Dear Editor:
As president of the Hoboken School Employees Association, I wanted to clarify a few things that I have been reading lately. There has been a lot written, and a lot that is misunderstood, about our membership and our recently settled contract.
First, the membership in our union consists of custodians, engineers who run the heating system, head custodians, maintenance, security guards, aides, and general workers. More than two-thirds of our members have been serving in the Hoboken schools for more than 10 years. Because of that, we know the schools, the administrators, the teachers, and the parents. Most importantly, we know the students and they know us.
Some have said that the contract we settled in February, a year and a half after the prior agreement expired, was too generous. However, most people don’t understand what our members earn. The lowest full-time salary on our salary guide is for a first year aide, who earns $11,500. The highest is $63,124 for a head custodian at step 25, an employee with a supervisory role who has been working twenty five years or more. The average raise this year was the lowest in many years and the percentage raise was the lowest we have ever agreed to. In addition, we made historic concessions on health care, agreeing to contributions for the first time and increasing our prescription costs. With these concessions, some of our members will pocket less than last year, while earning salaries that are at or near poverty level. We are not getting wealthy at the expense of the taxpayers and we understand the difficulties many people are facing. We live here and face them, too. That is why we continued to work for so long without a contract.
I would like to thank the Board for their professional conduct and amiable negotiations, particularly the members of the team who signed the agreement: James Farina, Rose Marie Markle, Ruth McAllister, and Maureen Sullivan. We made difficult decisions, as did the Board, but we came to a fair settlement that was appropriate for these times.
Joe Vitale,
HSEA President