The union representing public school teachers moved to have its contract talks with New York City declared at an impasse yesterday in the hopes that a state mediator would intervene.þþThe current contract between the city and the union, the United Federation of Teachers, expired on May 31, 2003. þþThe Bloomberg administration has proposed virtually eliminating the existing 200-page contract that has given the city's 80,000 teachers a large say in how the school system is run for more than 40 years. Instead, the administration has offered an eight-page bare-bones contract that the union president, Randi Weingarten, has called an insult. þþAfter five negotiating sessions, including four in the last two months, Ms. Weingarten called an emergency meeting yesterday at which about 900 union delegates voted to declare the talks deadlocked and to ask the state's Public Employment Relations Board to declare an impasse, a first step to binding arbitration.þþÿThis action follows six months of fruitless and only occasional talks, which in turn followed four months with the city refusing to talk to us at all,ÿ Ms. Weingarten said at a news conference. þþThe city labor commissioner, James F. Hanley, who is leading the negotiations for the education department, issued a statement saying the city was still willing to talk. þþÿWe stand ready, willing and able to negotiate a contract with the U.F.T. at the bargaining table,ÿ Mr. Hanley said in the statement. ÿBut we will not negotiate this contract through the press.ÿ þþMs. Weingarten accused Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg yesterday of trying to stall the contract talks.. Last month, the city demanded that its eight-page contract be adopted for all schools, prompting Ms. Weingarten to warn that a deadlock was inevitable. þþKathryn S. Wylde, president and chief executive of the Partnership for New York City, a business group that has pushed the two parties to work more closely together, said she was disappointed by the stalled negotiations. ÿIt's very discouraging to folks who want to see the reform effort succeed,ÿ she said. þþEducation Department officials have also discussed a strategy of seeking to embarrass union leaders while reaching out to teachers. þþThis month, in an effort to communicate directly with teachers, the department distributed the first issue of a newsletter called Connections. It included a front-page letter to teachers in which Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein acknowledged some teachers' complaints about micromanagement over issues like bulletin boards, how seats are arranged in classrooms and the number of minutes for certain types of lessons. þþ
Source: NY Times
