New union deal at Miami-Dade Schools to begin push toward $15 hourly minimum wage

By William Gjebre, FloridaBulldog.org 

A tentative agreement between Miami-Dade Public Schools and the union representing its general employees raises the minimum pay for some of district’s lowest paid workers to $10 an hour, marking what a top union official says is the start of a drive to obtain a minimum hourly wage of $15.

The deal also provides for an immediate average pay hike of about four percent to the district’s food service employees, custodians, bus drivers and other workers.

Negotiators for the Miami-Dade school system and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Local 1184 reached the agreement Nov. 13. It goes to the School Board for approval today.

“We will be pressing for $15 an hour” in future negotiations, said Local president Vicki Hall.

“I think it is a very good deal for the union considering they are the lowest paid,” said James Haj, Assistant Superintendent in charge of the school district’s Labor Relations Department. He added that the district will look at the $15 an hour wage minimum, but only as an idea to be phased in over time.

“It does not happen overnight…We will keep moving on it,” Haj said.

Government agencies in various states around the country have joined the $15-an-hour minimum wage movement.

Last week, outside County Hall in downtown Miami, several hundred workers joined a $15 wage minimum rally headed by the Service Employees International Union, part of a nationwide demonstration in more than 200 cities that day.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo this month unilaterally established a $15 hourly minimum wage for all state workers in New York City by the end of 2018, and the end of 2021 for state workers outside the city. Other cities that have approved a $15 an hour minimum, to be reached over the next two to five years, include Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The Miami-Dade School Board will be asked to ratify the agreement subject to union members endorsing the pact at a Nov. 23 vote.

BOARD MEMBERS LOBBIED

Sources said the agreement came after union officials lobbied several school board members for a pay boost higher than the 2.4 percent that district officials had been offering. Union officials said the board members they lobbied were chairwoman Perla Hantman, Marta Perez Wurtz, Lawrence Feldman and Wilbert Holloway.

The pay boost for the union’s 7,300 workers is slightly more than the percentage boost accepted earlier this year by unions representing teachers, professional/technical workers and skilled craft employees. The AFSCME union gained much of the increase with a step advance on salary schedules — providing a nearly 4% average hike — rather than a flat rate hike.

According to district figures, the AFSMCE new contract’s total would cost increase salary costs by $4.5 million, though that number is proportionally less than its labor agreements with other unions. For example, the deal with the United Teachers of Dade, representing 31,000 teachers and other support personnel, is $50.1 million more.

If approved, the AFSCME accord would cover terms and conditions for three years, with the wage increase set for the first year, retroactive to July 1. Union officials said additional improvements to health insurance benefits would actually provide a wage improvement of 5 percent in the first year of the new contract.

About 714 employees represented by the union, including some food service and bus aides, will have their hourly salary hiked from about $9 to the new $10 minimum, Hall said.

Hall said the agreement also provides for joint union-management committees to study increasing the minimum hourly work guarantees for bus drivers to seven hours from the current six hours and evaluating staffing of food service workers and custodians to possibility add workers and reduce part time employees in these categories.