginning: these first three articles lay the foundation for the agreement, but they’re a little dry. Bear with me and I promise it will get more interesting!

Keep in mind that this is a draft of the contract, and may have minor updates before it is final.

Preamble – Statement of Purpose
The preamble (formerly held in Article 2) has been updated for the new contract to reflect a broader vision of the work we do together: “This Agreement supports the efficient operations of the District and bargaining unit members’ vital contribution to fostering a successful, intersectional, equitable learning environment for the children and families of San Francisco.” It’s important to remember why we’re here, and why we invest all this effort in organizing and fighting for better working conditions – our working conditions are the students’ learning conditions.

Article 1 – Recognition
Membership matters. In article 1, we identify who SEIU 1021 will represent in the district. In the past couple of years, we have added several new classifications as the result of organizing and policy work, because when we work together we are better able to achieve our goals. Section 1.1 details the procedure for recognizing these new classifications. If there are disputes about whether a class is properly part of our unit, the CA Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) will make a ruling according to the Educational Employee Relations Act (EERA). As public employees, we are not subject to the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board like workers at private companies.

Article 2 – Term of Agreement (and other matters)
Three basic contract tools exist in article 2: term, severability, and scope. 2.0 Term specifies how long this contract will last, before a new one is negotiated. Your current contract expires on June 30, 2020.

2.1 Severability accounts for the possibility that some part of this contract may become out of compliance with the law. If that happens, the rest of the contract will not be impacted.

2.2 Full Agreement represents that there are no other agreements outside of this contract that impact the rules inside of this contract. No employee handbook or private deal can overrule the terms of the contract. What you see is what you get.

Section 2.3 contains a “reopener” clause that allows us to return to the table to discuss wages whenever our members at the City get a raise that we do not get.

Next Thursday we’ll cover Article 3, Nondiscrimination, in some detail. See? It does get more interesting.