Retirement Incentive and Bargaining Updates
Members:
Your HEA Bargaining Team has been busy developing a possible retirement incentive and gearing up for interest-based bargaining for our salaries for 2022-2023. As of this writing, we do not have a response from the district on the retirement incentive and have been unable to lock in a date with the district to begin our bargaining process.
Retirement Incentive Timeline:
11/3/21--Jane first asked Rex Weltz if there was interest from the district in holding a retirement incentive. Answer: Yes it would be considered.
12/9/21--Jane had informal meeting with Rex, Stacy Collette, and Janelle Mickelson to flesh out what the district would consider and what they would not.
12/9/ and 10/21--HEA bargaining team met to develop a proposal.
12/12/21--HEA bargaining team delivered proposal to the district via email.
12/20/21--Jane met with Rex who said that it was a priority to get the proposal costed out.
1/5/22--Jane met with Rex who asked if HEA would be willing to consider the retirement incentive and the salary bargaining all together, without using interest-based bargaining.
1/6/22--HEA bargaining team met to discuss this ask, and determined it was not in the best interests of our members, nor in the best interest of a continued bargaining relationship with the district.
1/7/22--HEA bargaining team sent an email to Rex, Stacy, Janelle and Luke Muszkiewicz outlining our decision and asking the district to please respond to our retirement incentive proposal.
1/7/21--Jane received an email from Rex stating that the business office was working on the cost out for the retirement incentive proposal and would get back to us "in the coming days."
Interest-Based Bargaining Timeline:
10/6/21--Jane sent an "Intent to Bargain" letter to the district as prescribed by the CBA. In this letter I quoted the preamble to the CBA which states that the district and HEA will bargain in a collaborative manner for the good of both parties.
10/26/21--Jane met with Stacy who said that the district would not engage in consensus based bargaining which has been the norm in Helena for many years, but would engage in interest-based bargaining. This requires a facilitator which the Department of Labor and Industry provides free of charge. Stacy said that the district would approve any facilitator the union chose to use.
11/9/21 (approximately)--Jane contacted Max Hallfrisch at DLI to discuss our wants and needs for interest-based bargaining.
11/12/21--Jane and Stacy jointly completed and sent the "Request for Assistance" form from DLI requesting interest-based bargaining facilitation and Max as our facilitator.
12/17/21--Max sent an email to Stacy and me asking for confirmation of dates.
12/20/21--Jane responded "all" and asked for Wednesday dates, as that works best for the HEA team. Stacy did not respond.
12/21/21--Jane met with Stacy who asked if we could meet over the holiday break with Rex to talk about the format for bargaining. I agreed, but Stacy never contacted me to set up this meeting.
1/5/22--Jane met with Rex who asked if we could tie the retirement incentive proposal and the salary bargaining all into one proposal and send it to the district.
1/6/22--HEA bargaining team met to discuss this ask, and determined it was not in the best interests of our members, nor in the best interest of a continued bargaining relationship with the district.
1/7/22--HEA bargaining team sent an email to Rex, Stacy, Janelle and Luke Muszkiewicz outlining our decision and asking the district to please set up dates with Max for interest-based bargaining.
1/7/21--Jane received an email from Rex stating that the district would "make that contact to establish a schedule.