As chair and on behalf of the Unit A Bargaining Team, consisting of myself, Allison Cox (President), Gayle Carvalho (PR&R Chair), Derek Ferguson (QHS), Sean Greene (QHS), Seth Harmon (QHS), Peg McDonough (SWMS), Nicole Prevost (Parker), and Teresa Rand (Wollaston), I wanted to briefly update you on the status of bargaining as we begin the process of negotiating a new contract.
On February 24, 2020, the Team met for the fourth time. In these initial meetings, the team has closely examined all of the bargaining information that building reps collected earlier this year from the staffs of individual buildings. This information is an invaluable resource for the Team, and we are deeply grateful to all of the QEA Building Reps who worked to get this information to us and to all the staff who contributed. Examining that data has left the Team with strong impressions about what the priorities of our membership are.
We plan to continue meeting weekly, with forthcoming dates on March 3, 10, 18, and 23 and April 1, 6, and 15. Our goal will be to use as many of these dates as needed to begin the process of making decisions about how we can best turn your priorities into a package of proposals we can bring to the table.
Once we arrive at a list of proposals the Team feels good about, we will reach out to the Superintendent to set up dates for the actual bargaining to commence. You should expect another update from the Team around that time. If you have any questions before the next update, you can email them directly to me at mellisqhs@gmail.com. Thank you.
Michael J Ellis
QEA Vice President
Chair, Unit A bargaining team