MEA bargaining tools arm local

As local bargaining teams head to negotiating tables this spring, MEA has new data showing in many places educator compensation has not kept pace with school funding increases, information which could be used to justify significant pay increases.

Statewide trends show all school employees’ compensation as a share of total school district expenditures has fallen from 82% before the Great Recession of 2008 to 77% in 2021 — which is an all‑time low, accord ing to MEA’s Statewide Bargaining Consultant Craig Culver.

Bottom line: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has presided over a signifi cant increase to the state’s education budget over four years, and overall pay increases have not kept pace. Culver’s calculations and figures do not include federal COVID‑relief money which was one‑time funding to address the pandemic’s challenges.

“The irony is the administrators’ total compensation (as a share of total expenditures) has remained flat,” Culver said, “so they have kept their share of the pie, but the rest of the employees statewide have lost pieces of the pie.”

Statewide and local trends do not parallel each other in every place, but “Where it exists, union leaders and bargainers must make it their ‘mis sion’ to restore lost compensation to their members and adopt strategies and best practices to succeed,” Culver wrote in a report issued by MEA’s Statewide Bargaining Strategies and Implementation Team.

The Cost Alignment Calculator, designed by Culver, produces his torical trends and district compari sons — u sing state‑audited data that are undeniably accurate — to tell a story and make a case at the bargain ing table, Culver said.

Much of the data needed for the Cost Alignment Calculator is now available to most bargaining units in the state thanks to the new automated district financial analysis developed by MEA Economist Tanner Delpier.

“There’s not a state association in the country that has better tools than what MEA has developed in‑house to serve our members,” Delpier added.

At a recent bargaining retreat in Gaylord hosted by the Northern Michigan Education Association — attended by 35 bargaining units from the area — Culver shared an exam ple from a district where a teachers’ unit has had compensation as a share of expenditures drop from 60% to 52% over the last five years.

Simply to bring that number up to 55% — not even back to the highest five‑year point but to the average percentage over those years — would require a 13% pay hike, he noted to audible gasps in the crowd.

“The point isn’t to do all this finan cial analysis so you can look at it and be mad,” Culver said. “Tell it to your members prior to beginning negoti ations; resolve to get it back; lay the numbers out on the bargaining table, and tell your administration, ‘Here’s how much you’re under‑spending on our unit, and we’re going to bring you a proposal to solve that.’”

Another angle to pursue in docu menting the need for a compensa tion increase is to compare current pay structure against comparable districts in the area, Culver said. Especially useful is an analysis MEA’s bargaining department can provide that compares salary schedules over a 30‑year career.

“We’re doing a lot of this career earnings analysis to get people to